Mother Nature is a tricky mistress. She builds into some of us this desire to procreate. Like lemmings we oblige. She then makes it clear that parenthood is not an easy ride and proceeds to punish the mother-to-be (presumably for being too excited about the impending parenthood) by making her sick for an indeterminate period of time.
Next she decides to give (many of us) a break for several months. During this time we again get excited about our procreation status. We plan, we prepare, we dream.
Then we arrive at the end of the gestation process. At this point, Mother Nature decides that the only way we’re going to be willing to go through what we have to go through in order to hold our little miracle is to make the last few weeks of the process nearly unbearable. Our bodies ache too badly to sleep more than 45 minutes at a time. We wake up multiple times each night to relieve ourselves. We wake up at random hours of the night/morning unable to fall back to sleep. We are completely worn down by the whole thing.
This is the only thing that makes the idea of doing something as crazy as pushing something the size of a watermelon out an opening the size of a lemon seem like a good idea. Because we know deep down that this is the only way to make the pain stop.
I’m pretty sure that I am experiencing some form of PTSD from Liam’s birth. I’m terrified. I desperately don’t want to go through what I had to go through last time in order to get Baby Girl out of me. I have options. I’ve run them all over and over in my head dozens of times. There just don’t seem to be any good answers. There are assurances, but there are no guarantees. The only thing of which I’m certain at this point is that if Baby Girl doesn’t make her entrance into this world in the very near future (and by that I basically mean during the next week, preferably several hours after Matt and I have picked Liam up from his first day of preschool on Tuesday) I’m going to complete my spiral into total madness. Watch out folks, I’m afraid that things are about to get really ugly at The Connolly Ranch…
On with the freak show.
Week 38 in my pregnancy with Liam (I’m still jealous of the sweater, but at this point I’m certainly not jealous of the pants. Long live the sundress!):
Wow.
Bonus shot (Contrary to appearances, I was not doing my very best impersonation of Britney Spears, it’s just what happens when you’re this far along in a pregnancy and you have nothing left to wear that will actually cover your body but you refuse, on principle, to spend another dime on maternity clothing. You can all thank Matt for capturing this gem.)
Week 38 in this pregnancy with Baby Girl (My eyes are barely visible between the puffiness that’s a result of water retention and the puffiness that’s a result of waking up every 45 minutes all night long to turn over and then waking up at 4:30 unable to go back to sleep. It’s getting brutal and it’s showing all over my face. Literally.):
Also–if my belly looks smaller in this than last week’s pictures, don’t be deceived, it’s just the back-to-back contractions. It’s the pregnant version of holding my gut in…
Here’s to hoping that these are the last pictures of their kind and that next week’s shots include post-uterine-eviction shots of Baby Girl. Those will be much less painful to look at…