35 weeks (+1 day): 5 weeks to go.

i know i'm super antsy for lana to come out, but i am somewhat appeased that i am now close enough to do a countdown - when people ask "when are you due?" or "how far along are you?" it makes me feel better that i can say "i have 5 weeks left" instead of "35 weeks." it doesn't work quite as well when you're like "oh well i have 18 weeks left."

still, with that said, physically everything is getting harder and harder. i feel ginormous, my hips, back, legs and belly ache and pull, i don't sleep as well, i'm constipated, i can't stand or sit for long periods, etc. as mom friends tell me, this is nature's way of making you totally ready for whatever it takes to get the baby out.

i think what's surprised me the most about pregnancy (in terms of the way my body feels) is how much the legs suffer. you always figure that the belly area and torso will have a lot of the burden to bear, but i didn't realize how hard it is on the legs. i keep thinking of those pre-pregnancy days when i could run around and do whatever i felt like without having to consider my body. i had a freakout moment last night - i came home from work, sat down for dinner, and just stayed seated at the dinner table for a couple hours. after dinner, i chatted with my mom and then played blokus with my cousin. my mom kept telling me to stop playing and go lie down on the couch so i finally did. my legs felt funny once i got to the couch so i looked down and holy moly my legs had swelled up like balloons! my right leg was way worse than my left - i couldn't believe it was my own leg. and my toes looked like little sausages. :( i propped my feet up and my mom massaged my legs and feet for a good hour to help the swelling go down. it's much better today but i'm still wary of sitting or standing for too long. pregnancy makes you sympathize with all sorts of ailments out there that you never really thought about - obesity, water retention, shortness of breath, a "bad hip," etc.. i sound like a 70 year old.

overall i don't think i've been too bad with mood swings during the pregnancy. i was super exhausted and thus super irritable during the first trimester, but besides that i don't think i've been crazy pregnant lady. (and i haven't ever made unreasonable requests for the hubs to go out and get [name the sweet] for me in the middle of the night. then again i haven't had any weird cravings at all during the pregnancy.) but. i think the aforementioned physical ailments + the heat + the "just get her out of me!" feeling are contributing to the making of a sort of "preggzilla." i suppose sh could give a more objective view on this matter but you know, no need to bother him. :)

while we're talking about pregnancy, i came across this video and...well, just watch it. it's a clip from the show "i didn't know i was pregnant." it boggles the mind, i tell you.
http://jezebel.com/5821307/there-was-a-baby-in-my-sweatpants

bump!

15 weeks: feeling bipolar + maybe hormones can be a good thing

sometimes, i complain to sh that we are still so far away from august 23. but i have to admit that each week does go by pretty quickly. 5 more weeks and i'll be halfway through the pregnancy (and we'll know if the baby is a mini-sh or a mini-carol). well, hopefully by then i'll be liking food and sh can take me out to eat somewhere yummy. not being able to eat normally has been the biggest frustration for me during this pregnancy. it's really hard to think of something i can eat that's not cereal, fruit, yogurt or bacon.

so i've been feeling very up and down this week - bipolar not in my attitude towards the baby, but in how i feel about this world into which the baby will be born. i think it's hard sometimes to wrap my head around the fact that this world is so dichoto...mous? (is that a word?) sometimes, life is good. saturday morning was chilly but super sunny, so sh, sammie and i took a nice walk to fort greene (which did wonders for my SAD-ness) to pick up muffins and coffee from a small coffee shop. i thought to myself how excited i am that soon we'll have a baby that can join us in morning walks like these.

but at other times, life really just sucks. i've recently gotten into the tv show bones. i know it's been on for a while but the first time i saw the show was only a few weeks ago. it seems like it's on at least 3 times every evening, so i've been watching it incessantly. (it doesn't hurt that i had a crush on david boreanaz during the buffy years and now he's back as a hunky fbi agent.) obviously, there's always a dead person involved in the plot since dr. brennan + team are now investigating said dead person's bones to solve the mystery of the death. and almost always, there's a murderer involved in the plot as well. i started crying during one episode where the murderer was particularly callous and horrible and demented.

when sh got home later that night, i started tearing up again. when he asked me what was wrong, i told him how it's scary to think of bringing a baby into this crappy world. just the thought of the baby experiencing any hurt, sadness or fear makes me want to cry, but i know it's inevitable. how can a parent raise a child to have some understanding that this world is flawed while also adequately protecting the child from those flaws until it's ready to tackle them on its own? i know this is probably one of THE questions of parenthood and i probably won't have to battle it until a little later, but it's there, floating around in my mind. the lens with which i look at everything has changed since i got pregnant. if i weren't pregnant, i would've watched that episode of bones and gone, "ugh. what a nutjob" and moved on. now, it's "omg, nutjobs like that live in the same world as our soon-to-be born baby." freak out ensues. i'm sure hormones have something (maybe a lot) to do this with these emotions and thought processes. at first i would blame hormones for overreacting or being oversensitive or just feeling miserable. but now i'm not so sure. maybe hormones can be a good thing. maybe it's preparing me now for the emotions and thought processes i'll go through a million times over as a mom.

ultimately, all these emotions and thought processes i'm going through as i progress through pregnancy are showing me a little more about how God feels about us. if i can love the baby this much and i haven't even seen it yet (minus the little show it put on for us during the ultrasound), how much more does he love us? after i calmed down from the freak out over bones, sh responded that we don't have to worry. he reminded me that this world sucks but God is good.

this week's baby bump picture: