Bump Catch Up… And Some Commentary

OK, confession, I live for people’s bump pictures.  They are pretty much my favorite thing ever and my heart lets out a little squee even when it’s only some rando on Google images.  Bumps/babies=highest known levels of human adorable-ness.  So even though I feel a little shy about slapping my tummy all over the internet, I feel compelled to give back.  Also this stuff is critical to the documentary component of the preggy journey so it’s happening.  Deal with it.  Don’t make fun.

Alllllright… here is our baseline.  The very merry day we found out!

Ugh.  If only I knew what was about to happen.  The first few weeks were, umm, ugly.  Not sure how to elaborate without being disgustingly TMI except to say it was a journey of 1,000 gastrointestinal nightmares and I was not sure I would live through it.  I’m not being hyperbolic for once; that was literally my fear and it was awful and terrifying and I don’t even want to remember those days.

I am very lucky that although I had about 3-4 weeks of shock and awe, I miraculously started feeling a lot better right around week 8.  A lot of chicks I talked to and stuff I read suggested it was common to start feeling sick at that point (hence bracing myself for my demise).  I just like to think of my body as extra speedy and efficient and I hope labor follows a similar pattern.

So, yea, I found out on May 8 and started feeling better on Memorial Day weekend.  In those twenty days I lost eleven pounds. It was truly horrible.  So here I am at week 8 looking like freaking Skeletor (if Skeletor took awful MySpace bathroom selfies… not sure what I was thinking here).

Here was just a little bit later at 9-10ish… when I could juuuust start to make out a different tummy landscape and was feeling like a rock star.

In fact I remember the very morning this was taken.  We used to live close to this really nasty yet iconic Arlington diner, and up until that point I had never gone (seriously it’s nasty, and who knows what sort of ingredients they were using behind that counter), and that morning I woke up and was all GET ME TO THE DINER BIG BOY, MAMA NEEDS SOME FRENCH TOAST.  Jeff thought he had died and gone to heaven.  I declared myself healed, since until that point I was lucky to stomach 3 tablespoons of applesauce per day.  That french toast was SO GOOD.

The unfortunate thing is that I fell off the picture-taking wagon right around this point and missed the blossoming of my mini-bump.  Something else that happened in my Summer-o-Chaos was that my mama found out she had a malignant mass on her kidney and needed some pretty serious abdominal surgery right around July 4.  I’m not about to blab about her business all over the interwebs, but will tell you she is recovering swimmingly, and has been given a clean bill of health pending clear CT scans for the next few years.  (High five, God!).

So July really sucked, for my mama most of all, but I spent those 4 weeks back and forth and back and forth and back and forth between DC and PA, frequently spending all weekend in PA then leaving at 5:00 a.m. to drive back to DC on Monday and go straight to work.  I was desperately trying to finish up and transition at work (this all meant I was unexpectedly out of the office for 1.5 of my last 4 weeks of work… lovely).  Jeff was of course up in PA the whole time working, so then I had to single-handedly close up shop at our Virginia house, etc etc etc whine whine whine.

Oh, and how could I forget this… I know it’s probably a faux pas to talk money specifics on your blog but WHATEVER… we also found out with our new insurance it was going to cost us $6,000 out of pocket to birth this baby.  If ever there was a time I came closest to desiring an unattended birth in our guest bathroom, it was staring at that figure after just having walked away from our second income.  Awesome!

Anyway.   I spent most of June and July crying and screaming at people.  I was very grateful baby didn’t have functional ears at that point.  It was not attractive.  Belly pictures didn’t happen.

So here we pick back up at 16 weeks! (Aww… hi, old bedroom!)

19…

A candid 21 from vacation… this photo cracks me up!

And, catching back up to real time, here was yesterday at 23.  Happy, rested, settled, long past the first trimester of horrors, my mom back to her busy bee self, and a little 1 pound 5 ounce baby having just passed their anatomy scan with flying colors hours ago.  Grateful, grateful, grateful!

The Whining Vs. Gratitude Paradox

Sometimes I swear all I want to do is come on here and whine.  In my defense, one of the reasons I like the model of the blog is that I have the freedom to do annoying things like that, and I know people are only reading it if they’re interested in reading it.  If people think I’m an annoying twit they can not read.  Like, I would know better than to burden 300 facebook friends with mundane complaints (“Ugh humidity”) because seriously, boring.  Complain about the weather in a way that is thoughtful or funny or at least different in some way.  If it sounds like something you’d say in an awkward elevator encounter, the world probably doesn’t care.  Sorry I’m in a bad mood and being obnoxious.  Please forgive me.

I truly believe that the key to happiness is gratitude.  And I do spend a lot of time being grateful for stuff.  I’m not sure what the, like, average is… but I definitely am aware of my blessings on a daily basis.  And even though I am too ADD and narcoleptic for proper prayer, usually when I’m snuggled in bed at night I do manage to eek out a “Yo God, thanks for this day.  And this snuggly bedding.  And this climate controlled house.”  But by that point 23 seconds have elapsed, and my brain starts descending into sleepyville.  (Blender.  Ostrich.  Feed the dog a motorcycle.  Forty six.  VIOLENT TWITCH.  zzzzzzzzzzzzz).

So, the problem is then I start to loathe myself anytime I get whiney, whether it be over a serious life concern or excessive frustration over something dumb (cough cough people with suitcases who STOP DEAD IN THEIR TRACKS at the bottom of the metro escalator cough cough).  Remember that dumb infographic that was going around Pinterest… basically saying if you have a roof over your head and money in the bank, you are living better than billions of people on the planet? It’s true.  So what right do I have to complain about anything ever?

Even more so, you are living better than billions and billions (trillions?! I don’t know!) people throughout history who lived in truly terrible conditions.  I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I never really appreciated all the people who worked to establish the United States until I watched the John Adams HBO miniseries last year.  Holy crap! You need to watch this stuff! I mean everybody is getting shot, having to spend months on a nasty ship crossing the Atlantic, smallpox, more getting shot at, field amputations, 10 year old kids put to work on the battlefield.  After watching I am convinced that in the eighteenth century LIFE SUCKED FOR EVERY PERSON ON THE PLANET.

At one point the Adams kids got smallpox and Abigail Adams disinfects the entire house on her hands and knees with a bucket and a brush.  And I’m thinking… Phew at least this woman is just cleaning the house and not out bayoneting people.  She is lucky.  WAIT… homegirl is disinfecting every surface of a house with a bucket and a sponge.  No rubbermaid tools.  No lysol.  NARY A PAPER TOWEL.  (I would probably have a nervous breakdown at the thought of this task.)

And then this happened over the weekend.  I had a tour at the zoo, and what happens is we file in and they brief us with some demographics about our assigned group (biology class, donors, girl scouts, family with little kids, family with older kids, etc.)  And they tell me my group is a Make-a-Wish family.  UMM.  1) I need a little more time to emotionally steel myself for that and 2) I need a little more time to read my flashcards if I’m expected to fulfill a sick child’s most important wish! Obviously most of my thoughts were for these sweet little sick kiddie that I was entrusted with.

People, holy crap.  This sweet girl.  I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you all cry the way I’m about to cry recalling this.  But apart from a fuzzy little bald head, she was your usual middle schooler with so much energy, so many questions, so many stories to tell me.  It broke my heart to walk away from this family knowing that I would never see them again, never know the rest of their story.  Our few hours together were memorable enough that it felt weird to just be like…. bye! The zoo thanks you for visiting! I actually dreamt of her last night.

My point is.  It’s about a 15 minute walk from where the tour ends to get back up to our office.  Minutes 1-5 I was so overwhelmed with the experience, was thinking of this girl’s future, was sending up prayers for all the suffering children and their families because REALLY, out of all the crappiness in the world, terminally ill children is probably THE WORST, don’t you think?

But then by minute 12 I am passing the zebras and already back to stressing out over some dumb, minor problem of mine.  I can’t remember what it was, but I caught myself and was like OMFG already you’re back to this?! Ugh! Self loathing!

On the flip side, one of the things we talk about constantly at yoga is being kind to yourself.  It’s so hard, isn’t it!? Do you push yourself to be a better person, or do you forgive and love yourself? So hard.  I guess both, right? Somehow? The determination I’ve ultimately made about the whining/gratitude paradox is that even your dumb problems are always going to be magnified more than a stranger’s because they’re your problems.  You’re living with them 24/7.  If you’re lucky, you and this life will get many years to spend together, just the two of you.  This life that is 98% wonderful and 2% REALLY EFFING IRRITATING.

Another thing that comforts me about this comes from that dumb book Eat Pray Love.  Ugh I really was not wild about that author but this one part stuck with me.  So, she lived in India and of course spent time in some really impoverished communities (this would be the “Pray” component).  Like, she would hang out in these groups of women where they were facing poverty, sleeping on a one-room dirt floor with 20 extended family members, etc.  Again, REAL problems and struggles.  What did these women complain about when they hung out together? Lazy husbands, annoying sisters, friends that talked trash behind their backs.  The same petty crap as all of us first world tycoons.

Deep thoughts.  The end.

I regret to inform you this entire diatribe was only a prequel to free me up to whine about my 99 problems with the new Metro Rush+ system. (Honk if you hate stupid Rush+).  To be continued…