Five Symptoms of the Home Stretch

As of tomorrow, I am officially in my third trimester. And I am huge. Big as a house. My wedding ring doesn’t fit, my chin has a twin… and my feet are holding water like a pink reservoir. My toes, which have always resembled small sausage links, now look like an odd white meat, of indeterminate origin, being squeezed out of an overstuffed burrito.

*               *               *

I think I am carrying additional babies in my thighs.

*               *               *

Lately, BabySor has been using my bladder as a bean bag chair, which means whether I have to or not, I feel the urge to pee almost all the time. So I have had to develop a routine for running errands: Whenever I go to the store I pee before leaving the house, pee as soon as I arrive, and then pee again before heading home. I usually manage to do this in the bathroom.

*               *               *

I am mobility-challenged (to a greater degree than I was pre-pregnancy). This makes high surfaces difficult to get onto, and low surfaces difficult to get up from. Example: Our bed sits higher than most, so for weeks now I have been using the corner of the 38″ Ikea-dresser-turned-nightstand to push myself up high and then drop and roll on the bed. Each night that I am able to land somewhere in the vicinity of Not-On-Top-Of-Marcus, I consider this method a success. Getting out of bed is much easier, though. I just swing my legs downward and voila! I’m standing up.

It’s the opposite story with the couch. It sits much lower than the bed, so I don’t need any leverage to get onto it. But if I choose to recline, then getting up is an adventure! For some reason, I can’t go from lying down to sitting up without five minutes of physical exertion and cursing. And I can’t swing my legs to the side and find myself standing. So instead, I scoot to the very edge of the couch and then try to get up enough momentum to hurl myself on the floor, being careful to land on my knees. I imagine it looks alarming to the observer, and it sure startled Marcus the first couple of times I did it, but as uncontrolled and pathetic as it looks, it is all really quite strategic!

*               *               *

I don’t know if this is a pregnancy symptom or not, but for days now I have had some very vivid dreams. The one I had two nights ago was the strangest. I dreamed that the baby was only two months old and already talking. At first I was shocked and wondered if this was a sign of something wrong (possession by Satan, maybe) but I quickly concluded that I was just darn lucky to have a baby who could talk to me and tell me what he needed or what was wrong. The other weird thing is that despite having a crib, he was spending all of his sleeping and waking time in a Moses basket on the dresser. At his request, I had the dresser and basket positioned by our open bedroom door so that he could look out and see the rest of the house. I would go off and do things I needed to do, and when I heard him fuss I would go into our room and ask him what he needed. A diaper change? A feeding? Magazine? Open the blinds? At one point I was downstairs doing dishes when I suddenly remembered that for a few minutes I had forgotten I had a baby at all! How long had it been since I checked on him? Frantic, I ran upstairs and rushed to his basket to find him kicking back with his hands clasped behind his head. “Is everything okay?” I cried, still catching my breath. He rolled his eyes at me, sighed, and said, “Ye-ess!”

Duh.

And to think, I foolishly thought I had 16 years before my kid took that tone with me :/

6 comments

Skip to comment form

    • mom on June 28, 2010 at 4:53 pm

    your “pee” comments sound just like me…I have to pee before I go somewhere, pee when I get there and pee before I leave for home!! I’m so glad someone can now relate to me…and I’m not even pregnant….we need pictures of all so those little sausages and double chins though.

    • Sam on June 28, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    I agree on the pictures. There are a few ‘big ones” of me around, so it’s only fair. As far as the dreams go, I do think it’s part of pregnancy. I had them too. Some pretty scary as well as amazing. I saw some darling baby clothes today and I thought about you. Getting excited for you guys.

    • Tricia on June 30, 2010 at 8:31 am

    I also agree on the picts.! I also agree on the dreams too… I have SCARY dreams when I’m pregnant its AwFul! I’m glad everything is going good, well as good as can be! Take Care!

    • Danielle Garner Little on July 13, 2010 at 6:06 pm

    Your mom recently told me about your page – it’s great! What a fantastic job the two of you have done 🙂 I’ve really enjoyed “getting to know” my cousin a little bit again 🙂 Kudos on the little one btw… Tubs, right? 😉 Hope all is well! Take care

    • Kellie on July 13, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    This was a particularly funny post (intended or not!) I would like to request photo evidence of these burrito digits.

    • Shona on July 14, 2010 at 8:39 am
      Author

    Thanks for stopping by, Danielle!

    Kellie, I’ll think about it… I guess I have to do something to spice up this blog. Maybe a little bit of pregnant foot action would be just the thing.

Comments have been disabled.