2/23/21
Today at my first appt we heard the heartbeat. I keep thinking of the nurse, how when she finally found his heartbeat, her eyes got big with mine. it went bop-bop-bob-bop-bop-bop-bob-bop faster than I expected. She was really nice. She gave me estimated due date of Sept 3, and said i was 12 weeks.
tonight in the shower, had a thought: “what if the pregnancy just keeps growing me bigger and bigger until I pop from the inside and just die?”
2/24/21
I want to try harder to be in the moment, each moment of my pregnancy. Because I think most of my anxiety is coming from dreading the experience of the actual birth, fearing how much will hurt. But: what if it’s an easy birth and doesn’t hurt much at all? Then I would’ve wasted like eight months giving myself needless worry.
2/25/21
Something I just realized: even if the birth experience is totally horrible (which I don’t think it will be), even if the worst possible thing happens, I feel like nothing is ever that horrible as long as he’s there. As long as R’s there…there’s something around us- this barrier or light, that “the worst” can’t get through, no matter what happens. I feel it. I know it, with him.
We’ve never talked about this explicitly, and I don’t know how to fully explain it, but I think something that holds us close together is this feeling that both of us mutually have that we are not good enough for the other one. By which I mean: there are certain qualities that we so respect and admire in the other so that we are continually striving. and the qualities that we admire in each other are different from each other—they are things that the other one doesn’t (naturally) have, so that, again, we are continually striving. That’s the best I can explain it for now.
2/26/21
This week, maybe starting a little at the end of last week, it seems my cravings and aversions have begun to lessen in severity. Yesterday I could drink a little of the green juice that I was completely averse to (even just looking at) earlier in the trimester (but absolutely could not chug it like I did pre-pregnancy). And early this trimester, I craved something new for every single meal, but more often now, I can eat leftovers/the same meal twice in one day. It’s pretty slow and gradual, but it’s a difference.
Feeling fine lately. Feeling happy paired with I think normal baby worries. No nausea still, only bordering on nausea when hungry. Some very infrequent & very mild headaches. The biggest thing is just feeling bloated and heavier. I’m ugh-ing and moaning and groaning more, like an old man does, just when going to sit, or rising to stand, or changing sitting positions, or upon reaching the top of the stairs after climbing them, etc. Just more weight on me to haul, I feel. In the mirror I think I see my butt coming out of some underwears that it never popped out of before. I think the doc weighed me at around 99 on Tuesday, and the other day, granted after I had just eaten, I was like 101. I don’t know if I’ve ever before in my life gone over 100. I still don’t LOOK pregnant, or look like I’ve gained weight, even. I feel like it’s all just like liquid weight concentrated in my middle that I’m carrying, that’s all sloshing around in the punchbowl of my uterus (with this tiny swimmer floating on his back sipping a tropical drink in the midst of it all).
2/27/21
Everyone expects me to be scared when it starts (movies, stories, and therefore mainstream society). I won’t be.
It was in passing, and among a flurry of a thousand other words, but I keep remembering when she (the nurse) said this at my appt, regarding birth: “it’s mostly mental. it’s all mental.”
I’m thinking lately that…that as dramatic event as it is—the birth—I think it’s not the most important thing. I’m getting a sense that the most important thing about this whole thing is like: taking responsibility for that life that comes out, raising that life, loving it, supporting it and building its resiliency and expanding its horizons and anything he needs me to do to lead him out into the world…I think this will be my biggest, most important role maybe, not the actual birth necessarily, though that’s obviously a critical, brief step. But all the nurturing and the raising and the role modeling—the mundane and kind of daily, “boring” stuff that has such an unseen effect- this will be what leaves the biggest impression on his life, I think. THAT is the biggest deal and the main event, really.
Highlight of my day today: in bed when I woke up, realized there was a whole tray of dad’s stuffed shells left over that I could eat all day. (ended up only eating it for one meal, but still, this thought in the morning made my day. i think it might have even been the thought that got me out of bed)
Marriage Journal 