This post is just for me. A personal reminder of why this should be my very last pregnancy. JUST IN CASE, a year or two from now, when post-partum amnesia has set in, I convince myself to pony up $20,000+ and do IVF-with-sex-selection to get a girl. This post has many of the same items from THIS post. The reason all of these things are so much more traumatic this time around, is because they're starting much earlier. The last post was written at 8 months. Right now, I'm barely 5 months.
Here are some reasons I SHOULDN'T EVER GET PREGNANT AGAIN EVER!!!
1. WEIGHT! I'm gaining weight. But not just normal pregnancy weight. LOTS of extra weight. And since I'm a lazy sloth who hates exercise, this is not good for me! Each pregnancy I start out weighing 5+ pounds more than I weighed when I started the last one. This is not a reassuring precedence.
2. THE PAIN! A few weeks ago, my feet started to hurt. I couldn't figure it out. Every day they were a little worse. A foot rub from Doug didn't help. Soaking them in the hot tub didn't help. I cut down my flip-flop wearing. That didn't help. Pretty soon I was hobbling around like an old woman and sitting down every possible second. (Not helping my weight.) Finally I went to the podiatrist. He said it was caused by the normal pregnancy thing where your ligaments get loose in preparation for the baby. This normally occurs in my hips the last few weeks. It's never happened to my feet. Prescription: Only wear shoes with great arch support and roll feet frequently on a frozen water bottle. If that doesn't work, come back in for custom insoles. Also, my arches just might fall.
No more flip flops? No slippers around the house? No more bare feet? And the possibility of FLAT feet? Terrible! And, by-the-way, turns out rolling your feet on ice is COLD!
WHY pregnancy, WHY?!?!?!
3. MORE PAIN! That ligament pain I mentioned? The extreme inconvenience that normally doesn't hit until week 34-35? It's already starting in my hips. Makes it painful to walk, climb stairs, sit down, get in and out of bed...it pretty much just sucks. And again, it's happening much earlier this time. I'm only 20 weeks! TWENTY MORE WEEKS OF THIS!?!?!
4. CAN'T EXERCISE! When I was first pregnant, I had a morning when I was feeling okay. Not too nauseated. I got on my exercise bike and started peddling. Three minutes later I was hanging over the toilet saying good-bye to my stomach contents. Now that I'm over the morning sickness, exercise has a different result. Even mild exercise leaves me sore for the next 3-5 days. AGAIN, not helping my weight. Even the pool left be sore the other day. I think it's the stupid ligament thing. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
5. HAIR! Excessive hair growth. And no, I don't mean my hair is getting long and luxurious. It's as thin and wimpy as ever. (And after I have the baby, it will all fall out.) No, I mean body hair.
I will say no more about this topic ever. (Unless it's to tell you I'm a big fan of laser hair removal.)
6. NAUSEA! I would mention the three months* of incessant puking and nausea, but I'm trying hard to block it out. (*Three months this time. Six months with Gray--lest I forget that.)
7. EXHAUSTION! I'm tired!!! Okay, fine. I'm always tired. No change there. But adding one more kid to the mix doesn't normally improve matters either.
8. ANEMIA. Again. Always. Dizzy. Light-headed. I'm over it! And p.s., taking iron does weird things to your, um..., poop.
9. LINEA NEGRA! Why me? I do not fit the profile of having darker skin tone! I'm down-right ghostly! Yet I always have it and I always take extreme and painful measures trying to scrub it off post-partum. Why? (And in the same area we also have "Ugly Belly-Button Syndrome")
10. ACID REFLUX! Brought on by pretty much anything with any flavor or seasoning of any kind. Extremely uncomfortable!
There are more reasons, (Optical Migraines!) but I'm feeling like a pretty big whiner. Suffice it to say, I am not one of those women who have pain and hassle-free pregnancies. (But all of YOU women, should go ahead and have 10-12 kids to make up for wimpy people like me!) In fact, I think my body is really trying it's hardest to punish me for this one. It seems to be telling me, "If you proceed in this baby-making folly, I'll have no choice but to self-destruct one item at a time. Hair, eyes, bladder, joints, feet, weight, mental health (such as it is)....all will fail you. So knock it off!"
There are other ways to get babies. If I decide I really can't live without a girl, I would like to declare--to myself--right now that ADOPTION IS YOUR ONLY CHOICE! Hopefully "Future Me" will listen.
I must never forget!!!
P.S. I should mention, on a serious note, that I am very grateful that my body has the ability to make babies. I'm grateful for all five of my pregnancies. I realize there are women dying to experience what I'm complaining about. All I'm saying is, now that I've experienced it (almost) five times, I don't want to make it six.
