This has been a particularly difficult week this week. I've been feeling pretty blue. Its week 38 and with only 14 days until my due date it seems to be getting harder by the day. It's no secret by now that I haven't found pregnancy to be an easy pursuit. That I have been surprised by situations and scenarios that I had not even considered before getting pregnant. Don't get me wrong. I read all the books and took a really active interest in pregnancy and all the things that my body would go through and i was prepared. PREPARED. If a pregnancy quiz existed I would ace it. I knew my chosen subject so well that I take pride in the fact that I haven't pestered my midwife with every little twinge and ailment. Like she doesn't have enough to do.
Unfortunately for me there is a secret bonus round in the quiz that I didn't know about. I am the spotty teenager that only realises she should have turned her paper over for the second question ten minutes before the end of the exam. You see it doesn't matter how much you study the textbooks, no one tells you how much the comments and behaviour of others will affect you. There is no chapter on how to cope with the intrusion of others. Had there been, I perhaps wouldn't have been completely caught off guard and thus their observations and opinions would not have had a such a detrimental effect on me.
Some of the terminology that people choose to use during pregnancy is startling in it's inappropriateness. The word 'HUGE' is cast around by everyone you come across. When has it ever been OK to use that word when describing a women? Just because I'm pregnant. The one time in my life when I couldn't do anything about it even if I wanted to. My weight has always been pretty steady. I fluctuate between 9 1/2 and almost 11 stone depending on how active I am and I've never really had massive body hang ups apart from the odd 'fat days' and the frustrated 'I have nothing to wear' moments but who doesn't get them.
I have been hearing that word since I was 20 weeks which was back in June. At least if I was overweight people would keep their judgement behind my back but when you are pregnant they say it to your face. Human beings are judgemental. I just wish I didn't have to hear it for months on end.
So maybe I'm being over sensitive. Maybe i should just accept the things that people say and do.
Well here's a list of some of the things that people have said to me over the course of my pregnancy so you can be the judge.
"WOW! You are double the size my daughter was with her first baby" A really stupid thing to say when you think of how human beings come in all shapes and sizes. Pregnancy is no different. It would be weirder if my dimensions suddenly exactly mimicked hers considering I am not related to you in anyway??!!
"You're huge! Are you sure there's only one in there?" I've heard this about fifty times. Yes I'm sure. I've had scans. They check for that. You're a dumbass.
Person: "How long have you got to go?" a relatively innocent question but one which quickly turns sour.
Me: "__ weeks"
Person: now with a look of either confusion or horror on their face "Really? Are you sure? You look ready to pop/burst/drop/explode" This is so moronic. Yes I'm sure. You'd think if anybody would know how many weeks I have left of being an human incubator, IT WOULD BE ME!!!
"Your bump comes round the corner/enters the room about 5 mins before you do!" Again, I have heard this more than once and it stings.
"WOW! You literally get bigger every time I see you!" Really?! No shit Sherlock! That will continue to happen week by week until I give birth. That's what happens in pregnancy. Read a fucking book.
And my personal favourite...
Lady at drinks counter of an event that I went to recently: "I don't want anything else but there's a lady with a fat stomach here who probably wants a lemonade.."
If this seems a little too harsh to be true, I swear to god its word for word and those of you that know him can ask Mr X as he was standing in equally stunned silence next to me when this happened.
So it's inevitable that all of these comments have chipped away at me and them coupled with my daily assessment of my now swollen body has brought me to this point. I have amassed a generous amount of new cellulite during the last nine months. My once pert boobs are now swollen and veiny and leaking (ain't that a kick in the head) My clothes don't fit. Even my maternity clothes. My stomach is heavy and distended to an alarming level and the few tiny stretch marks that I thought I was getting away with have been joined by a little gang of secret ones that were hiding below my field of vision on the underside of my bump. I haven't seen my vagina for months, much less given her any kind of haircut until the other day. I'm pretty sure that the end result could have been better executed by a drunk Edward Scissorhands.
This is the biggest I have ever been and the most I have ever weighed (although I haven't weighed myself since I found out I was pregnant. There really is no point knowing because I can't do anything about it) I look at myself in the mirror or in the photos that people insist on taking of me despite my desperate pleas that I don't want my photo taken and I hate what I see. I am so disgusted. I feel, for the first time since I was a teenager, that I have major body issues and I don't think its so surprising that I wouldn't want photo evidence of that. I am incapacitated and cant get off the sofa without assistance because my body is so achy and tender. I feel weak and like I'm not in charge of my own body anymore.
So when Mr X asked me what was wrong this week it was inevitable that the tears fell freely and before I knew it I was sobbing out all of the frustrations that I have felt and kept inside about the way I look at the moment. He listened as he always does with concern and offered words of encouragement and love. "You're doing so well honey", "It's not going to be for much longer", "You look beautiful" (bless his lying ass) "It must be so frustrating because you are still the same person but you can't move around or do the things you used to do"
And then it hit me like a fucking steam train.......
There is an end point to this and I shouldn't be so bloody self involved and self deprecating. My poor mum must have felt like this early on in her diagnosis. Like she still wanted to dance, sail, walk and run but that her body wasn't hers anymore. She was trapped inside a body that she no longer recognised and that behaved in a way she couldn't control.
How unbelievably selfish of me to complain about something that I should be celebrating. My chubby little body with all its faults and dry patches is doing something incredible. I get to meet my little hitchhiker in a matter of weeks and whatever the fallout from the birth is, whatever silhouette I am left with as a result should make me feel proud not shameful. I can believe that the comments have affected me, I am only human after all but I can't believe that I let it get me down to such a degree that I lost sight of the lessons that my mothers illness has taught me.
So, I have decided to stop being a whiny little bitch (channelling Jessie Pinkman a bit there) Pull myself together and realise that whatever I am feeling, it pales in comparison to what some people have to live with, without the knowledge of a happy ending or a resolution.
I am hardly a 'She Beast' after all.
annnnnnnnd breath.......
No comments:
Post a Comment