A Loooong Post
I've sort of been dreading this post because lately I have done so much self-reflection that having to repeat the story again, (its already in my personal journal), and after having to tell more than enough people in person really feels like it's beating a dead horse and I'm so ready to move on.
AAAAAnyway, I got an ultrasound last week. I was starting to see some pretty scary numbers on the scale and it was really starting to bug me. That's kind of a big deal because self-image has never been much of an issue for me. Even when, in college, I was sporting an extra 20 pounds, I never felt poorly about myself. But this amount of weight is far beyond what I have ever had to experience. So, the ultrasound. Yeah, it shows one baby. I was wrong. Which isn't really what's bugging me. I'm not even feeling any kind of loss, you know where I was expecting two so it's kind of like I lost one child. That's not my problem. Every time I think about this new child and that prospect, I get excited. I'm really looking forward to it and 7 more weeks just can't come fast enough.
The main problem is how confused I am. It's made me angry on and off and mostly at my own body for acting so incredibly out of character. I have always been able to depend on it to act in accordance with how I treat it. If I go through a poor eating stint, I expect to experience the side-effects. If I struggle to eat really well, stay away from empty calories and eat the right amout of fat and protein, because my body seems to demand it this pregnancy, I expect my body to reward me with health and a moderate weight gain, NOT 40+ pounds. That part really ticks me off and it would be fine if I had some kind of explanation for it all, like twins, but I don't no matter how hard I try to think and consider the reasoning behind it all. It's just not normal for me. It can't be "just how my body is" when I've already been through 3 other pregnancies and haven't gained nearly the amount of weight I have this one. It's like I've been betrayed. That's how it feels anyway. And I swear, if one more person says to me, "Well this pregnancy is just different" I might just smack them. That's a cop-out answer. Say something like, "Wow that's quite a mystery." or "I have no idea why your body is going haywire" because I have never believed that anything that the body does is by chance. There's always a cause and effect. There's a scientific reason. There's an explanation for the anomaly. God didn't masterfully design a random universe. Until now, I've never felt so disconnected from my own body as it appears to be doing it's own thing despite what I consider to be iron self-control when it comes to diet. If I weren't pregnant I could put a stop to this quite easily. But how do I ignore a hungry pregnant body and not worry that I'm depriving my unborn child somehow? I can't. So I feel like the next weeks are going to be slow and torturous as I watch helplessly as my weight climbs to even higher never before seen numbers. The confusion of it all almost seems like too much to bear at times and I feel like I am being forced to somehow adjust to some kind of more ambiguous view of how the world works or continue to live my life in anger and confusion at my misbehaving body and at nature for allowing it to misbehave so grossly.
BTW, NO it's not gestational diabetes and the baby appears to be a normal-sized baby for gestational age. It wasn't a medical ultrasound so I don't know more than that as far as what's going on in-utero. Answers to my prayers for understanding seem to always be answered with one word, "patience" which I have discovered isn't my strong point when I am confused. I dislike this feeling of confusion so intensely I feel like it's kind of taken my normal pregnancy hormones and turned me into an emotional basket-case. I get upset at myself for stressing over silly things like whether or not to put dressing on my salad. I literally go through a conversation with myself that goes kind of like this:
"Salad dressing has no nutritional value and is only going to add uneeded calories"
I reply "Oh you aren't going to become THAT person are you? The kind who counts every little calorie instead of looking at food in the big picture?"
Then I might cry because I hate the person I've turned into and then I remember I'm pregnant and I'm sending all my bad vibes to my unborn child which makes me feel worse.
As the days pass, I think about it less and less which is good, but every time I do, the same level of confusion returns. The memory has not lost its sting and I have to work really hard to not fall into the same cycle that's repeated itself every time I spend any time considering "how I feel". My confusion is so great that often the only way I can avoid being self-deprecating about my body is to refuse to believe that there's only one baby in there. To me, it seems more likely that the sonar tech didn't know what she was doing than to believe that my body is behaving this way. It's a frustrating world I am living in, let me tell you. I'm apt to blame my obsessive behavior as yet another bizarre never experienced pregnancy thing but it's so hard to know. Maybe I really am this obsessed with the world making sense which would be kind of an interesting character trait I had never noticed about myself.
And so here I am, all pregnant and emotional. Is it over yet? Gosh, I'm counting down the weeks until the oxytocin of labor and delivery and the love hormones of breastfeeding can fill me with that happy high feeling and if that doesn't work, the stress of having a newborn will trump disgruntled and confused and all this will have seemed silly to have even thought about.
AAAAAnyway, I got an ultrasound last week. I was starting to see some pretty scary numbers on the scale and it was really starting to bug me. That's kind of a big deal because self-image has never been much of an issue for me. Even when, in college, I was sporting an extra 20 pounds, I never felt poorly about myself. But this amount of weight is far beyond what I have ever had to experience. So, the ultrasound. Yeah, it shows one baby. I was wrong. Which isn't really what's bugging me. I'm not even feeling any kind of loss, you know where I was expecting two so it's kind of like I lost one child. That's not my problem. Every time I think about this new child and that prospect, I get excited. I'm really looking forward to it and 7 more weeks just can't come fast enough.
The main problem is how confused I am. It's made me angry on and off and mostly at my own body for acting so incredibly out of character. I have always been able to depend on it to act in accordance with how I treat it. If I go through a poor eating stint, I expect to experience the side-effects. If I struggle to eat really well, stay away from empty calories and eat the right amout of fat and protein, because my body seems to demand it this pregnancy, I expect my body to reward me with health and a moderate weight gain, NOT 40+ pounds. That part really ticks me off and it would be fine if I had some kind of explanation for it all, like twins, but I don't no matter how hard I try to think and consider the reasoning behind it all. It's just not normal for me. It can't be "just how my body is" when I've already been through 3 other pregnancies and haven't gained nearly the amount of weight I have this one. It's like I've been betrayed. That's how it feels anyway. And I swear, if one more person says to me, "Well this pregnancy is just different" I might just smack them. That's a cop-out answer. Say something like, "Wow that's quite a mystery." or "I have no idea why your body is going haywire" because I have never believed that anything that the body does is by chance. There's always a cause and effect. There's a scientific reason. There's an explanation for the anomaly. God didn't masterfully design a random universe. Until now, I've never felt so disconnected from my own body as it appears to be doing it's own thing despite what I consider to be iron self-control when it comes to diet. If I weren't pregnant I could put a stop to this quite easily. But how do I ignore a hungry pregnant body and not worry that I'm depriving my unborn child somehow? I can't. So I feel like the next weeks are going to be slow and torturous as I watch helplessly as my weight climbs to even higher never before seen numbers. The confusion of it all almost seems like too much to bear at times and I feel like I am being forced to somehow adjust to some kind of more ambiguous view of how the world works or continue to live my life in anger and confusion at my misbehaving body and at nature for allowing it to misbehave so grossly.
BTW, NO it's not gestational diabetes and the baby appears to be a normal-sized baby for gestational age. It wasn't a medical ultrasound so I don't know more than that as far as what's going on in-utero. Answers to my prayers for understanding seem to always be answered with one word, "patience" which I have discovered isn't my strong point when I am confused. I dislike this feeling of confusion so intensely I feel like it's kind of taken my normal pregnancy hormones and turned me into an emotional basket-case. I get upset at myself for stressing over silly things like whether or not to put dressing on my salad. I literally go through a conversation with myself that goes kind of like this:
"Salad dressing has no nutritional value and is only going to add uneeded calories"
I reply "Oh you aren't going to become THAT person are you? The kind who counts every little calorie instead of looking at food in the big picture?"
Then I might cry because I hate the person I've turned into and then I remember I'm pregnant and I'm sending all my bad vibes to my unborn child which makes me feel worse.
As the days pass, I think about it less and less which is good, but every time I do, the same level of confusion returns. The memory has not lost its sting and I have to work really hard to not fall into the same cycle that's repeated itself every time I spend any time considering "how I feel". My confusion is so great that often the only way I can avoid being self-deprecating about my body is to refuse to believe that there's only one baby in there. To me, it seems more likely that the sonar tech didn't know what she was doing than to believe that my body is behaving this way. It's a frustrating world I am living in, let me tell you. I'm apt to blame my obsessive behavior as yet another bizarre never experienced pregnancy thing but it's so hard to know. Maybe I really am this obsessed with the world making sense which would be kind of an interesting character trait I had never noticed about myself.
And so here I am, all pregnant and emotional. Is it over yet? Gosh, I'm counting down the weeks until the oxytocin of labor and delivery and the love hormones of breastfeeding can fill me with that happy high feeling and if that doesn't work, the stress of having a newborn will trump disgruntled and confused and all this will have seemed silly to have even thought about.
wow, that is confusing and irritating for sure! I am sorry that you body is acting so strangely!
ReplyDeleteGrrrrr! I just wrote a long thought out comment and blogger couldn't process my request so it got deleted! So, here we go again.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about this post ever since I read it a couple of days ago. it seems very strange that you have gained so much weight and that this pregnancy is so vastly different. I know that you take great care of your body so I can definitely understand the confusion. It really is a mystery. I think, however, that sometimes God makes things mysterious to us to tell us things or warn us of things. I don't know what your prayers have been like or what you have been asking for, but confusion is a "no" answer. It sounds like God is trying to tell you something. I don't mean to sound preachy or anything, but I believe things happen for a reason so I'm sure there is a reason for this drastic weight gain.
I was talking to my mother-in-law about her 3rd pregnancy. She never gained much weight in her first two pregnancies, but her 3rd was much different. Like you, she and everybody else thought she was having twins. Finally she went in for an ultrasound (which she never had with the previous two) and they found a large sack of fluid around the baby's lungs. This is normal, but her baby's fluid sack seemed to be growing too quickly and looked as though it was stunting the growth of the lungs. They induced and the baby was born 6 weeks early. The fluid sack was absorbed into the body and she had a healthy 6 pound baby. The baby still had some lung issues, but if they would have waited until my mother-in-law went into labor naturally, it's highly likely that she would have had a still-birth. But because she gained so much weight and got the proper help she needed, things were fine. She still never found out why she got so big, but she was glad that she did so that she was willing to go in and get the help that she needed. I'm by no means trying to tell you that you should reconsider your home birth with your midwife, but it might be a good idea to at least have a medical ultrasound so that you can make sure that everything is okay. It seems as though this weight gain is telling you that there could be something wrong. Good luck in these next 7 weeks!
Oh, and I had to laugh when I read about the love hormones of breastfeeding because somehow I never got those. In fact, I had quite the opposite--post partum depression until I stopped the torturous nursing!
Thank you Kiersten. I will most definitely consider it as I hadn't thought about that particular angle and you are right about the confusion. Perhaps I'm not getting the answer because I am so focused on the wrong thing. In any case, I really appreciate your comments.
ReplyDeleteI have had several family members’ gain a lot of weight in pregnancy and it was all related to excessive fluid, yet completely normal babies. You/baby is producing more fluid than you are expelling. If you are watching caloric intake, fluid has to be the culprit. That would be the logic. If you are watching what you eat and burning the same calories as the previous 3 pregnancies, it has to be fluid. I don't know what else it could be. The fluid accumulation could not only be amniotic, but can also be in your tissues.
ReplyDeleteI would reason it is fluid and you will drop it all within days of having the baby. ;)
Actually Aryn, I know where the weight has come from... eating. But I only eat when I'm hungry. I never snack on junk food. I always make sure that when I am hungry, I am eating something nutritious and protein-rich so it counts and keeps me filled longer. The problem is I'm hungry almost all the time despite my efforts... so I eat, which is what I have done every pregnancy. As I said before, I'm afraid to ignore the hunger because I don't want to be depriving the baby. So I am very disciplined about eating more nutritious and protein-dense foods so that the calories count. It would be nice if it miraculously turns out to be fluid though ;-)
ReplyDeleteNo, don't deprive the baby. As long as you aren't suffering from pica, your cravings are fine. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI loved your post about deciding to have the 4th child. You and Brad are "good people" and I am glad to know you both.