This Time Around

If I’ve spoken with you at all over the past seven months, or if you’ve ever allowed a baby to grow inside your womb then you already probably know this, but just for the record, no pregnancy is the same.  Speaking more directly from my own experience, this pregnancy is vastly different than the last one. Here’s a quick rundown of the dissimilarities:

 

Heartburn

Then: I had a few weeks experience with it last time, at the very end and it was the first time in my life that I’d ever felt acid creeping up into my esophagus.  It was the worst thing that happened last time and I could hardly believe how it kept me awake at night and just how many Tums I could chew while Jud slept beside me.  

Now: Hahahaha! It is always with me.  It’s not a late night problem.  It’s not merely a spicy food issue.  It’s ever-present.  It’s vomit inducing. It’s hard core.  The Tums still work, thank the Lord, but I am also eating them all throughout the day.  It’s worse in the afternoons and late evenings, can choke me away from eating at all and will be on the top 10 list of the things I am most enjoying as I hold my daughter in my arms. 

 

Pain

Then: I had some shooting bizarro round ligament business while my body stretched out it’s nether regions to make way for Gideon.  It drove me to my knees from time to time and made me wince.  It was stabby and sharp, but quickly went away.

Now: I feel like a 350lb 65 year-old woman. My legs and knees and ankles are sore.  My back is all ‘oy’ and ‘grind’ and ‘creek’.  My stomach skin is crying out for her to stop doing that pushing thing where her entire back is forcing my already thin epidermis to ache. 

 

Contractions

Then: I was waiting for them all the time, hoping they would come, excited for every Braxton Hicks seize of my belly.  It didn’t really have any pain attached to it and since my water broke before I was really in labor, I never really felt hard contractions until the Pitocin started dripping into my veins. I have no idea how much worse/better the pain was because of the meds. Maybe I’ll find out this time.

Now: I have plenty of contractions every day.  They aren’t organized or progressive, but they can take my breath away and cause random women at World Market to ask me if I am okay. I’m staying hydrated and I don’t typically do much heavy lifting (save the little boy who runs around and must be corralled for baths and bedtime and even still he is under 30 lbs), but they still come and interrupt my day with little reminders that in about 10 weeks our lives are going to be very very different.

 

Fear

Then: Every teeny tiny anomaly meant I was loosing the baby. I didn’t want to buy things, even when the due date was getting really close, for fear that having all the stuff and then no actual baby would break my heart into shards and I would be left with a bassinet and no bundle of joy to lay inside.  Lots of anxiety.  Lots of paranoia.  Plenty of random google searches and consequently blog reading that scared me senseless. 

Now: Who has time for all that worrying?  Oh yeah, people who are not raising Gideon.  He is so busy and creative and fun and exhausting that I barely have time to make sure we’ve turned up the heat for the day (or turned it down when we are headed out the door [note: purchase programmable thermostat]).  

 

In Remembrance

Then: I knew it was slipping. I’d read all the information about how you loose 10% of your brain power when you’re gestating and how it takes about a full year to get it all back in working condition.  I knew I had to write things down if I had any real hope of completing the task.  It’s not like me to be forgetful and I was slightly frustrated at myself for the things that I’d let slip through the cracks, especially when it came to work.  Nothing huge occurred, but people would ask “did you get this” or “where are we at with that” and I’d just be completely blank.  I couldn’t recall anything about those things and I’d have to admit it.  Bluffing is also apparently not something pregnant women do well. 

Now: I’ll be in the middle of a sentence and completely loose my train of thought.  I write things down and then loose the notepad or envelope on which they are written.  The other day I lost Jud’s cell phone because I was going to be helpful and bring it upstairs from the table and instead of doing that I somehow put it on the love seat.  It took a full 24 hours to find it since it was on vibrate while we called it, happily buzzing away on a soft surface.  

 

 

They aren’t huge differences to you, maybe, but I think I will be even  happier to have this baby snuggled in my arms than the last time.  I suppose we’ll have to have another kid before I can say “girls are harder to carry” or “boys are easier”.  Did I really just admit that, God willing, I’d be open to being pregnant again?