Becoming Mother

A book and a blog for first-time mothers

Tag: second trimester

October 26, 2016

Week 27: Here Comes the Weight Again

Last week, I pulled on a pair of underwear and thought, “What happened?”

Tight. All over.

And these were the underwear that I wore at the end of my first pregnancy.

I stepped on the scale, the number staring me in the face.

Well, that makes 25 pounds so far…

And still 13 weeks to go.

I tried to put it out of my mind, but when my husband asked me what was wrong, I just started crying.

pregnant-woman-black-and-white

***

Now, I’ve been through this whole thing before. I know how this goes. You gain a few pounds in the first trimester. Things kind of “explode” in the second trimester. But it’s the third trimester when you really start packing on the weight.

In my head, I know this.

I also know that I was able to drop the weight after the birth. I wish that the way that it melted off me for the first two weeks had continued until I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight. But the truth is, after those first weeks of blissful, unintended weight loss, losing weight resumed the same old narrative that it has always had in my life.

Losing weight was a fight.

I’ve won that fight three times already.

Up in the 190s and then down to the 130s.

Up to the 170s, then down to the 130s.

Up to the 180s, and then down to the 140s.

But it’s still hard.

I am used to navigating the seasons of my life when I need to “batten down the hatches.” I become goal-oriented, willing to forego what I want in the moment for the results that I want in the future. Even when it doesn’t pay off immediately. Look at how I spend my time: I teach. I write. I knit.

These things come easy to me because I have control.

But this season of my life is markedly different.

Pregnancy is a time of growth and expansion. That’s pretty easy to see. It’s probably the most widely understood parts of pregnancy–that you grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

But if you’ve never been pregnant, let me tell you how this is effectively me internally.

At 27 weeks, this baby is now pushing up against my rib cage while at the same time kicking and brushing against my pelvic bones. Since this is my second pregnancy, I’m feeling round ligament pain. My lung capacity is starting to shrink so I’m taking more breaths per minute now. My stomach is compressed so I can’t eat a full meal like I used. I feel so stretched on the sides that sometimes I wonder how I’m going to possibly contain this baby for another 13 weeks without my stomach just splitting wide open.

13 more weeks…

But the physical stuff is a lot easier to deal with than the emotional stuff. And the emotional stuff is a lot harder to see.

It’s not just that I’ve gained a lot of weight. And that I have more to go.

It’s that I’m struggling to let go.

Struggling to surrender.

Struggling to relinquish control.

Struggling to humble myself, once again, to this great task that lies ahead of me.

11 Comments
October 19, 2016

Cure for the Election 2016 Blues

Like other Americans, I’m working hard to detach this election year from my emotional well-being.

I’m reminded of this clip from The Tudors (one of my favorite series of all time), in which two of Henry VIII’s advisors discuss a translated poem about what it means to have a happy life.

On the left, Henry Cavill plays Charles Brandon, one of Henry VIII’s lifelong advisors. On the right, David O’Hara plays Henry Howard, another member of the court.

What strikes me about this scene is the emptiness of a life lived in the pursuit of power. Both of these characters spend years and years scheming and blackmailing that result in some gruesome plays of power that end the lives of others. Including thousands of innocents.

All in the name of rising above others.

But in the end, the things they long for are things that they could have without any power at all.

They long to live the lives that many of us are living right this moment. 

While this election season drones on and we watch politicians seeking to bury each other in quest of power, let’s not lose sight of what truly makes a happy life.

The happy life be these, I find

The riches left, not got with pain

The fruitful ground, the quiet mind

The equal friend, no grudge nor strife

No charge of rule, nor governance

Without disease, the healthful life

Wisdom joined with simplicity

The night discharged of all care

For much of human history, no place like this has existed in the world. I think our greatest challenge is to exist in the tension between seeking to improve this nation while still being grateful for it.

Let’s keep it in perspective.

Let’s remember that we owe many of these elements of a happy life to the simple fact that we live in this time period, in this country.

We have come a long way from the days of burning people at the stake for being the wrong kind of Christians or having our heads cut off because of our political dissension.

Let’s remember to love what we have.

stamps

 

6 Comments
October 11, 2016

Week 25: The Edge of Viability

A baby cannot survive outside of the womb prior to 21 weeks.

At 23 weeks, it has a 10-35% chance of survival with significant intervention.

At 24 weeks, it increases to the 40-70% range.

At 25 weeks, it’s 50-80%.

At 26 weeks, it’s 80-90%.

In this short time span, some women end their pregnancies. Many of them have received devastating, terminal diagnoses at their 20-week ultrasound scan. Diagnoses that end with the crushing phrases like, “little chance of survival” or even “incompatible with life.”

Anencephaly. Bilateral renal agenesis. Severe spina bifida. Severe heart and lung defects.

 

To obtain an abortion past 20 weeks inspires the ire of millions of anti-abortion advocates. This anger has boiled over into politicized (not medical) terms like “partial birth abortion.”

Yet only 1.2% of all abortions are performed after 21 weeks in the United States.

preemie

***

As I stand here on the edge of viability, I ask my fellow citizens who are the most enraged about second trimester abortions this:

Do you think that I would choose to end this pregnancy for some selfish, frivolous reason?

After having coming so far?

Through nausea and indigestion

Fatigue and weight gain

Only to decide to end this pregnancy because I don’t realize the sanctity of life?

Do you think that I don’t feel the weight of this life inside of me?

Do you trust me to understand what it would mean to end my pregnancy at this point?

Or do you think that I need laws to keep me in my place?

Do you trust me to carry this life?

Do you really care about my child?

Do you really care about me?

 

And if you say that you do…

Does your concern for the well-being of my child end once it’s in my arms?

Would you do an about-face once my child is born and tell me now it’s your responsibility, not the government’s?

Do you care whether my child and I have an income

while I recover from the stretching, the pushing, the tearing, the leaking, the constant waking, the weeping?

Does your heart break like mine does when I have to return to work just six weeks later?

Does it?

 

If we want to respect the sanctity of life, that means respecting the mother who carries that life as well.

It means not turning up your nose when someone bemoans our nation’s lack of guaranteed, paid maternity leave.

It means not decrying the fact that your taxes are used to pay for programs like Medicaid, WIC, Head Start, food stamps, and subsidized childcare.

It means not demonizing clinics like Planned Parenthood, which millions of women rely on for their health care services.

It means that you don’t flag down a store’s security guard to report that a woman is breastfeeding her child in public.

To me, the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” don’t completely encapsulate what we’re talking about.

What is “life” without health?

Who “chooses” death over life?

These are the questions that the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” evoke. And I think they entirely miss the point.

I believe and will always believe that pregnant women feel the weight of the life inside of them.

It can be exhilarating.

It can be terrifying.

But I don’t think that pregnant women feel nothing.

To characterize the need for second trimester abortion restrictions as a way to “keep women from killing children” does a great disservice to what many of these mothers and fathers face when they walk out of the doors of their 20-week ultrasound.

Reeling from the worst possible news.

Figuring out whether to or how to end the pregnancy

Determining if they’ll have to travel to another state in order to do so

Wondering if they will be expected to “explain” to family, friends, co-workers, and even acquaintances why they are ending the pregnancy.

Waiting for judgment to fall on them.

week-20

14 Comments
September 12, 2016

Week 21: Streeetch

I forgot this feeling.

The feeling of a weight underneath my skin, pulling at my sides and stretching me forward.

It makes me do that “pregnant stance.” The one you see women doing, hand on the hip, rubbing the sides of their bellies.

Yeah, that.

pregnant-belly

It makes me sore.

I totally forgot about the soreness of being stretched like this. Last time, I swear I didn’t start feeling like this until I was about 7 1/2 months pregnant. But, like I’ve said in previous posts, everything is happening earlier this time.

Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that my daughter is also being stretched right now.

***

This Sunday, she began Sunday School.

Revise that: She tried to begin Sunday School.

Until now, her concept of church has been the thin path between the front doors and the wonder that is the nursery, full of wall-to-wall toys. Not one, but two dollhouses. A Lego table. Blocks, blocks, blocks. Books and puzzles. It’s a veritable playground of fun. We started taking her regularly to the church nursery when she was about 14 months old. After the first few weeks of newness, she began to love it. The church nursery entered the category of “familiar things” in her life, just like our home and daycare.

But this past Sunday, I think I overwhelmed her. I took her into the church sanctuary and introduced her to a new concept of church.

Singing. Listening.

Streeetch.

More singing. More listening.

Streeetch.

Prayers.

Streeetch.

The pastor called all the kids to the front of the church and I led her squirming, protesting body to the front of the church.

Streeetch.

She sat in my lap, pressed against my ribs. We listened to the pastor’s children’s message.

Then it was time for Sunday School.

Streeetch.

SNAP!

Let’s just say, we tried.

I managed to wrangle her squirming, protesting body down the stairs to where the other kids were gathered.

But she was just. Not. Going. In.

No amount of consoling or explaining helped.

It was just too much for one day.

We went back to service, took communion, and then I took her back to “home base.”

The church nursery.

She hugged the nursery workers and settled in with her favorite toys. We talked about how hard change and adjustment can be on kids.

But who am I kidding? It’s hard on me, too.

It hurts to see your kid stretched way beyond what they can handle. It hurts to see them curl into themselves to protect themselves from the uncertainty of the unfamiliar.

But that is part of our responsibility as parents. To reassure our kids that change is part of life. That the unfamiliar is scary because it’s new–but that doesn’t mean that the unfamiliar is bad.

“Sometimes, new things are scary,” I told her. “But when you do them again, they’re not new anymore. And you might even like them.”

She hugged me.

Streeetch.

***

Last Thursday morning, my husband and I watched the image of our next child take shape on the screen as the sonographer moved the wand across my belly.

20-week-ultrasound

It’s funny.

I don’t really remember much about my first pregnancy prior to 20 weeks. It was all a blur of nausea, indigestion, and fatigue. Most of what I remember happened from 20 weeks to 40 weeks.

Childbirth education classes. Hospital tour. Baby showers. Key conversations with my doctor. And all the weight gain and discomfort. It was a continual ramping up of events, week by week.

So I know that we have a long way to go.

We still have no idea how the second half of this pregnancy will go. And then there’s labor. Birth. And the hell that is recovery and the postpartum period.

But in the face of all this uncertainty, it helped to hear the sonographer’s words, “Everything looks great.”

So I, too, will work on adjusting. This pregnancy and birth will be entirely different, no matter how similar they may feel now.

This is a new life.

A new path.

Streeetch.

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September 4, 2016

Week 20: The Answer is No.

No, we’re not finding out.

Why?

I love surprises.

That is all.

4 Comments
August 29, 2016

Week 19: The End of Child # 1’s Naptime

stages of pregnancy

Now entering the “I got this/ Cheeseburgers” phase of pregnancy.

I’m great in the second trimester. I have decent energy. My emotions are (mostly) under control. And I’m not so hugely pregnant that I hate even the idea of moving.

I’m still exercising about five days a week, a combination of cardio/kickboxing, weights, and yoga. My target heart rate for cardio workouts is about 135-145 and that seems to be working well. The weights and yoga help keep my legs, hips, and back from killing me.

While I feel like I’ve got a handle on this pregnancy so far, I’m starting to realize that I’m entering a completely new phase of parenting with my three-year-old.

The phase that is completely void of naps.

The naps are… gone.

Or they need to go. At least if we want her to go to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 like she used to.

In the last week, we’ve put her to bed at 7:30 just as we’ve done for the past six months or so. Usually, she’s alseep by 8:00 or 8:15.

But lately, she’ll sit in her room, reading books, until 9:3o or 10:00. Sometimes 10:30.

Then, she’s  up at 6:30 again.

It hits me.

We’ve been so spoiled with 11-12 hours of her sleeping at night and 1-2 hours of her napping. People often didn’t believe us that this was her typical sleep routine. They asked us if we drugged her or ran her ragged to make her sleep that long.

But that’s just how she was.

Now, that phase is ending.

Now, we’re becoming the kind of parents that are strategizing ways of getting out of the house and using up her energy. We go to birthday parties. All of them. We go to the library. We take her grocery shopping and deal with the headache of letting her learn to navigate the tiny kid’s cart around the unsuspecting legs of strangers.

We’ve even dropped money on special outings, like a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo and tickets to ride Thomas the Tank Engine at Lebanon-Mason Railroad Station. In a torrential downpour, I balanced my purse, a diaper bag, and my three-year-old under an umbrella, while everything below my thighs got royally soaked. My husband had dropped us off with our only umbrella and went to park the car, so he fared much worse. He boarded the train, completely drenched.

But when your child smiles like this…

Thomas_and_Felicity

Can you really be upset?

So we’ll do what we’ve always done: adjust. We’ll move into this next phase of parenting even as we prepare to re-enter phases that we’ve passed through years ago.

The will-we-ever-leave-this-house-again phase.

The oh-my-God-sleeping-four-hours-feels-amazing phase.

The maybe-she’ll-sleep-longer-if-we-give-her-one-more-bottle-before-bedtime phase.

The crap-she’s-figured-out-how-to-open-the-cabinets phase.

The holy-crap-my-child-wandered-into-the-next-room-without-me-noticing phase.

We’ll do it all again.

Maybe a little more relaxed this time.

Hopefully, a little wiser.

But always with the knowledge that there is always rest after the hard times.

Even if it is small.

3 Comments
August 24, 2016

Week 18: Already?

I’ve found myself thinking this a lot lately.

I’m already 18 weeks pregnant?

I already can’t sleep on my back anymore?

It’s already time to find a doula?

I’ve already outgrown my bras?

I already have this bump? 

I’m already 150 pounds? 155 pounds? 159 pounds? 

The time from Weeks 5 to Weeks 11 was agonizingly slow, prolonged by my worries of miscarriage and weeks of debilitating waves of nausea. I could not get through the weeks fast enough.

Come on Week 7… Hurry up Week 8.

But the weeks are flying by now.

The baby is moving.

I felt its first tiny kick in Week 15 as my husband and I watched part of the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympic Games. I felt a lot of “stuff” before then, but that moment was the first clearly movement that couldn’t be mistaken as anything besides a person kicking me.

Life is moving, too.

My daughter is now capable of having conversations with me. In the last week, she prefaces every sentence–a question, a statement, a command, whatever–with “How about…”

  • “How about I have a marshmallow?”
  • “How about where’s the sun?”
  • “How about you hold me in the rocking chair?”
  • “How about we do a puzzle, Mommy?”
  • “How about I already take my diaper off.”
  • “How about I like preschool.”
  • “How about I don’t need to go potty!”

And the world is moving.

I woke up on Monday and noticed that our downstairs windows were not covered in condensation. It’s a welcome sign that the humid days of August are coming to an end and the early days of autumn are on the horizon.

Next to our house, a patch of land owned by the local parks department has drastically transformed in the last four months, right along with this pregnancy. After we talked with the parks Operations Manager last year, we agreed to let the land turn into a prairie rather than having the parks department mow it throughout the summer.

So the grass grew tall and brown.

Then, it died.

The crab grass took root and grew.

Now, patches of wildflowers spring forth.

IMG_3718

IMG_3716IMG_3715

IMG_3717

Amidst the chaos of weeds and grass.

Against the cacophony buzzing, whirring insects.

Without intervention.

Beautiful and whole.

The wildflowers grew.

 

2 Comments
July 26, 2016

Week 14: Why Am I Eating So Much Apple Crisp?

I suppose there are worse foods that I can be obsessed with right now.

With Felicity, I ate about 35 tomatoes in the span of four days. My husband had a bunch of tomatoes leftover from some cooking event for our church and I just went to town on them. At first, I ate them on salads and sandwiches. Then, I thought, Who are you kidding? Just go for it. Then it was just tomatoes. Tomatoes upon tomatoes, with nothing in my way.

I have no idea why.

Last week, I was looking at the fruit bowl, pondering what to do with a bunch of apples and pears that were getting too ripe.

I will make apple crisp, I thought. I’ve never made it before, but I can figure this out.

To the Internet.

I got some good ideas and then looked around our cupboards. And because it brings a smile to my face to make something that I can share with Doug, I got some ideas from him about how to make it gluten-free so he can enjoy it, too.

Apples, oatmeal, some brown sugar, some rice flour, cinnamon, and a little safflower oil.

YUM.

In the past week, I’ve made two 9″ X 11″ pans of it. Doug has eaten some of it, but really… I’m doing the damage.

I just can’t get enough of this stuff.

Here’s the recipe I’m using if you have any interest. Proportions of sugar and cinnamon are flexible, depending on what you like.

Apple Crisp of Destruction

IMG_3653.JPG

Apple Mixture

  • 8 apples, peeled, cored, and cubed
  • 1/2 cup rice flour (if you’re going for gluten-free. Wheat flour is fine too.)
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar

Topping

  • 3 cups of oatmeal
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 2-3 tablespoons of safflower oil (or whatever oil you have on hand)

 

Apples in an ungreased pan first. Then, cover with topping.

Cover with foil. Put in the oven at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove foil. Finish baking for another 25 minutes. Check to make sure the topping doesn’t burn.

You’re welcome.

6 Comments
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