pregnancy – Sconnie Molly

The dog days of fall

I am terrible at blogging regularly. But here we are.

And I am quite lonely. The Holidays® are approaching and we will not be doing anything for Thanksgiving. Maybe we’ll attempt a pie; I think that’s the least we can do. But there won’t be any family, there won’t be any decorations. There probably won’t even be a food coma – not that that will stop me from napping. Oh believe you me, it will not. I guess it’s just that I had thirty solid years of pretty perfect Thanksgivings that I apparently took for granted.

So I am trying to focus on Christmas, when we’ll be home for two weeks and will have time to see all of our people and do The Holidays® right, and my parents’ house will be a cozy, warm, softly-lit Christmas paradise like it always is. That image is basically getting me through right now.

Image result for perfect hygge christmas" — *it feels like this.*

They say motherhood, the early days at least, can be really isolating – just you and your crying baby, awake at 12am and 2am and 4am and God knows when else. That’s probably true, but I think pregnancy itself can be isolating too. I don’t have another woman to share any of this with, so I’m forever posting and scrolling around on my Facebook due date groups looking for some small piece of camaraderie/sisterhood/something. I pester my friends who are moms with tons of questions. I try not to talk about it too much with my friends who aren’t moms, lest they think I’ve become totally consumed with this nameless, amorphous creature that belongs more to the future than to the present.

What I’m reading: Just started “Over the Top“, JVN’s memoir, after finishing “The Witches Are Coming” by Seattle’s own Lindy West. She’s one of my favorite feminist thinkers, so her book of essays was a treat. I also recently finished Watchmen, the original graphic novel, and am now understanding, and consequently enjoying, the HBO version much more.

What I’m watching: Watchmen. Not much else? The Man in the High Castle too, but I feel like the gap between seasons has been so long that I’m not as invested as I had been, because I don’t remember some of the finer points. We also got Disney+ of course, and V’s first priority with that has been watching all the Star Wars movies, and I sort of dip in and out of that.

What I’m annoyed about: Oh God, so so many things, I am so glad you asked…

apartment maintenance for some reason put two big stacks of orange cones right next to our parking space in the garage, between our space and the door that goes outside, making passenger-side access to our car extremely difficult for, again, no apparent reason but storage
I think I need new walking shoes? Something to better support these tired bones in my quest for near-daily constitutionals
the impeachment hearings – like, I am very glad they’re happening, but it really feels like an Al Capone/tax evasion situation, you know? Because we know dude has done sooo much worse than try to get a foreign government to get dirt on a political rival, but maybe that’s all we can actually *get* him on? At least for now? I just would really like to see him brought to account for, say, racist housing discrimination, and/or rape, and/or probably a million kinds of financial fraud, and/or literal Soviet puppetry
I have felt very minimal, if any, movement from Baby Nagappala, which isn’t technically concerning at 22.5 weeks with an anterior placenta but sure is annoying when the Facebook due date groups are abuzz with posts and videos of belly kicks and punches and somersaults
the Packers – when they lose it always puts me in a mood.

What I’m looking forward to:

Christmas in Wisconsin, obvs
I’m thinking of booking a maternity photo session if I can find something reasonably priced. It seems worth it to commemorate this time, especially if I can be commemorated looking all glamorous and ethereal. Especially since this could be my only pregnancy – who knows.

I will leave you with some highly relevant pregnancy memes that describe my current life.

Image result for pregnancy memes"

Mandatory side sleeping: the second majorly painful sacrifice expecting moms must make (after avoiding alcohol). (I would kill for a mimosa.) (But I know some FB moms who are planning on chugging a beer right after delivery and it’s like…I think you might have a problem)

WHY CAN’T I HAVE APPLE CIDER

I mean, I know why not, but it’s total bullshit. What is fall without apple cider, I ask you? All the good shit is unpasteurized.

We are officially making the holiday pilgrimage to Wisconsin December 18-31 and I am PUMPED. Who knows to what lengths my belly will have grown by then!

In organizing our travel plans, I was reminded of a crude fact of living in a place without nearby family or close friends: you have to pay people to do shit for you, shit that your family or close friends would have done as a matter of course if you still lived among them. I don’t mean mooching! I mean the little life chores that people do for each other – in a symbiotic way – when they care about one another. Dropoffs/pickups at the airport, or when your car is in the shop. Pet-sitting. Babysitting. Bringing food when someone’s sick. Random errands. I’ve done all those things and had all of them done for me over the years. I suppose that’s called having a support system, and though we’ve made a few friends here, we do not have a support system. And that’s why, no matter how beautiful Seattle is, no matter how much money might possibly be made here, no matter how much I love Biscuit Bitch, we can’t stay here indefinitely. I need our people, and I will especially need them once Baby Nagappala makes their debut. (And also, I’m too afraid of the Cascadia Subduction Zone.) (I am warning you, the article linked is really fucking scary, you probably shouldn’t read it, I think about it every goddamn day.)

Anyway. I’ve always said the move is temporary. In other news…

What I’m reading: The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which I believe is his first foray into fiction. I’ve read everything else he’s written and found it excellent; so far the novel does not disappoint.

What I’m watching: Several months ago I watched the first two episodes of Succession and then kind of forgot about it. Now V has taken it up with me and we’re about halfway through the first season. Rich people are terrible, you guys. And as it turns out, terribly compelling.

Of course given the season, we are also watching a ton of football. My fantasy team, the Iron Jawed Angels, is currently 4-2 and playing against V’s team this week. (I am always terrible at naming things, but I happen to think I.J.A. is a pretty badass team name.)

What I’m listening to: Look, I usually think Dax Shepherd is pretty annoying, but I am enjoying his Armchair Expert podcast. He gets into every guest’s whole life story and you learn a lot of crazy things about them. I skip around and only listen to the people I’m actually interested in, of course: Charlie Day, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bill Hader, Kumail Nanjiani, Kaitlin Olson (yeah, there really should be more women). Dax has a female co-host who…almost never talks? I don’t know what that’s about. But the most recent episode is with Monica Lewinsky and that’s obviously gonna be amazing.

Baby Nagappala update: We’re on week 17. According to the Bump app, during this week the baby is the size of a pomegranate, and its feet are the size of gummy bears (!).

We are in heavy name-brainstorming mode, and I obviously will not share the contenders here, but it is true what they say: you never realize how many people you hate until you have to name a child. I’m picking out registry items too, but am so overwhelmed by the research that needs doing on car seats, cribs, high chairs, etc that I have mostly just selected cute outfits and accessories so far.

I’m dealing with a lot of lower back pain; it’s usually brought on by overdoing it on my walks, so then I am housebound for a couple days trying to recover, unable to do the one thing everyone agrees I MUST be doing (walking). It has become a bit of a cycle.

img_20191017_213341 — *Week 17, day 3. You get a nice bump close-up this time because mama’s eczema is flaring up and she is NOT fit for public viewing at this time.*

What else is going on: Isis has her yearly vet appointment this weekend, which is not a big deal, but she’s been a little odd lately. She’s thrown up a couple times, and left a gift from her bowels in the guest room while we were in Portland last weekend. And of course she’s still gnawing off all of her fur she can reach, every chance she gets. Her tummy is literally bald, it’s so sad. I’m sure she’s fine but she’s no kitten anymore so I get worried sometimes.

Been pitching some things. No recent success to share. Maybe I should write about pregnancy? Because that’s a really under-discussed topic. #sarcasmfont

At Last

*At Last was the song our bridal party walked down to at our wedding and it also feels appropriate now!

So yeah. ICYMI…I’m gonna have a baby. I’m going to be a mom and V is going to be a dad and we’re going to be parents. You know…real adults!

Just kidding, I know far too many parents with and without their shit together to believe that parenthood makes anyone an actual grownup. “Real adults” is quite relative.

It’s a heady thing, pregnancy! And it’s why I haven’t blogged most of the summer – I had no idea how to talk about what was going on with me without mentioning THE biggest thing. So to catch you up, here’s how it’s been thus far…

Finding out: V and I both took off work on the day that we would find out if our embryo had successfully implanted. We wanted to be together for the news, whether it was good or bad. And as soon as the fertility clinic nurse called, I knew – her voice was too cheerful to be bad news.

Weeks 5-7: My main pregnancy symptoms were super painful boobs, super painful constipation, exhaustion, and nausea. During week 7 I went to Disneyland for beloved Michelle’s bachelorette party, and that was Quite. A. Day. I had a great time despite not being able to ride a lot of the cool stuff, and the sandals I wore (researched exhaustively before purchasing to ensure quality and comfort) held up, but I was BEAT by the end of the night.

Weeks 8-10: The bad symptoms started to wane. We visited family in Fresno and brought V’s mom back to Seattle with us. She spoiled us with homemade food and I took video of her making dosas so I could potentially attempt it myself at some point. I was still very tired most of the time and took lots of naps.

Weeks 11-now: I had my first real OB appointment, after “graduating” from the fertility clinic. I had no idea how to pick an OB and obviously we haven’t lived here long enough to know very much about the local medical scene. That does make me wish we were home in Madison, where I had the same insurance company and system of care for literally my whole life and everything was familiar. But anyway, I liked my doctor, and we got to see an ultrasound where Baby’s head was discernible (and not much else). They did a bunch of blood tests (11 vials worth!), all of which have come back normal, much to our relief. After that, we finally felt ready to “go public”, even though some of our close friends and family already knew.

Cravings I have had: Nothing exotic. There’s nothing in this world that could make me crave, like, pickles – not even pregnancy. I’ve wanted Egg McMuffins (sans meat, and besides, who really wants Canadian bacon anyway, even if you do eat meat), potatoes in all their glorious forms, and this French brioche bread I found at Trader Joe’s that is just magical. So, you know, nutrition is…something we are working on. The Egg McMuffins have been funny, because while we’ve lived in Seattle we’ve eaten very, very little fast food and anyway, there’s not much on those menus that we can eat even if we wanted to. That has changed!

Things I did not know about pregnancy but do now: maternity jeans are weird-looking!! I never knew that they didn’t actually have zippers or buttons – or POCKETS! That really pisses me off. A lady needs pockets, for God’s sake. Also, pregnancy brain is a very real thing. I’ve accidentally left my phone at home when going out more times in the last few weeks than ever before in my life. Relatedly, I have gotten rather clumsy, like *nearly* tripping or knocking something over a lot, just not really looking where I’m going. I think it’s driving V crazy.

Image result for pregnancy brain meme

The amount of love we’re getting from people who are happy for us and celebrating with us is so, so appreciated and kind of cathartic, also, because everyone knows what a long struggle this has been. I’ll definitely be writing about it, but because I’ve been there, I want to tell anyone for whom this subject is painful that it is ABSOLUTELY FINE to block me, mute me, unfollow me, do whatever you need to do for as long as you need to do it. I’m going to write about my pregnancy because I write about my life and because I want to fully absorb and be able to remember how all of this felt. And I 100% understand if you don’t want to hear it. Only pretty recently have I unblocked/unmuted/re-followed a number of the new parents among my friends. Do what you need to do, chin up, I love you.

img_20190904_095638 — September 4, 2019 (week 11)