Name Game

Hormones can really suck. For the last day I have been a wreck over several things, and the hormones coursing through my body are not helping the situation at all. I feel like I have been smashed into a thousand pieces that won't ever fit back together properly. I am tired, cranky, and tears are falling pretty easily right now. I can't wait to find out how exciting my hormones make life after the baby comes!

Part of me wants to write about what is upsetting me so much and part of me does not. I feel nervous writing down these feelings, as if they will somehow come back to haunt me. Here goes. My husband and I have an unusual last name. We get made fun of quite a bit, and ha-ha, we always try and laugh about it because what else can you do? It doesn't make sense to get angry over a joke about our last name that has been made approximately 100 bazillion times. Most of the time people get bored with making fun of our name, and move on to bigger and better jokes. Thank God, because hearing the same damn joke about our "funny" last name gets really fucking old. Just sayin.

I have been worried since I got pregnant about naming this child a name that won't have to much ridicule when combined with our last name. Well, it seems all that worry was in vain, because it turns out this kid doesn't even have to be born to be made fun of. Poor baby. Friends of ours are throwing a baby shower for us, which is very kind of them, but have managed to turn the save the date invite into a joke fest over our baby's last name. I can't describe how much it hurts me to read jokes directed at our baby, suffice it to say: ALOT.

I want nothing more than to protect this child and it pains me to know that already this cannot be done. I suppose I could consider all this a wake up call to the fact that this baby's life will not be perfect no matter what I try and do to make it perfect...but HELLO. Did I mention the fact that it hasn't left my body yet and already it is facing ridicule? I have done a damn fine job of getting pissed off these last couple of days, but I think now that I have typed these feelings out I can start to cool off a little.

I love you baby, and rest assured that your Dad and I are doing our best to name you something wonderful, regardless of what people will say to you because of our last name.

'can't sleep pregnant'

Last night was the worst night of sleep I have had since 'Operation Cletus: 2007' began. It is a struggle for me to think of the words I should type because my brain is fuzzy, my eyes are heavy and I feel only a little bit better than if I had been hit by a Mac truck. If my shoddy calculations are correct I had approximately negative 3 hours of sleep last night. Okay. Okay. That isn't true. Perhaps I had about 5.5 hours of sleep, but it was not all consecutive. No. Why would it be? It was spread out over the course of the night, which made it even more enjoyable. The worst part was as I was lying there trying to sleep, I just found myself getting more and more angry, which wasn't exactly helping my cause.

I just spent the last 30 minutes at work being very productive and googling 'can't sleep pregnant'. Over half of what I read were other pregnant women saying, 'oh, this is just nature's way of preparing us for what's to come', which isn't exactly what I want to read, as I prop my eyes open with toothpicks to stay awake for the next 7 hours. I want a solution, and not one that happens in 18 years when this kid leaves home.

As I become more tired due to lack of sleep, I feel extremely sorry for myself. I know things really aren't that bad, and that lack of sleep can skew things in a pretty crappy direction, but it sure it easy to take on the 'woe is me role' and whine and complain. While I am sure everyone around wants me to just stick a sock in it already, but I feel better having been a cranky bitch, which isn't exactly fair to those around me, but whatever. They don't have 20 extra pounds on them, causing them to be a sleep deprived basket case.

Speaking of extra pounds, I was worried for awhile that I was gaining too much weight too quickly. Now, I have opposite fears. I feel like this kid should be getting bigger with every breath I take. I want to feel it moving around more as it is growing, and I don't. At first I didn't want to get on the scales, but now I do it willingly to see if my baby is fatting up, and since I have only gained two pounds in the last two weeks I wonder if something is wrong. All my baby books say from here on out this kid will triple in size, blah, blah, blah. Which, I know the tripling takes place over the last months, but...really, since I don't have enough on my mind already, let me just add this one other thing to the mix, that I probably shouldn't really even be worrying about, but will anyway. I am sure in two more months, when I reach whale like proportions, I will look fondly back on this time and wistfully think of the days when this kid wasn't growing into what will probably feel like Andre the Giant proportions in my uterus.

When I think about it, I really am enjoying this pregnancy (though you may not be able to tell from this entry) and I like being pregnant, I truly do. I also like causing myself grief over things that are way out of my control, I figure it balances the scales a little. Now, please excuse me while I lay my head down on my desk and get some work done...

Randomness

Does it make me a bad mother to admit that sometimes I forget how pregnant I am? This week I was discussing with my husband the fact that I was 25 weeks pregnant and then I second guessed myself, especially when Jim told me that I was not 25 weeks, but 26. I almost broke out the calendar and counted, but then I remembered that last week I was 24 weeks (or 6 freakin' months) and so this week I am only 25 weeks. I am already having mini convulsions over the fact that I am closer to having this baby than not having this baby, so to add a false week on my timeline is not something I want to do.

There are so many things I want to remember about this pregnancy, but I have been so lazy about updating here, I always think I should at least write once a week, but I get busy and forget to post. I have been feeling the baby move pretty regularly, there are times when it is more active and sometimes it still catches me off guard to feel something inside me move. My initial reaction will be to tell myself my stomach is doing flips until I remember there is a kid inside of me doing flips, and it is most likely not my stomach.

There hasn't been a lot of progress made towards the completion of the nursery. However, if you are one of those people who considers progress 'piling clothes and sundry items around the room', then the nursery is actually very close to completion. There will be a December baby shower in my hometown and I am hoping the weekend of that shower Jim will be able to stay home and do lots of damage to our house, which will also be considered progress on the nursery front. We shall see.

In other news I finally decided to sit down a measure my ever expanding chest. Considering that I am still wearing my original brassieres, you can take my word for it when I say things are a little...crammed. Everything I have read says make sure to invest in proper fitting under garments, as you will be so much more comfortable. This makes perfect sense and, if I weren't so lazy, would have been very valuable advice for when I first began to expand in my upper torso region. So, without further delay I must announce that the number part of my current bra size sounds something like dirty mate and the letter part falls between C and E. I have to admit that I was shocked, considering that before this whole pregnancy business started I topped the charts at a nice, normal 34B. Luckily I have been wearing many a sports bra, which seem to do a fine job of supporting the girls, and last night I had the good fortune of being able to borrow a few bras much closer to my current size. So, while things are still a little tight up top, it is a vast improvement over what my breasts were being submitted to days ago. My chest is thanking me as I type this.

We still have no name for this child if it turns out to be a boy. Our attempts to choose a boy name go a little something like this:
a. Discuss family names that we both like
b. Decide that we need more boy choice names from my side of the family
c. Repeat top three name choices about a bazillion times
d. Mention again that it would be nice to have more choices from my family
e. Begin thinking of names we find hilarious, i.e. Truck, Robot, and Brick
f. Lather, Rinse, Repeat

The last few times we have tried talking about boy names I find myself getting annoyed with our choices, but I have done nothing to explore boy names on my side of the family, so really I can only be annoyed with myself, which: no. I do not like to be annoyed with myself and so then I get annoyed with Jim for not being more open minded, and good grief, if he could just like a few of the choices I suggest we wouldn't be in this predicament, now would we?

I continue to wake up during the night; and lately I have had the pleasure of waking up not once, but twice a night for an hour or so. Add a little heartburn to the mix, and the end result = pregnant me. I am feeling more and more crankier lately, probably due to lack of sleep, and as a result I want to complain more, about anything, about nothing. Last night I wanted to complain over and over again about how badly my throat was hurting and how this heartburn is driving me insane. I try and refrain from sending Jim over the edge with all my complainyness, but it gets hard. The worst part is this kid won't even appreciate what all I went through for another 25 years. If only I could make it see now how much I suffer in the name of love...

As Thanksgiving approaches I think of all the things I have to be thankful for. While I may be feeling sorry for myself right now, I really am thankful for this child, as well as for how easy this pregnancy has been up to this point. Life, even with its lack of sleep and raw, burny throat, really is good and I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.