How it Feels to be Pregnant

After a 2-hour hike, feeling healthy, yummy, and ultra-preggo stretchy!

 In honor of Mother's day -- here's what it feels like to be pregnant with you, Bubble, mostly stuff I never expected.

It feels like... I love your Daddy so much that the emotion is sparking the fire of molecules in my belly, and I am weaving you as the incarnation of the harmony of our life together.  You are our love given breath and a mind; you are our reward.

Being pregnant is like having a self-perpetuating exothermic ball of blue Life-light condensing in my tummy.   It's very empowering because I work; my body does what it's made to do.  It feels like a sacred honor to host you, and I love when you kick me.  I felt you first at about 23 weeks (in Natural Language Processing, your favorite time to move of the whole week) and it felt like a goldfish squirming against the inside of my pelvic bone.  Now, almost 3 months later, you fill me up to just below my rib cage, so when you move the sensation is much bigger, sometimes like an entire football flipping over, squished in between my organs.  Only about 4 times have you moved enough to take my breath away or alarm me, and the first time was when Uncle Kelson and I arrived very sleep-deprived at a hotel in Orlando, Florida after flying all night.  We hadn't eaten, and I was feeling too exhausted to move -- but I had to move if I was going to eat, and you really let me have it, gave me a great big lurching kick as if to say GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND FEED ME.  It felt very weird and disconcerting but I was happy because you were so vigorous, which meant you were healthy (and we went to get food, where I, of course, broke down in hungry-happy tears).  I had very little morning sickness, so when I did feel yucky it made me happy, because it meant you were really in there.  The first symptom before I tested positive was that my breasts felt different -- not sore or tender (they never really did that, unlike most women) but just heavier, fuller, different.  I went for a hike in the cold high Rockies outside of Frisco, Colorado at 6 weeks pregnant and the frigid air caused the first round of chest pain, a hard freezing so incisive it makes breathing a challenge.  Fortunately it hasn't happened since January, because once it starts there is nothing I can do to stop it, and it hurts so badly it makes me laugh.  There is no alarm or fear in the pain, nor is there any way I can stop it, so it's good practice for labor; instead of wishing it were over or trying to escape it, I laugh, and try to re-frame it as the American novelty of discomfort, a sensation I rarely have the chance to experience.  And when it ends I am very relieved.


Physically it is mostly ridiculously uncomfortable these days, so much so that I laugh rather often, typically shortly before wiping tears of frustration from my eyes.  I feel like a balloon stretched to popping, but much more like an armored tank than a balloon -- very heavy, unwieldy.  I read Nando Parrado's autobiographical Miracle in the Andes at 7 months pregnant because it describes the harrowing physical and spiritual gauntlet of a team of rugby players who barely survived a crash in the high Andes in winter and the starvation that followed; that's real suffering, which allowed me to see how silly it is to be reduced to tears by the bracing of my great big abdomen every time I was wracked by a cough.  Nonetheless, tears come, which is another pregnancy thing, and I don't really mind, I just feel rather silly.  Warm baths take the soreness from my overtaxed muscles and are relaxing, but my body fills up the whole tub, making it equally hard to lean back to wash my hair or to lean forward to get it wet -- so taking a shower is more practical, but standing up doesn't take the ache out.

The rare pleasure of deep sleep is like a coma; when it comes, it rolls in hard and stays, and it takes me 30 minutes or an hour before I can speak and move normally after I wake up (which, thank God, your Daddy finds endearing).  Most nights I sleep very poorly in stretches an hour or an hour and a half long, awoken either by the need to pee or by pain caused by the heaviness of my body staying in one position too long.  Rolling over is yucky because it feels like I have a 50 lb. suitcase pressing down on my tummy and my lungs, so I only move if I have to.  I love the 4-foot-long body pillow but I've grown to resent it because it's EVERYWHERE, a lot like Niko the cat and our 3 dogs, whose light sniffing noses against my hands annoy the crap out of me now in a way they never did before I was pregnant.

I enjoy loving your Daddy in a way I never have before too; somehow me being pregnant has made HIM sexier.  I love how he puts his hand on my tummy and sends you colored warm fuzzies of love every night before we sleep, and I love how he always giggles (even in the middle of the night, half-asleep) when he feels you moving inside me.  The warmth of his skin against mine is very comforting, very grounding, and when I ache everywhere and am frustrated from exhaustion, he leads me through relaxation scripts while rubbing my back and it makes all the pain go away so I can sleep.  I think he is sexier now because I know he will be a phenomenal Daddy -- because he is being one right now, working on Mother's Day as I write -- and the extreme excess of female hormones in my brain are rejoicing that I have found such a powerful and gentle ally to help me take care of you after you are born.  Plus I think pregnancy enhances smells and sensations, which makes having bodies more fun, and intimacy more exquisite altogether.

Happy to host you -- in the delivery gown I'll wear when you arrive

Lately I have come to feel inhabited, and I look forward to your birth.  You are vulnerable to the wisdom or irresponsibility of every decision I make, and your nervous system is being calibrated to the vicissitudes of my own, which probably means that when I suffer, you suffer.  It also means that if I eat chocolate and drink Coke to console myself with indulgence, your tiny brain courses with caffeine and your blood sugar probably rises, so you'd more likely prefer I indulge in quinoa and warm milk.  I am very honored to be knitting you together in my womb and when I saw your face it was like watching the breathtaking power of a lightening storm cracking open a summer twilight -- absolutely awe-inspiring, deeper than words can capture.

My own Mama, your Grandma Carroll (where your middle name comes from), described being pregnant with me this way: "The soon-to-be New Mother was terribly excited about having a daughter and dreamt constantly of holding her, nursing her, dressing her... She just could not wait to have that baby in her arms!  Neither had she ever seen the terrific struggles a premature baby goes through and how much littler they are, how much healthier it is for the baby to stay in-utero as long as possible..."  I am glad she wrote that!  I won't overexercise in hopes you come sooner.  But just like she said, I stay up at night thinking about holding you, about the sound of your breath and the smell of your skin.  I love you, Bubble, whoever you are, and I am honored to be your Mother.