Excuse me while I complain this time

Internet, IOU an elaborate, photo-filled post about the FANTASTIC weekend that we just had in Virginia with family and friends for two baby showers. It was a whirlwind of two days and so incredibly fun. I wanted to come back and write all about it, but I also came back with a cold... wait, make that two colds. And I'm too stuffy and tired and grumpy to effuse the appropriate enthusiasm that the weekend deserves. I'll get to it though, just not today.

Today, I'm going to complain, which is really something I haven't done much of until now. Everyone always asks, "So how are you feeling?" And I've always said, "Great!" kind of guiltily, because I know that pregnancy is hard on so many people, and I really think it's luck of the draw as much as anything that gives you an enjoyable, let alone bearable, pregnancy, instead of a tough one that you just learn to get through because, well, you have to, and you count on that hormone during birth that's supposed to help you forget the less desirable parts of the whole experience.

Until the past couple of weeks, I have been feeling really good, I haven't just been saying it. Part of that, I think, is due to my easy schedule. Shortly before I found out I was pregnant, I decided to take time off from graduate school in New Hampshire for this year. My plan was to teach one or two writing classes as an adjunct in Boston and to continue working part-time at a certain outdoor retail store, which I've been doing since our first year in Boston. When the teaching jobs didn't pan out as quickly as I'd hoped, and when I realized how awkward it would be to jump into a new work environment with new students AND this new belly, I decided to embrace the opportunity to just work a lot less. I figured that I'd earned it by working a whole lot more the past year, while commuting nearly two hours door-to-door to UNH from Boston and reading/writing in every second of "spare" time. I felt like I overdid it in the past year, so why not underdo it this year. And wow, I'm officially in full support of underdoing it every once in a while.

So the answer has been "I'm feeling really good," and it was an honest one. I had time to work out about four times a week--either doing the elliptical at the gym or walking the hour to work. I could get plenty of sleep. I had the time and energy to take care of myself, but I also had this great job that kept me out, about, and social. It was not where I'd seen myself--I mean, hello--30, pregnant, and working retail--but I would not have it any other way. What's funny is that at least half of the staff at the store have graduate degrees or are working towards one, so it's fantastic company to be in, and a unique and conscientious company to work for. It's let me very consciously take a step back from the fast lane and enjoy this pregnancy, as well as enjoy the way our life is heading. Slower works well for us. And I think we've earned it.

All that build-up is to explain the kind of grumpy shock that I'm in now as I suddenly feel pretty terrible, at least compared to how I've felt thus far. Two weeks ago I got a run-of-the-mill cold. I had a sore throat that seemed to go away but then turned into a stuffy nose that then became a cough--over the slow course of two weeks. I thought it was on it's way out yesterday, then last night I got a stuffy nose all over again! Two colds, one after another, it seems. So my patience with taking time off from the gym (which helps my body feel normal as it grows, and this is increasingly important as I'm hitting 20 extra pounds), from going out with friends, from enjoying being at work, is pretty much through. My reserves are too low. I imagine I got this second cold from being exhausted over the weekend and traveling, and hey, I'm happy it's not anything worse. [Got my H1N1 vaccine on Tuesday, so that's a relief.] But I'm so tired of it.

In addition to this going-on-three-week cold extravaganza, I've been dealing with increasing pain on the left side of my ribcage for about two months now. It started as a knot-like pain in my upper back and a corresponding tingling, like pins and needles, around the front side of my ribcage near the top of my growing belly. Over the past two weeks, what with sitting on the couch too much, not working out, and just getting bigger in the belly, this rib pain has become excruciating at certain times of the day and pretty consistently awful at night. I ice it every night with a pack that wraps around my side, which helps, as long as I leave it on until I go to bed. Previously it didn't bother me until after I ate dinner, presumably because it corresponded with putting more in my belly and making everything push further up against my ribs, as well as with sitting down and having things feel squished up against my rib cage. I wish I was taller. The theory is that I'm just small-framed, so the way my ribs expanded and everything in my abdomen has been pushed upward is pushing on muscle or nerves in a way that results in this ridiculous pain. Add to that the increased time I've spent in cars and planes this past week with traveling, and it's no wonder it's bothering me more (not to mention the lack of gym and yoga time because I didn't want to be that stuffy/coughing pregnant woman--I draw enough attention at the gym in my college neighborhood these days as it is). It's just that the rib pain on top of the cold is unbearable, and I'm exhausted, and I'm probably also just stressing out about now being in my third trimester, because let's face it, I'M ONLY GOING TO GET BIGGER FROM HERE! And how will that continue to alter my easy answer of, "I'm feeling great!"? Maybe venting here will help me not vent as much in person. I know that the third trimester notoriously brings more discomfort as it brings a bigger belly, and I'm definitely apprehensive about what that will mean for me. I just need this cold to go away so I can gear myself up for it.

But really, REALLY, I know that everyone has their burdens during pregnancy, and I still feel lucky if this is what I get. I'd rather have pain than nausea, and some people are sick for the entire nine months. I haven't gained massive amounts of weight or gained the weight I have in ungainly places, which I know has helped me feel good mentally and physically. I seem to have these moments that last about a week every few months when things start to change, and I feel exhausted by change after change(like when my belly popped at about 5 months and my ribs started really hurting), by keeping up with how I'm feeling and keeping myself even keel outside the house, emotionally, physically, and in between. I hate to use a whole post for complaining, but if you ask me, writing is interesting when it's not always happy and easy, so hopefully that gives me leeway to just sulk here today. And this will balance the ridiculously upbeat and enthusiastic post I'll write later about the baby showers I/we had last weekend :).

who gave the cupcake a drum set?

I'm pretty sure that starting around 11 p.m. each night, about when I'm trying to fall asleep, the baby starts playing Rock Band.

cravings? more like fixations

The question I've been asked over and over again is, "So have you had any weird cravings?" 

No, sorry. I know, it's kind of boring, but I really haven't. No pickles and ice cream. I'm trying to be patient with the clique though because no one except me seems to tire of the pickle joke. 

At first I just figured that cravings were more like a loosening of inhibition. Like, I'd walk by a hot dog stand and smell that glorious smell, and think, "I want a hot dog." Whereas before I knew that I'd be gaining 30 pounds regardless, I'd have thought, "Yeah that smells good but I don't just go around eating hot dogs." Still though, I didn't have to have a hot dog then and there. I just thought, "I could go for that." But then I'd move on.

I do think I've had some food fixations though. For a few months, it was this white cheddar cheese from Whole Foods. I swear I ate a block of it a week. Again, that could be attributed to lessening of food inhibition because who wouldn't want to eat a block of cheese a week? I've realized just recently though that I've stopped eating so much cheese, and now I make whole wheat pancakes or toast up Kashi waffles a few times a week. But I wouldn't call these "cravings." I don't go all day thinking about syrup and waffles. They've just become my go-to, I'm-hungry-and-this-will-fill-me-up-and-make-me-happy habit. Both of these fixations have ease of preparation in common, which is always tempting for me, and while they're both treats that I normally would never indulge in with such abandon, as long as I'm still working out and hungry for about 2/3 of the entire day, I don't give the calorie intake a second thought. Anyway, the cheese has calcium and the pancakes/waffles have fiber. 

Funny thing about the cheese though... 

I just realized a few days ago that it is NOT pasteurized. It's a hard cheese, it's cheddar, but pasteurized it is not. One of the first rules of pregnancy eating is to avoid "soft cheeses" (I swear it's always soft cheeses that are referenced, like Brie and goat cheese) that aren't pasteurized because there's a miniscule chance that they could have a bacteria called listeria in them. I'm supposed to avoid deli meat that isn't heated to steaming (yeah, ew) for the same reason. And hot dogs too, so for the record, it's a good thing that their smell doesn't ignite a full-on craving (though honestly I think this mostly applies to the kind of hot dogs that sit an a warming rack at 7-11 all day, and no one should be eating those). 

I was picking up this favorite cheese of ours at Whole Foods just last week and the word "raw" on the label caught my eye. I did a double take: huh? Raw? Anil and I have bought this cheese a million times before and never noticed that word, and I'm not even exaggerating when I say that for like two months I was going through a block a week of this stuff. Neither of us ever thought to look at the ingredients to check for "pasteurized milk," because it's cheddar for crying out loud--it's from Vermont, not the south of France. 

Ironically, at brunch that morning I'd spent literally 10 minutes deliberating over whether I could get the breakfast sandwich, because I wasn't going to ask them to heat the ham in it separately and I thought it reasonable that the sandwich would heat it enough (and really, it's just ham). Turned out the ham wasn't deli style so it didn't matter anyway. But there I was deliberating with Anil over a single piece of ham after I'd apparently been incessantly wolfing down unpasteurized cheese. 

For the record, I'm not worried about it; the risk of listeriosis, as I understand it, is incredibly minimal. It's just that somewhere along the way doctors realized that this was a bad bacteria to expose a fetus to and that it could be avoided by simply reading ingredient lists (not that difficult, you'd think!), so it became a rule. Obviously, it's not like the moment you eat a piece of unpasteurized cheese, lighting strikes. Certainly I would have avoided it if I'd realized my mistake, but at this point, it's spilt milk. Raw, unpasteurized milk, but it's been cleaned up nonetheless. 

Five and a half months in, it makes me think about all that we try to control, in pregnancy, in child-rearing, heck in our own bodies in this time that, for many women, is the first time we've ever felt like our body suddenly has a mind and agenda all its own, and of how somewhere, someone is watching all of that and just laughing. Like so many things in life, you do your best, but at the end of the day you just hope you keep getting lucky. If that sounds like a pregnant woman who's recently realized that she's almost in her last trimester and life is about to get as out of control as she's ever seen it, I hope I'm making that attitude of "so be it" sound believable. I'm working on it.

Sara's belly takes Chicago

Two weekends ago Anil and I made a pilgrimage to Chicago to see our friend Melissa. She was one of Anil's roommates when we first lived in Boston for a year after college and is still one of our favorite people. (I'm not just saying that because she reads this blog. Hi Melissa!) So I wanted to make a trip out to see her before Anil & Sara 2.0 takes effect and everything changes. I wanted to catch up while it was still just us. 

We pretty much ate our way through the streets of Chicago, which wasn't hard to do considering most streets we found ourselves near either smelled like grilled sausages or chocolate. Seriously, we cracked the window in our downtown hotel room because we couldn't get the AC to work, and it smelled like a mouth-watering sausage cart outside of Fenway Park. While Melissa was at work on Friday, Anil and I strolled around the waterfront and sought out a Chicago-style hot dog at Navy Pier. For dinner Melissa took us to an all-organic pizza restaurant called Crust (even the beer was organic, as was the "safe sex on the beach" mocktail that I had). Talk about making me feel good about eating pizza (um, and dipping the crust in the onion dip--organic onion dip is good for you, right?). 

The next day was filled with more eating and more walking, a great combo for 5 months pregnant. We ended the visit with an Argentinean steak house (Tango Sur if I Googled correctly). If we ever had hopes of our baby being a vegetarian, I'm pretty sure they ended on this trip. She wouldn't have had much of a chance anyway; every time Anil decides to try being a vegetarian he immediately starts craving ribs. Chicago has lots of restaurants that are BYOB, so the best part of the evening was watching an elderly woman shuffle across the street after dinner toting a half-full bottle of wine by her side. 

The only bummer of the trip was that my body hit some realization that I was, in fact, 5 months pregnant, and while I'd been feeling great at home, the combination of traveling, walking a ton, and toting around an extra 12 or so pounds (and I'm rounding down) really caught up with me. By the late afternoon, I started feeling pretty sore and tired, and this nagging and intense pain I've had in my upper back seemed to quadruple. Fortunately, I highly recommend the Seneca hotel, not only for its reasonable price and free hot breakfast, but also for its jacuzzi bathtubs! I have to say that in general I'm pretty grossed out by taking baths in hotels, but this one was worth it. Especially when I added shampoo in lieu of bubble bath and turned on the jets. 

Here are some photos from our adventure.

Melissa and me in front of the giant bean in Millennium Park. I wanted to see how the belly would look.

 

Anil and me, also in Millennium Park.

A pre-lunch treat in honor of you know who. I think Melissa has a version in which my eyes aren't closed, but this will do for now.