June 06, 2006

The Female Condition

I've lived in the South all my life (unless you count that summer in college that I spent in D.C.) and I thought I had heard and was immune to all Southern phrases. But no. The latest new one (for me, anyway) is to refer to pregnancy as, "the female condition". Not only do some of the men at my office refer to my pregnancy in that way, there are other pregnant women here who refer to their "condition".

This cracks me up because it makes it sound as though pregnancy is just one more stage women go through when they've contracted Epstein Barr or something similar. However, there are days in which calling this growing baby inside of me a "condition" doesn't sound too far off the mark.

Take Sunday, for instance. I had had a perfectly pleasant weekend sleeping late, eating a lot, watching movies on Netflix (Good Night and Good Luck was good, but slow) and even got to catch up with a fellow blogger. When I woke up Sunday I should've just stayed in bed. The baby decided, for reasons that are still a mystery, that he should use my internal organs as furniture. My liver must make a great ottoman and my bladder is an excellent sofa, no doubt.

I went into this pregnancy blind, with no information and no real clue what to expect. Although I was excited (and still am), I think I spent the first two months wondering if it was real. Once I convinced myself that yes Virginia, that nausea is a sign of more than just indigestion, I did what all of the expectant moms do and bought the books. They came in the mail from Amazon.com and sat in our apartment. And sat. And sat.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I love to read. So it was unusual that I would buy not one but two books and just let them sit. I mean, these weren't books on advanced calculus, so there was nothing to be afraid of. But still, I avoided them. In retrospect, I think the biggest problem with reading was the nausea. Seriously. Reading didn't make me any more nauseous, it was more like the problem faced by people who have suddenly found themselves deeply and inescapably in debt: the last thing they want to do is read financial help books that will just remind them of how depressed they are to be in this predicament in the first place. I avoided the books initially because I was so nauseous and tired that I really didn't want to read anything that would serve as a reminder of how nauseous and tired I was.

Fast forward and now we're nearing the end of the second trimester. Life is much better. So much better, in fact, that I often feel like I'm not pregnant -- and for someone with "the condition", that's as good as you're ever going to feel, trust me. I think I was lulled into a false sense of calm and well being by going for over a month without waves of nausea and without falling asleep every time I sat still for more than 10 consecutive minutes. And, of course, that's when the pain kicked in.

To be fair, I don't know if I would call it pain so much as discomfort. If I start calling this pain, I'm going to get a flood of e-mails from moms worldwide (beginning with my own), saying something along the lines of, "Oh, you don't know from pain until you've been in labor for 85 hours in the summer with no air conditioning while....." And they're right. I haven't been there (yet). All I can say is what I'm feeling now which is, um, interesting. I can't say that I ever feel like there's a baby inside of my body (until I see the ultrasounds, which are very cool). It mostly feels like everything is fine and then I'll get a pinched nerve on one side of my abdomen which causes me to pitch forward and hobble around like an 80 year old. I'm told that this is just the baby sitting in an awkward position (awkward for me, not him). And sometimes I can massage my stomach and convince him to move. But not always.

This is also the only "condition" I know of that requires a completely new wardrobe. So far, the initial nausea has turned out to be sort of a lucky break, because I actually lost weight during my first trimester. Having done that, I've now only gained 8 pounds total, and my third trimester starts next week (by now, most books state that the average expectant mom has gained 12-17 pounds). So I can still fit in most of my regular clothes. I haven't bought any maternity clothes yet, and of course I'm resisting that. I recently picked up some drawstring capri pants for summer, figuring the drawstring waist would expand as I do. The biggest problems I've had clothing-wise are: (1) staying away from shoes with a heel and (2) finding decent business wear that will grow with me.

Posted by Kitty at June 6, 2006 08:26 AM

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