I didn’t want to bother my gynae. I thought it was bratty and spoilt to complain about night sweats and prickly skin when I was having a relatively pampered pregnancy. After all, I was almost full term and I knew weird things were supposed to be going on. A lot of weird stuff happens to your body. A lot of weird stuff happens to your mind. You feel like you are living in an alien form and your brain is being chomped away by space bugs. Night sweats were the least of my worries. Until, that is, I realized I had a full blown bladder infection, started having contractions and had to be hooked up to machines for monitoring lest the baby had to be extracted a week early due to the fever. That was the bad part. The good part was that the medical aid had kicked in the day before. I also got a trial run to the hospital, a tour of the maternity floor and three days with my feet up.
Archive for May, 2007
Bed rest
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Proud to be Pregnant
Friday, May 25th, 2007You think 9 months take forever to get through, and they do. But it’s only 9 months! This is because you are not only experiencing your change of girth, change of mental state and change of … pretty much everything. But you are experiencing it through your own self and filtering it through everyone else’s perception of what you are experiencing. You are experiencing something deeply personal yet you may as well go out every day with your face painted blue because your pregnancy will not go unnoticed by anybody. And I can guarantee that no one who sees your pregnant form will be indifferent to it. Just as a blue-painted face will elicit some sort of response so too will that protruding belly. You gain weight, you don’t gain weight, you try to disguise your potbelly, you wear it out there, you ask someone to help you with your parcels, you don’t … whatever you do, people around you will form an opinion knowing nothing more about you than the fact that you have chosen to bear a child (whether intentionally or not).
I chose to wear my pregnancy proudly. This had less to do with a desire to show it off and more to do with the fact that I opted out of the dire selection of pregnancy clothes on offer and, instead, chose a few elasticised items that could be pulled lower and lower as my breadth dictated. If judgement from immediate family is anything to go by, you can be sure of judgement from perfect strangers.
Bedside Manner
Thursday, May 24th, 2007I changed vets. It’s one thing a vet being forward enough to ask what my birthing choice is, but quite another to comment on that choice … especially when that comment supported a NHS propaganda slogan, ‘Too Posh to Push’. This is a man who, in the same 10-minute appointment, suggested I lob my dog’s knackers off.
I have a perfect little scar just below my pubic hairline. My dog doesn’t.
The Luxury of Health Care
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007Often you will have the luxury of deciding you want to have a baby before actually falling pregnant. In many cases, the luxury of deciding pre-empts many months, sometimes years, of fertility treatments. And in possibly even more instances there is no luxury of deciding at all. In my case, the lethal combination of love, lust and unemployment resulted in a rather surprising discovery that I was pregnant when I was already three months in. This meant I had to swiftly take on a new role and start project managing my life. I had been actively looking for work since returning from the UK a few months previously and now figured that I was probably out of the running for any job once my pregnancy was showing. So I called and brought forward all job interviews. There was the last of the unpacking to be done to allow for an adequate amount of nesting time, and several essential purchases to be made, namely appliances and a mattress. And there were hospitals to be called, prices to get and medical aid to buy. I also had to scour the papers for a pedigree dog.
With skills and experience, I managed the process well. The packing was completed and the home decorated and equipped. The interviews were conducted while I could still fit into my pinstriped pants (self-sabotage, rather than lack of planning, can be blamed for not actually landing a job in time). A 10-week old pedigree Rhodesian Ridgeback was purchased and puppy school begun. But everyone knows to never be caught out with a pre-existing condition when purchasing medical aid. I knew this. I didn’t, however, make the connection between pregnancy and a ‘condition’, let alone a pre-existing one. If not for a very fortuitous collision of my shrewd broker with a policy change, I would have been returning the appliances, sleeping on the floor and flogging the puppy (by flogging, I mean selling, not beating).
The point I am trying to make here is when you have that luxury, do your homework before you climb in the sack.
Me, me, me
Monday, May 21st, 2007When you’re used to having it all, having a baby just isn’t enough.
I had left a city of consumerism where it was unconstitutional to not be selfish. I had left an apartment in one of the best London suburbs and a smoulderingly sexy SMEG fridge. I had left behind Paris for the weekend and Rome the next. And most importantly, I had left a job that allowed a year off for maternity leave; half of that paid. I had left my zone. How could this have happened? How could my life have changed so dramatically in one moment of passion … a totally cliché-free moment of passion, I might add, that didn’t involve a romantic hut on a beach on an exotic island. Not even close.
I wasn’t meant to be pregnant. What I was meant to be was gainfully employed, living it up on champagne and oysters in my new chi-chi townhouse on Table Mountain with a shiny new coupe in the garage.
Somewhere in a parallel universe there was a chick with my life. And I hated her.
Congratulations … or Not
Sunday, May 20th, 2007The feelings I experienced during my pregnancy had me hanging over a precipice, looking down on a pit of psychoses I was at severe risk of falling into. People call it hormonal, depressed, overwhelmed, etc., etc., but I believe it is the product of your parents’ attitudes, the egos of the folk you hang out with and the support you get from the people you love.
It dawned on me about six months into my pregnancy that I needed to analyse and reassess all of the above. The catalyst: an old friend I bumped into at a party who, in response to the news of my pregnancy, glanced and my fading hourglass and said, ‘Shame!’
How refreshing.
To be honest I had, by this stage, allowed a little excitement to mingle with the apprehension and cynicism, but my false smiles for people more excited than I was about my pregnancy were beginning to wear thin. No one would listen to me … I mean really listen. The thought of not only having a baby but also becoming a mother (yes, one implies the other but each induce their own unique feelings of fear and insecurity) completely terrified me. The friendly reassurance smacked of Stepford Wives.
‘Your life becomes so amazing when you have a child.’
You’ll fall in love with your child as soon as you see him.’
‘Your bond with your husband becomes so much stronger.’
Well, good for them. But all I needed was a little sympathy.
If you don’t get congratulated next time you tell someone you’re pregnant, perhaps that person has read this blog.
Walkabout
Saturday, May 19th, 2007Not only were my muscles taking a vacation, my brain was too.
Postnatal depression is something all women are advised to watch out for and prepare for. Prenatal depression is just as real.
When your head goes walkabout and you can’t seem to focus; when enjoyment of your friends seems to dwindle; when sleep is unnaturally high on your list of priorities – basically when life sucks – you may very well have prenatal depression. Obviously, you should only get yourself screened for prenatal depression if not only the above applies to you, but you are also pregnant.
Another excuse not to run
Friday, May 18th, 2007Usually when sick or incapacitated, it is a relief to climb into a hot bubble bath and feel guilt-free about lack of exercise for a few days. But what if you don’t have the choice? I was training for the Two Oceans half marathon and had climbed to 40km per week off-road running. Granted, it had been getting difficult to run, but that was during the phase of suspected malaria, so I kept pushing myself.
When I discovered I was pregnant, I was even more determined to run the race. I was not going to be one of those women who fell pregnant, put their feet up and expected to be treated like an invalid. Or so I thought.
At 4 months pregnant and a few weeks still to go to race day, I began to feel as though my insides were falling out each time I took a downhill plod … and when those insides hold a delicate, and rapidly growing, bunch of cells, I had to call it quits.
Pregnancy is as common as the common cold and you are treated as though there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. But then you fail at your exercise routine and life and limb become so much more cumbersome. So which is it? Are you delicate and worthy of giving yourself a break or should you attempt to continue as if all is the same?
That little bean on the ultrasound photo seems so insignificant at first but your child impacts your entire life from the moment it is around one inch tall. I succumbed and climbed into many hot bubble baths, primarily to chant and work through the resentment I was feeling towards my unborn child.
Beans for Lunch
Thursday, May 17th, 2007If your partner sheds the only tear on seeing the first ultrasound scan, don’t panic! This does not mean you are not bonding with the bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly. Yes, sure you want to, but … it’s a bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly.
And further to that, this bean-sized bunch of cells is, by no stretch of the imagination, capable of eating a full fry-up for breakfast, a lunch of bangers and mash, a roast dinner with all the trimmings and a midnight snack of a tub of ice-cream. So try not to eat for two. You will only look like a fool if you try and convince the person at the buffet table that the bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly needs its own plate of food. And if you gain too much weight during pregnancy, you will only be depressed after the birth – you’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll have time to go for a 10km run any time soon. Hey, you’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll be able to walk to the front gate without breaking a sweat. As it is, I only gained 12kg and I still looked five months pregnant for several weeks after the birth. And I’m one of the lucky ones.
Aim and Shoot
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007As if peeing on a stick isn’t bad enough, you go to your (male) gynae, only to be expected to aim and hit the opening of a thimble-sized bottle. Anyone knows a vagina isn’t capable of such accuracy – anyone knows a penis isn’t capable of accurately aiming and hitting the opening of a toilet bowl from more than, er, 9 inches, and a penis has been designed with aim in mind. Which is how we got into this mess in the first place.
Double Positive
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007Denial was a comfortable place to be. It lasted a week and a trip to Durban for my father’s 70th birthday, where I sat at the table with a pregnancy test in my bag, fielding questions from relatives wanting to know how much longer we were going to wait until we started a family. I fobbed them off, and then rushed home to take my test.
Thankfully, pregnancy tests require no puncture wounds because I had to take two. After careful aim, we watched to see how I’d performed. But because the instructions stated that it would take four minutes to show a result, I read the instant double-blue line as an indication that the stick was faulty. I took another test in the morning.
M is for Malaria and Motherhood
Monday, May 14th, 2007I always imagined I’d be able to pinpoint the exact moment … the moment of earth-shattering bliss that would signal the successful exchange of DNA and the beginning of cell division …
Not feeling sure I even wanted a baby, there’d be those moments when I would lie in post-coital bliss thinking, “Hmm, now if I was to fall pregnant, THAT would be a good way to do it.” I even started planning holidays to Fiji, Bora Bora and Hawaii at the mere hint that perhaps we might be ready to have a baby. After all, conception is as important to the parents as birth is to the baby. But the actual planning for the baby never reached fruition. So, at the onset of nausea, headaches and exhaustion, my first thought was to pull out the unused self-test malaria kits I had lugged half way across the malaria-infested Indian subcontinent several months earlier. The lack of pictorial instructions proved too complex and, after puncturing two fingers on my left hand, and one on my right, I drowned both test kits in my blood before figuring out that my stupidity must surely be indicative of the onset of a far more dangerous ailment … Motherhood.
On the Couch
Sunday, May 13th, 2007Everywhere around the world, women are secretly beating up their husbands and screaming into pillows. The reason? Childbirth!
Now, if only they would come out of the proverbial closet and admit that they are terrified of being complete failures, then everything would be OK. Yes, sure there are those mothers who are the true mother-nature types, but this isn’t a given just because they gasp in horror when you tell them of the times you have imagined throwing your crying baby against the wall (with just a hint of a satisfied smile on your face). I know I am not an isolated case and I will tell my story
to as many people as possible until one, just one, other mother decides to come clean.
Not that I need a reason to start a blog – there are, after all, over a million of them floating in the, er, blogosphere – but, if there needed to be a reason, it would be to flush out all those pseudo-maternal types. As you will see, my blog is a working document – a kind of therapy session that will change with time, my moods and how much of the truth I want to reveal at any given moment. If you keep up-to-date with my blogging, you will notice additions and changes along the way until I reach the goal of a completed, comprehensive, er, blog.
