Hiccups, Exhaustion, and a Preggo Funny

My doctor appointment Monday went perfectly. Too perfectly. I was thinking to myself this morning “I have been so lucky that nothing has gone wrong.” My blood pressure has remained consistent, my peepee has remained protein-free, and I’ve managed to only gain about 5 lbs in 6 weeks. Knock on wood, I know. I’m still waiting for the fallout. And let me just say that the weight management has NOT been easy. There in the middle of my pregnancy, I took full advantage of the “I’m pregnant and therefore have every right to act like a Hoover” mentality. And my weight gain definitely reflected my “MUST. EAT. EVERYTHING” attitude. So now in the home stretch, I am trying to make up for it and be more careful.

Back to my appointment… see how I get sidetracked so easily?

My mom went with me – when hubby’s out of town on a job, my mom always jumps at the chance to go. The appointments aren’t extremely exciting. They check my weight and vitals, ask routine “how are you feeling?...how’s baby’s movement?...do you have any questions?” pregnancy questions, and use a Doppler machine to listen to the baby’s heart. At this appointment, baby Luke had the hiccups. He gets them often now, and I sometimes don’t even notice them because they just feel normal to me. I didn’t even think about them popping up on the Doppler as we listened to his heart. But sure enough, mixed in with the horse-galloping-sound of my little man’s heart, there they were. We could HEAR his hiccups, perfectly aligning with each twitch in my belly. The three of us – me, mama, and my doctor – all sat there smiling as we listened. For the first time since I first heard his heartbeat back around 10 weeks pregnant, I thought I was going to cry right there on the exam table. It sounds silly, right? They’re just hiccups – it’s not like little Luke is in there carrying on a conversation with himself. They were hiccups. But they were MY BABY’S hiccups. It was a sound that I could link to something that I feel every day. Something that until that moment had become routine, normal, and nearly forgettable. So today when he got the hiccupsas I sat at my desk working, my eyes welled up with tears. And I thought to myself “Dang… I’m going to be one of THOSE moms… I’m going to cry at everything, aren’t I?” And you know what? I probably will. And I’ll do it proudly. When I put his little tiny feet in my hands, I’ll probably cry thinking “These are the feet that jammed themselves into my lungs and stretched against the bottom of my ribcage.” Only instead of cursing those little feet like I often do lately, when I am actually HOLDING those feet in my hands, I’ll probably be crying remembering how sweet it felt. But not today. Today I lean more towards the cursing of the feet that are currently pushed halfway into my lungs.

Along with feet-in-ribs and an overall sense of “GOD I’m getting huge” discomfort, I’ve also returned to the first-trimester symptom of being tired. All the time. And I can’t use lack of sleep as an excuse. I’m in bed at 8 (laugh away, but it’s wonderful) so I can be up for work at 5:30am – typically giving me about 8 hours once I actually fall asleep *and accounting for the 2-3 bathroom trips each night, which I can proudly say I manage to do with only half-way opening one eye to check for critters in the toilet (call me crazy, but I get great comfort in knowing that some sewer snake isn’t waiting for me to blindly sit down). So my exhaustion definitely isn’t due to lack of sleep. People say “Oh honey, it’s just Mother Nature preparing you for once the baby gets here”. Well, the baby isn’t here. And I’m trying to stock up on my energy reserves now because – yes, I know – I will need the extra energy once the baby gets here. So this pre-baby exhaustion can suck it. *I know, I know. Telling the exhaustion to “suck it” does absolutely nothing to help. But it sure feels good to say.

And with hiccups and exhaustion, I will close with a little story. This past Sunday, the weather was GORGEOUS. It was just one of those days. Low 70s, a good breeze, and blue skies. I was home alone and, thanks to my neuro-nesting, my Sunday ritual of house cleaning and laundry was already done. So I decided to go lay outside in my hammock with a few magazines. My hammock has become one of my absolute favorite places – it’s one of the few places I can actually get comfortable anymore. So there I lay in my hammock, enjoying the weather, reading my magazines until the sun shifted just enough to make me have to change positions to get it out of my face. If you’ve ever laid in a hammock, you know moving around can be tricky. So imagine that PLUS an extra 30 or so pounds PLUS a boulder-shaped belly. Back to my story… I start to shift. Just a little – a few inches would get the sun out of my face. I move ever so slightly, and… SUCCESS. The sun is out of my face. But my magazine is out of reach. I sit up just barely to reach for it, and as slowly as I leaned up to get it, the hammock slowly turned over. I didn’t even realize it was happening until I was on the ground with my dog in my face like “holy crap – what just happened?” I seriously had no idea that I was tipping over. I was so intent on moving slowly to get my magazine so that I WOULDN’T tip over, that I didn’t see everything slowly turning upside down. All I could do was sit on the ground and laugh. And if any of my neighbors happened to catch sight of the slow-mo-flipping-preggo, I’d imagine they got a good laugh too.