37 weeks

On the fence about whether the last month of this pregnancy is going to be worse than the first trimester. With Jonah the last month was by far the worst, but I wasn't nauseous with him at the beginning. Months two and three were brutal with this pregnancy. All I did was gag, and I had to do it discretely because no one knew I was pregnant. Ugh. 

With Jonah I remember feeling like my pubic bone was going to break in half during the last few weeks — I haven't felt that way this time (yet). I'm thinking this baby is either in a different position or he's got a smaller head. Fingers crossed for both. 

The worst parts right now are: 1) it is so hot and I am so sweaty and 2) acid reflux. Also, while I like my doctors much, much more than last time, I am getting really tired of being told that I'm old and fat every time I go in for an appointment. They are very nice about it and use words like "over 35" and "higher BMI" but the upshot is the same. Very much looking forward to 2024 when I will (hopefully) only have to go to the doctor once, and I can enjoy being old and fat without anyone commenting on it. 

Next week is my last week of work, hooray. With Jonah, it was covid and I never left the house, so I worked basically up until my due date. In retrospect, that was not a good decision. All I did those last few weeks was work and watch Criminal Minds, which strikes me now as a truly insane combination. 

(Criminal Minds, in case you don't know, is a terrible and unwatchable tv show about serial killers. It's pretty graphically violent. For some reason I was obsessed with it during the last few weeks of my first pregnancy. When I came home from the hospital I watched it again and realized how terrible it is. That was the first time it really dawned on me that women who are very pregnant are not always totally in their right minds.)

This time I plan to actually take a break before I have the baby. No work, definitely no Criminal Minds. (Suggestions for good tv shows or novels that are NOT about serial killers are appreciated.) I am also training myself to forget about my due date, because I find the countdown to be entirely unhelpful. Either I will go into labor or I will have a c-section at 41ish weeks, and that's that. 

Also: I really like my boss, but he's been worried about finding coverage for me while I'm away and that's been stressing me out. I sometimes feel like I need to apologize for going on maternity leave, and I hate that feeling. I am grateful to have 4 months of paid leave, but nothing I do is all that important! The university will continue on just fine without me. I think my boss needs, as the 90s kids say, to take a chill pill. 

33 weeks and the fun continues

The baby will not stop moving, and it's driving me crazy. The first few months it's impossible to concentrate because you're trying not to puke, then the last couple months it's impossible to concentrate because you are constantly being thwacked from the inside. I'm up at 3am trying to figure out what kind of dance he's doing. Such a weird feeling. Take a damn break, kid! 

I'm trying very, very hard not to think too much about the size of the parasite inside me. Also trying very hard not to think of him as a parasite. But he is a parasite. He's just in there, floating! In a bag! Growing limbs! Feeding off me through a weird tether, made possible through the formation of an entire organ that didn't exist 9 months ago. And that I will summarily shed as soon as he is expelled from my body. 

The whole thing is just so damn creepy. Nothing makes me feel more like an animal than pregnancy. You know when you watch Animal Planet and there's a special on the horned toad, or whatever? And you're totally amazed to learn they have some crazy organ that sprouts when they're breeding 10,000 eggs? I feel like I am at least as strange as the horned toad, possibly more so. I deserve my own special on Animal Planet. 

And did you know that no one has any idea why or how labor is triggered? Every single person on this planet is born (somehow!) and yet we have no idea what gets that process started! So I have all these instagrammers telling me to eat dates to trigger labor. Like this is the fucking 14th century and we're still using fruit to perform medical miracles! I just cannot. 

A definite symptom of this pregnancy is overwhelming grumpiness. I don't remember my mood being quite this bad last time. I'm not sad, just extremely annoyed. Most of this is directed at my boss and my coworkers, though I also hate all the drivers in a 30 mile radius, every doctor I meet, and, sometimes, my family. 

My leave from work starts in a month, which I'm hoping will cut down on the grumpiness, since work has been a main source of frustration lately. But it's possible that I will just start to redirect my bad mood towards other areas of my life, once I'm no longer working. My poor family will just have to deal with me, I guess.