Monday saw a significant event: The purchase of 1 x pair of size 8 maternity jeans (feels slightly like an oxymoron to me...) from New Look's impressive range of maternity wear and 1 x maternity bra (who needs under wire when you can have a tee-shirt bra eh?) that made me realise how my breasts had been stuffed unattractively into a confined space for a little too long and had actually made me suffer severe discomfort. I felt truly pregnant.
Tuesday and I had yet another significant event: My second twelve week scan.
This time my oldest friend accompanied me. We have known each other all our lives, quite literally, having been christened together (the sharing of font water, while not something I can of course recall is something of a bond).
So, jelly smeared over my enlarged stomach, baby appeared again. This time: bigger, better, with more exciting features! We saw hands and feet and it bounced up and down, using my womb as a trampoline. Then it began to drink, opening and closing its lips repeatedly (I can't imagine amniotic fluid is all that tasty, but I guess baby doesn't know any different) and the sonographer explained romantically how it would then pee. Into my womb. Nice. This time she conducted fuller tests on the thickness of its neck fluid and took a good look at its enormous brain. This one definitely takes after J.
So now I wait for the blood test results (I nearly fainted, however my friend came to my aid with fizzy pop which managed to restore some sort of normality in my frazzled veins). For the baby and me. I am terrified. Not that I think I do have syphilis but the list that it checked me for really was quite disturbing and, as I am a born worrier, I am obviously riddled with notions that something with ill intentions may be lurking in my veins.
With my bump ever expanding, I proceeded through the rest of the week. Last night, however, I had a bit of a shock. Preparing for bed at J's aunt's house, I noticed how truly enormous I was. It isn't a pretty little belly. My belly starts to extend outwards at a dramatic exponential rate just after my breasts conclude. I am enormous. And I'm only 13.5 weeks. That isn't all baby - that's belly. I'm not even supposed to be showing yet according to the biblical reference books that I would love to discard but am addicted to like a sinner hovering continually in a confessional booth waiting for a sign to say that I'm really doing okay and I really am normal.
Blood test results awaiting. I'm wondering if the answer machine at home is flashing with messages I don't want to get.
Friday 14 March 2008
13 weeks. The 'honeymoon' trimester. Apparently.
"Are your long-lost energy and sex drive making a comeback? If so, you may soon find out why many women call this the honeymoon trimester."*
13.5 weeks. Still sick as a dog. Starting to worry that narcolepsy might be setting in for good. Can't bear the thought of a reassuring, breast crushing, space-invading hug of any description, let alone anything slightly more engaged. And feeling like an eighty year old trapped in the exhausted body of an ungainly, overweight, adolescent teenager with growing pains, awkward growths and distinctly ill fitting clothes, exhuding all the personal eroticism of a pubic louse. Everyone else saying they began to bloom at 13 weeks. Still with no life, an ever decreasing lack of social interaction and interpersonal skills, while an increasing waistline due to continuous grazing to abait the beast of all things regurgitating, I reacted somewhat badly to my update email from BabyCentre yesterday.
The honeymoon trimester you say? I reacted about as well as I did to J crawling into bed intoxicated and having over indulged on Saturday night, whispering through alcoholic tinged breath that he understood how I'd been feeling because he'd eaten and drunk too much. Oh how truly touched and understood I felt.
*BabyCentre email, 13 weeks pregnant
13.5 weeks. Still sick as a dog. Starting to worry that narcolepsy might be setting in for good. Can't bear the thought of a reassuring, breast crushing, space-invading hug of any description, let alone anything slightly more engaged. And feeling like an eighty year old trapped in the exhausted body of an ungainly, overweight, adolescent teenager with growing pains, awkward growths and distinctly ill fitting clothes, exhuding all the personal eroticism of a pubic louse. Everyone else saying they began to bloom at 13 weeks. Still with no life, an ever decreasing lack of social interaction and interpersonal skills, while an increasing waistline due to continuous grazing to abait the beast of all things regurgitating, I reacted somewhat badly to my update email from BabyCentre yesterday.
The honeymoon trimester you say? I reacted about as well as I did to J crawling into bed intoxicated and having over indulged on Saturday night, whispering through alcoholic tinged breath that he understood how I'd been feeling because he'd eaten and drunk too much. Oh how truly touched and understood I felt.
*BabyCentre email, 13 weeks pregnant
Sunday 9 March 2008
Friday 7 March 2008
Baby Bump
I have, as the title so effortlessly gave away, a baby bump.
However, according to the books, those creatures that dictate my baby's growth, my hormonal changes, my physical contortions, state that it isn't a baby bump at all, but fluid retention because of my enlarged uterus.
Gee. Doesn't that make an already spiralling to all new lows of unattractiveness pregnant lady just feel so warm inside?
My mum proudly pointed out my protrusion yesterday and I immediately reeled at her comments, worried because I shouldn't even be showing yet, according to the naked body chart of yet another smug mum-to-be with its little evil description beneath.
My SP's sister had an unfortunate incident with one of these books, in the end throwing it in the bin triumphantly after attempting, and failing, to live by its dictatorial regime. There's one thing my mum's continually told me is that the baby hasn't read the book. So when she told me, and also told me to take all knowledge, anecdotes, stories, advice and suggestions that people will willingly lay on with trowels as soon as you are pregnant and, to an even greater degree, once the baby has been born, I was determined to take on board their knowledge, file it efficiently and then continue to follow mine and J's own parenting strategy.
It worked with Newf (to a point: who needs a dog who can come to recall and doesn't slobber over babies and young children's faces - to their excitement/horror/abject terror - anyway).
The problem being: I am a born worrier. I am also constantly concerned, and absorbing, of other people's opinions.
Those two things combined offer an often soul destroying, depressing, uncontrolled set of emotions. Add that to the pregnancy hormones and we're cooking up something worthy of a Roald Dahl name that does strange things to grannies.
I have made a pact with myself that I need to control this before the baby is born. I knew it was coming, the opinions, the idealistic routines, the exceedingly high expectations I set myself, and will not achieve because it takes two to tango and the baby will not be particularly inclined to appease my own personal concerns and worries.
Luckily J, on the other hand, is confident, self assured, calm, practical, pragmatic and generally the Alka Seltzer to my emotional burnings. Otherwise this poor baby would be lumbered with absorbing it's mother's numerous unattractive personality nuances and neurosis. With J, it has a chance of some balance at least.
But I wasn't really prepared for the rules and regulations dictated by pregnancy within these books that I was gearing up to challenge once the baby was here. This week you will, the baby will. Some of the charts are a little more forgiving, with some mays and probablys sprinkled in to ease the worry of a concerned pregnant lady.
I have been absorbing pregnancy anecdotes, questioning friends insistently and, occasionally, strangers on their trimesters, my most recent question, tinged with desperation, aching with worry, 'when did you start to show?'
So, this baby bump. My mum looked at me, her eyes sparkling, telling me that it was perfectly normal. Those that love me, that are close to me, that have seen this new extrusion of my flesh that has appeared within this last week and see the baby within.
However, those that don't know I implant, mostly I imagine unnecessarily, the opinion that I'm letting myself go a little, the thickening of the waist attributed to too many pies. I don't really have that many sympathetic clothes and those that do make me look either like a chav or a hippy (thank god for the empire line being in fashion this year, I was slightly concerned we might all be adorned with lyrca hotpants for the summer, with unpredictable trends and my complete lack of fashion awareness).
And myself, what do I see? I see flesh-covered liquid and gas. That's it.
I know what it is. My belly is a fraud for my poor digestive system, something that has never been on my side when it comes to appearance, my dinner sitting nicely in the large round bowl of my stomach after a meal while it debates the act of digestion for several hours.
The baby is there, deep within me, protected by my inefficient inner workings, hiding behind an ever swelling mass of liquid and gas.
However, according to the books, those creatures that dictate my baby's growth, my hormonal changes, my physical contortions, state that it isn't a baby bump at all, but fluid retention because of my enlarged uterus.
Gee. Doesn't that make an already spiralling to all new lows of unattractiveness pregnant lady just feel so warm inside?
My mum proudly pointed out my protrusion yesterday and I immediately reeled at her comments, worried because I shouldn't even be showing yet, according to the naked body chart of yet another smug mum-to-be with its little evil description beneath.
My SP's sister had an unfortunate incident with one of these books, in the end throwing it in the bin triumphantly after attempting, and failing, to live by its dictatorial regime. There's one thing my mum's continually told me is that the baby hasn't read the book. So when she told me, and also told me to take all knowledge, anecdotes, stories, advice and suggestions that people will willingly lay on with trowels as soon as you are pregnant and, to an even greater degree, once the baby has been born, I was determined to take on board their knowledge, file it efficiently and then continue to follow mine and J's own parenting strategy.
It worked with Newf (to a point: who needs a dog who can come to recall and doesn't slobber over babies and young children's faces - to their excitement/horror/abject terror - anyway).
The problem being: I am a born worrier. I am also constantly concerned, and absorbing, of other people's opinions.
Those two things combined offer an often soul destroying, depressing, uncontrolled set of emotions. Add that to the pregnancy hormones and we're cooking up something worthy of a Roald Dahl name that does strange things to grannies.
I have made a pact with myself that I need to control this before the baby is born. I knew it was coming, the opinions, the idealistic routines, the exceedingly high expectations I set myself, and will not achieve because it takes two to tango and the baby will not be particularly inclined to appease my own personal concerns and worries.
Luckily J, on the other hand, is confident, self assured, calm, practical, pragmatic and generally the Alka Seltzer to my emotional burnings. Otherwise this poor baby would be lumbered with absorbing it's mother's numerous unattractive personality nuances and neurosis. With J, it has a chance of some balance at least.
But I wasn't really prepared for the rules and regulations dictated by pregnancy within these books that I was gearing up to challenge once the baby was here. This week you will, the baby will. Some of the charts are a little more forgiving, with some mays and probablys sprinkled in to ease the worry of a concerned pregnant lady.
I have been absorbing pregnancy anecdotes, questioning friends insistently and, occasionally, strangers on their trimesters, my most recent question, tinged with desperation, aching with worry, 'when did you start to show?'
So, this baby bump. My mum looked at me, her eyes sparkling, telling me that it was perfectly normal. Those that love me, that are close to me, that have seen this new extrusion of my flesh that has appeared within this last week and see the baby within.
However, those that don't know I implant, mostly I imagine unnecessarily, the opinion that I'm letting myself go a little, the thickening of the waist attributed to too many pies. I don't really have that many sympathetic clothes and those that do make me look either like a chav or a hippy (thank god for the empire line being in fashion this year, I was slightly concerned we might all be adorned with lyrca hotpants for the summer, with unpredictable trends and my complete lack of fashion awareness).
And myself, what do I see? I see flesh-covered liquid and gas. That's it.
I know what it is. My belly is a fraud for my poor digestive system, something that has never been on my side when it comes to appearance, my dinner sitting nicely in the large round bowl of my stomach after a meal while it debates the act of digestion for several hours.
The baby is there, deep within me, protected by my inefficient inner workings, hiding behind an ever swelling mass of liquid and gas.
Encounters that need a blog (and other stories)
So from my break from achieving a fairly minimal amount of productivity relative to the hours I have been sat in front of the computer, I decided to take a break with Newf and take her for a walk up the river, despite her being in the physical and metaphorical dog house after vomiting up whole strands of seaweed and a great deal of saltwater over the carpet just as I'd sat down with my jacket-and-beans for dinner last night (the house still smells like a trawler), and waking me at 3am to tell me that she'd finally realised that oh yes she really did need the toilet after all after drinking seven gallons of water to rehydrate herself before slinking off to bed.
The walk was beautiful, the sun was shining, my phone had decided to work again, albeit erratically and not wonderfully effectively after dropping it down the toilet last night (don't ask) and spending the night in pieces on the radiator to think about what it had done, so I was able to at least stumble blindly over twigs and roots, trip over nothing-at-all at extreme regularity and narrowly avoid various piles of misc dog related elements.
Then Newf met a friend. And I met the friend's owner.
We'd briefly encountered each other on the weekend, so I knew Newf was in with a good chance of not bullying it into submission, terrorising it, angering it or terrifying its owner. So off they went, Newf and friend, Newf submissively and kindly let her new friend try to hump her at various different angles (none of which were entirely correct, but thankfully her lady op meant I had little to concern myself with) and generally played various games involving driving her hefty 8 stone soaking frame into my legs at every opportunity as they bounded about together.
So I chatted to her friend's owner, a woman I'm guessing of her fifties, about various dog related things (all paving the way for playground talk of later years, I'm hoping this is an investment in small talk and How To Look Interested In Other People's Dogs/Children* *delete as applicable).
Then she told me she hadn't had a very good February. I'm not sure if I asked her quite why, but she proceeded to tell me anyway.
She launched immediately into telling me her ex husband had been found dead. This I managed to swiftly put an understanding but not too sympathetic (noticing the 'ex') look onto my confused face while she told me more, as the dogs crashed into each other and myself and tried to make ineffective puppy love.
Then she proceeded to tell me that he'd been pronounced dead on the Thursday when in fact he'd died on the Wednesday night. She knew this because, as she put it, she'd 'seen a fair amount of dead bodies in her time'.
Right. I didn't ask her about that.
She then went into not insignificant detail about exactly how bodies appeared as they were decomposing (including a rather traumatic tale about her daughter being summoned home from her holiday and not being able to look at the body for a week, by which point it was in a severe state of decay).
This story, embellished with a great deal of detail, then led on to another relative's hospitalisation, by which point my back had begun to drip with sweat, my legs had begun to sway, a prickling sensation had startled my skin and then, suddenly, my hearing went and I could only decipher words through what appeared to be a large volume of water or a rather effective pair of earmuffs. All the while the dogs were continuing to bounce wildly around us in gay abandon.
So I made my excuses and carried on walking soaked, happy and completely disobedient Newf as I tried to compose myself.
The baby had clearly decided it was time for beans and less talk about rigor mortis.
The walk was beautiful, the sun was shining, my phone had decided to work again, albeit erratically and not wonderfully effectively after dropping it down the toilet last night (don't ask) and spending the night in pieces on the radiator to think about what it had done, so I was able to at least stumble blindly over twigs and roots, trip over nothing-at-all at extreme regularity and narrowly avoid various piles of misc dog related elements.
Then Newf met a friend. And I met the friend's owner.
We'd briefly encountered each other on the weekend, so I knew Newf was in with a good chance of not bullying it into submission, terrorising it, angering it or terrifying its owner. So off they went, Newf and friend, Newf submissively and kindly let her new friend try to hump her at various different angles (none of which were entirely correct, but thankfully her lady op meant I had little to concern myself with) and generally played various games involving driving her hefty 8 stone soaking frame into my legs at every opportunity as they bounded about together.
So I chatted to her friend's owner, a woman I'm guessing of her fifties, about various dog related things (all paving the way for playground talk of later years, I'm hoping this is an investment in small talk and How To Look Interested In Other People's Dogs/Children* *delete as applicable).
Then she told me she hadn't had a very good February. I'm not sure if I asked her quite why, but she proceeded to tell me anyway.
She launched immediately into telling me her ex husband had been found dead. This I managed to swiftly put an understanding but not too sympathetic (noticing the 'ex') look onto my confused face while she told me more, as the dogs crashed into each other and myself and tried to make ineffective puppy love.
Then she proceeded to tell me that he'd been pronounced dead on the Thursday when in fact he'd died on the Wednesday night. She knew this because, as she put it, she'd 'seen a fair amount of dead bodies in her time'.
Right. I didn't ask her about that.
She then went into not insignificant detail about exactly how bodies appeared as they were decomposing (including a rather traumatic tale about her daughter being summoned home from her holiday and not being able to look at the body for a week, by which point it was in a severe state of decay).
This story, embellished with a great deal of detail, then led on to another relative's hospitalisation, by which point my back had begun to drip with sweat, my legs had begun to sway, a prickling sensation had startled my skin and then, suddenly, my hearing went and I could only decipher words through what appeared to be a large volume of water or a rather effective pair of earmuffs. All the while the dogs were continuing to bounce wildly around us in gay abandon.
So I made my excuses and carried on walking soaked, happy and completely disobedient Newf as I tried to compose myself.
The baby had clearly decided it was time for beans and less talk about rigor mortis.
Thursday 6 March 2008
Twelve Weeks
Last Monday I had my first twelve week scan.
I say first twelve week scan for a reason.
There I was, on the table, jelly smeared over the lower part of my stomach, my mum sat next to me, the sonographer waving her scanner thing over me.
And then I saw it. My baby.
Even as I write it, tingles shoot through me, a wave of pride, of emotion, of overwhelming protection, of realisation.
There it was, arms and legs wriggling like mad (clearly taking after J*).
I grabbed my mum's hand, overwhelmed, tears prickling my eyes. It was so clear, so alive.
The sonographer's words blurred with the image as I tried to focus - that she couldn't do any of the other tests now at this early stage.
Alarm bells drilled through my skull. Early stage?
She measured the baby - and again - 10.5 days old. My heart sank. My tears turned sour, but I smiled uncomfortably and thanked her, disappointment consuming me.
Looking back on it, having hit finally my twelfth week yesterday, the way I felt following my scan seems petty. But that would be betraying myself. If I'd have written back then (such a long time since my last post, absorbed with terrible morning sickness, a cold that floored me and then a mounting workload that ensured it invaded every waking minute for the past 10 days) then I would have seen the legacy the news left. Another 1.5 weeks of all-consuming sickness. Another 1.5 weeks of secrecy, of, basically with trying not to sound hideously melodramatic but failing dismally, misery.
Now my sickness has started to calm during the day, eased by the constant grazing of a variety of crackers, cereal, bread, beans and potatoes (yup, that pretty much summarises my diet for the past week). In the evening the tide comes in, every wave that little bit stronger, until I go to bed often gipping, often sickness (and potato) rising to the top of my throat, acid-burning. I lie awake, still, trying not to move, trying to lay the beast to rest, to calm it. Even when I wake in the night I feel it still, stirring.
And I do wake in the night. Often. Probably about every 1 - 2 hours. I raise automatically, gone are the days where I would try and ignore my insistent bladder, now I just obey its commands, mechanically, without any unwillingness.
Looking back over these twelve weeks - or I guess really two months - I have not enjoyed any aspect of my first trimester. I have been lonely, a recluse, a shadow of myself. I have not recognised myself, my actions, my conversation. I have felt so low I couldn't imagine being pulled out of this state of self pity, and sometimes couldn't even let myself. To put it lightly, I have not been happy.
I have been consumed by sickness, my body has seen its muscles tumble undone, my work, my control dissolving as I stand powerless. My changing shape, my back fat, my hips, my stomach, my breasts, all without my control, my years of work, of effort, of watching what I eat, of exercising, riddled with self consciousness. All undone.
I haven't been out on a social activity for weeks. When J is home at a weekend, we are reluctant to do anything but indulge in spending time together with Newf (in between my cat-naps, and as anyone who's ever had a cat knows, a cat nap is never quite as delicate and short as it implies). During the week, I am exhausted by the time I have finished work, with my stomach beginning to churn like a vicious wash cycle (these last days, between 8pm and 10pm anyway).
And my dance. I miss my poleing so terribly I dream through sequences, I run through those first classes when I'll return, awkward, with an enormous baby belly and no strength in my neglected limbs, unable to achieve the moves I worked so hard for. I couldn't bear to enter the class like that. I don't think I could cope. And I can't imagine J or the poor baby wanting to endure my collapsed figure's routines around the pole in the house either.
I watched my beloved Amy's routine on Friday, overwhelmed and so incredibly proud, a beautiful, intense, continuously, fluid, seemingly effortless routine (I say seemingly because I know how she felt the next day!), but it infected my sleep with dreams of dancing, continuously, sometimes back before I knew I was pregnant, one last memorable time with my sister on Christmas Eve, hours and hours of dance, and then some taunting me, mocking me, returning to a class where I don't know anyone, where I am unable to perform moves my body used to map out so well. I was never graceful nor a particularly talented dancer, but I danced for strength, for control, for a love that I had no idea the full intensity of until it was taken away from me. Until I took it away from me.
Would I have it any other way? Would I have done things differently if I'd have known the selfishness of my want, my need would make me bitter and resentful? I am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of my selfishness and my resentment. I am ashamed of my lack of perspective and my understanding that this won't be forever.
I am ashamed of my seeming lack of respect for my baby - no longer a foetus, not now, not now, not now I've seen you, oh but I do adore you so much, please forgive me for this, because I need to be forgiven, I've only seen the briefest of glimpses of you yet, you've made no appearance on my figure, you are still such a secret, such a thing I have trouble to comprehend.
I desperately wanted this baby. I do desperately want this baby. After seeing it, it became so real. I have the picture by my desk, I take it to bed. The meaning has faded out of the picture now, it isn't the wonderful realisation it was before, I am used to looking at the outline of my baby, of tracing its head, its tiny arms, its body. We used to discuss that if something had turned up through the blood tests that I am yet to have then we would discuss whether to keep it. Back then, before I thought we had a choice, before the baby became real, before the baby was just an idea, connected in some way to my sickness and my exhaustion but with no real link, no physical cord, no dots joined together. Now there is no choice. Now it is just the fierce protection of my baby, and the hating myself for not giving myself up in the way I would desperately want to, in the way I assumed I would, to pregnancy, to growing our baby.
Last night I lay awake day dreaming of romantic meals with a glass of champagne, a beautiful dress, a lovely hotel, J and me, together. All such a world away from my life at the moment. Alcohol is an abhorrent thought, a meal beyond anything with basically the complete genetic makeup of a potato makes me feel a little queasy just considering it. A hotel room, where we might drink, and sit up, and talk, I might feel pretty, not a mass of ever multiplying fat cells.
Last weekend J and I picked up a Mothercare and Boots Baby catalogue. It was bliss - we indulged in planning a nursery, choosing items, discussing 'travel systems' (something I'm definitely leaving to him to research), chatting about our baby. I had focus then, in talking, I could lose myself in the realisation of our baby. But only with him. Only when he's beside me, I realise that we're doing this together, that we're apart because we're going to have the most wonderful life when our baby comes. Together. Not being apart any more. The months stretch out before me, and I lose myself in a mess of week days.
So, twelve weeks. On Tuesday I have my second twelve week scan. Then I should be able to finally begin to tell those close to me who I haven't yet been able to tell. Then I will enter my second trimester fully, sincerely, finally. Finally.
*As my partner does play a fairly hefty role in many of my posts, I've decided after years of blogging to raise him from partner status to his initial. I haven't told him, but I imagine he'll be fairly uninterested in his increased status. Either that or he might be a little bit perturbed to why its only happened now.
I say first twelve week scan for a reason.
There I was, on the table, jelly smeared over the lower part of my stomach, my mum sat next to me, the sonographer waving her scanner thing over me.
And then I saw it. My baby.
Even as I write it, tingles shoot through me, a wave of pride, of emotion, of overwhelming protection, of realisation.
There it was, arms and legs wriggling like mad (clearly taking after J*).
I grabbed my mum's hand, overwhelmed, tears prickling my eyes. It was so clear, so alive.
The sonographer's words blurred with the image as I tried to focus - that she couldn't do any of the other tests now at this early stage.
Alarm bells drilled through my skull. Early stage?
She measured the baby - and again - 10.5 days old. My heart sank. My tears turned sour, but I smiled uncomfortably and thanked her, disappointment consuming me.
Looking back on it, having hit finally my twelfth week yesterday, the way I felt following my scan seems petty. But that would be betraying myself. If I'd have written back then (such a long time since my last post, absorbed with terrible morning sickness, a cold that floored me and then a mounting workload that ensured it invaded every waking minute for the past 10 days) then I would have seen the legacy the news left. Another 1.5 weeks of all-consuming sickness. Another 1.5 weeks of secrecy, of, basically with trying not to sound hideously melodramatic but failing dismally, misery.
Now my sickness has started to calm during the day, eased by the constant grazing of a variety of crackers, cereal, bread, beans and potatoes (yup, that pretty much summarises my diet for the past week). In the evening the tide comes in, every wave that little bit stronger, until I go to bed often gipping, often sickness (and potato) rising to the top of my throat, acid-burning. I lie awake, still, trying not to move, trying to lay the beast to rest, to calm it. Even when I wake in the night I feel it still, stirring.
And I do wake in the night. Often. Probably about every 1 - 2 hours. I raise automatically, gone are the days where I would try and ignore my insistent bladder, now I just obey its commands, mechanically, without any unwillingness.
Looking back over these twelve weeks - or I guess really two months - I have not enjoyed any aspect of my first trimester. I have been lonely, a recluse, a shadow of myself. I have not recognised myself, my actions, my conversation. I have felt so low I couldn't imagine being pulled out of this state of self pity, and sometimes couldn't even let myself. To put it lightly, I have not been happy.
I have been consumed by sickness, my body has seen its muscles tumble undone, my work, my control dissolving as I stand powerless. My changing shape, my back fat, my hips, my stomach, my breasts, all without my control, my years of work, of effort, of watching what I eat, of exercising, riddled with self consciousness. All undone.
I haven't been out on a social activity for weeks. When J is home at a weekend, we are reluctant to do anything but indulge in spending time together with Newf (in between my cat-naps, and as anyone who's ever had a cat knows, a cat nap is never quite as delicate and short as it implies). During the week, I am exhausted by the time I have finished work, with my stomach beginning to churn like a vicious wash cycle (these last days, between 8pm and 10pm anyway).
And my dance. I miss my poleing so terribly I dream through sequences, I run through those first classes when I'll return, awkward, with an enormous baby belly and no strength in my neglected limbs, unable to achieve the moves I worked so hard for. I couldn't bear to enter the class like that. I don't think I could cope. And I can't imagine J or the poor baby wanting to endure my collapsed figure's routines around the pole in the house either.
I watched my beloved Amy's routine on Friday, overwhelmed and so incredibly proud, a beautiful, intense, continuously, fluid, seemingly effortless routine (I say seemingly because I know how she felt the next day!), but it infected my sleep with dreams of dancing, continuously, sometimes back before I knew I was pregnant, one last memorable time with my sister on Christmas Eve, hours and hours of dance, and then some taunting me, mocking me, returning to a class where I don't know anyone, where I am unable to perform moves my body used to map out so well. I was never graceful nor a particularly talented dancer, but I danced for strength, for control, for a love that I had no idea the full intensity of until it was taken away from me. Until I took it away from me.
Would I have it any other way? Would I have done things differently if I'd have known the selfishness of my want, my need would make me bitter and resentful? I am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of my selfishness and my resentment. I am ashamed of my lack of perspective and my understanding that this won't be forever.
I am ashamed of my seeming lack of respect for my baby - no longer a foetus, not now, not now, not now I've seen you, oh but I do adore you so much, please forgive me for this, because I need to be forgiven, I've only seen the briefest of glimpses of you yet, you've made no appearance on my figure, you are still such a secret, such a thing I have trouble to comprehend.
I desperately wanted this baby. I do desperately want this baby. After seeing it, it became so real. I have the picture by my desk, I take it to bed. The meaning has faded out of the picture now, it isn't the wonderful realisation it was before, I am used to looking at the outline of my baby, of tracing its head, its tiny arms, its body. We used to discuss that if something had turned up through the blood tests that I am yet to have then we would discuss whether to keep it. Back then, before I thought we had a choice, before the baby became real, before the baby was just an idea, connected in some way to my sickness and my exhaustion but with no real link, no physical cord, no dots joined together. Now there is no choice. Now it is just the fierce protection of my baby, and the hating myself for not giving myself up in the way I would desperately want to, in the way I assumed I would, to pregnancy, to growing our baby.
Last night I lay awake day dreaming of romantic meals with a glass of champagne, a beautiful dress, a lovely hotel, J and me, together. All such a world away from my life at the moment. Alcohol is an abhorrent thought, a meal beyond anything with basically the complete genetic makeup of a potato makes me feel a little queasy just considering it. A hotel room, where we might drink, and sit up, and talk, I might feel pretty, not a mass of ever multiplying fat cells.
Last weekend J and I picked up a Mothercare and Boots Baby catalogue. It was bliss - we indulged in planning a nursery, choosing items, discussing 'travel systems' (something I'm definitely leaving to him to research), chatting about our baby. I had focus then, in talking, I could lose myself in the realisation of our baby. But only with him. Only when he's beside me, I realise that we're doing this together, that we're apart because we're going to have the most wonderful life when our baby comes. Together. Not being apart any more. The months stretch out before me, and I lose myself in a mess of week days.
So, twelve weeks. On Tuesday I have my second twelve week scan. Then I should be able to finally begin to tell those close to me who I haven't yet been able to tell. Then I will enter my second trimester fully, sincerely, finally. Finally.
*As my partner does play a fairly hefty role in many of my posts, I've decided after years of blogging to raise him from partner status to his initial. I haven't told him, but I imagine he'll be fairly uninterested in his increased status. Either that or he might be a little bit perturbed to why its only happened now.
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