Mama Thursday: Week 41 - Ruminations on Being Pregnant

Lily has been out of my body now for as long as she was in.  This has gotten me thinking back on the pregnancy.  I was hoping by now that the trauma of everything would have passed, but I'm still facing those demons.  This is probably because I'm nursing and my body is still a crazy hormone factory.

I hated being pregnant.

Hated it.  It was a full nine months of hell for me.  From the three months of nausea to the sciatica that brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion to the crushing fatigue to the stupid waddle I developed pretty much immediately because my hips went straight out of whack -- hell.  I'd like to say that there was a time during all of that where I was happy with what was going on or even mildly content, but there really wasn't.  There was that time I was craving apple pie and my marvelous husband went to the store, brought me some, fed it to me, and I immediately puked it back up on the bed.  There was the time I had one of my lovely first tomatoes that was fresh picked from my garden that morning for breakfast and I had to run-waddle through the office to puke it up.  There was the time I almost passed out at the top of the stairs at the train station.  There were all the times when I just wanted to cry (or did cry) because my back, butt, and leg hurt so bad from the sciatica and I could barely move.  There was all that not being able to get out of bed or off the couch without two or three tries.  There was the horror of seeing myself naked in the mirror, as if I didn't already have body image issues.  There was the loss of several pairs of shoes that I still to this day can't wear because my feet swelled up like water balloons.  There was the nagging anxiety about the impending delivery.

Then there was the delivery.  Labor itself wasn't nearly as bad in reality as it was in my head.  I got through it drug free in a tub just like I wanted.  But the psychological trauma of the process left a deep scar that I'm still trying to heal.

Of course it was all worth it in the end.  Don't even think that I would suggest that it wasn't.

So right now the thought of going through all that again is reeeeaaalllly not appealing to me.  Lily could be an only child, right?  She's got two first cousins and one third cousin within a few months of her own age.

Right?

Sigh.