Pregtarded

They say that pregnancy makes you act pretty goofy. Pregnant women are clumsy, forgetful, and just generally pretty disoriented a lot of the time. Well, what happens when you embody all of those qualities before you even become pregnant? That’s the definition of pregtarded.

I am completely pregtarded. I can’t do anything without looking or feeling like a fool these days. I will drop something, bend over to pick it up, drop it again, pick it up, drop it a third time, and finally just leave it there because it’s not worth the effort of moving my 40 extra pounds back over to try again. Did I say 40 pounds? Yes, that’s how much I’ve gained. And I’m steadily gaining about 2-3 pounds a week. And I still have 10 weeks to go. To use math, 40 lbs. so far + (2.5 lbs/week x 10 weeks to go) = 40 + 25 = 65. So we can estimate that I will have gained 65 pounds by the time this is over. I’m telling you, I’d better be giving birth to a 30 pound baby here…

I’m also beyond forgetful right now – I’m incoherent. I can’t follow my own train of thought, let alone those of others. It’s not unusual these days for me to ask someone a question about something they just told me not 45 seconds earlier. Work has become somewhat embarrassing.

But the greatest example of pregtardedness to date – not just for me, but for all pregnant women everywhere – is that I have officially lost my wedding ring. Nope, not joking. I can’t imagine where it could be. All I know is that I definitely had it on Tuesday night (I had a parent meeting for my volleyball team, so I made sure I was wearing my ring so the Catholic parents knew that I was married and not having a baby out of wedlock or anything), and I know I did NOT wear it to work on Friday (Big Show Day at The Bakken – parents everywhere – again, very conscious of the fact that I looked like an unwed mother-to-be), and I can’t remember when or why I took it off in between. I’ve searched the house, my desk, and my car from top to bottom and sent the word out to folks at The Bakken and BSM, but so far it’s nowhere to be found. I wish I could make a better joke out of this, but it’s been a pretty traumatic past couple of days of searching with no reward, so I’ll just ask my nonexistent readers to send out some good prayers for me.

Baby's First Trampoline

Trampolines were always sort of a mixed bag of fun for me growing up. On the one hand, they looked fun - no denying that. You could bounce up high, do tricks like flips, and generally have a good time. On the other hand, once you were actually on the trampoline, suddenly the tricks seemed too scary to try out yourself - after all, you could land on your head or flip off if you misjudged the flip - and the monotony of going up and down lost its thrill pretty quickly. Plus once, when I was little, I was bouncing on a trampoline and really had to pee, but there were other people bouncing on the trampoline, too, and I couldn't get off of it, and I ended up wetting my pants a little. Yup.

Well, apparently I have now become something of a human trampoline for my little baby-to-be, and again, I have to say...mixed bag. On the one hand, every little bounce and kick and flip lets me know that she's in there and that she's doing well. That's very reassuring and reminds me that soon she'll be a real person that I can actually look at and play with and care for. On the other hand, she has a tendency to bounce on things that I wish she would avoid. Like my stomach. Or my bladder. Some of that naseau from the first trimester is doing an encore performance, and I have to pee all the time - or at least my bladder thinks I do. Nothing like wasting a toilet flush - not to mention the trip to the bathroom itself - for 1/2 an ounce of urine only to feel like I'm about to burst not 5 minutes later. And it doesn't matter that my brain knows that I don't really have to go - the bladder has lost all reason and will not be denied. And this girls is not afraid to do flips on her mommy trampoline. It was super cute the first time I felt her kick, and even cuter the first time I saw it (I would stare at my belly for 30 minutes just to see it bounce one time), but the cuteness gets called into question when my belly visibly distorts and wobbles during a meeting, making it look as though cirque du soleil were rehearsing a new act in my uterus. Plus, something that people forget to tell you is that the baby doesn't just kick your belly - she kicks in any direction she feels like kicking. It was quite a shock the first time she aimed a low kick right into my intestines - she's not even born and already she's kicking my ass.

So maybe someday I'll be more excited about trampolines. For now, they're not my favorite things in the world, but hey - at least one of us is having fun.

Suga Wata

Who's a slacker? I am! Okay, truth be told, I haven't actually told a single person about this blog yet. In fact, no one in the world knows about it but me. So the need to write updates wasn't very powerful. You understand, don't you, non-existant readers?

But I felt like writing today because I'm having a severe inability to sit still, and this is the only thing I could think of doing to focus my attention. I have no one to blame for this but myself - you see, I may have eaten half a bag of Twerps for breakfast this morning. In case you are not familiar with this delightful candy, it's sort of like small pieces of twizzlers with oozy sweet filling in strawberry and orange flavors. That might not be the best description, but trust me - they're tasty. And I brought some to work with me to snack on if I got hungry. And then I ate them all by 8:45 am. Healthy. So now I'm kind of freaking out because I'm feeling hyper and claustraphobic inside my cube and all I want to do is lie down under my desk right now. I did go so far as to lie down in the bathroom for five minutes (I know, that's gross, but there's a lock on the door and it gives me privacy, so judge all you want - that was a great five minutes), but I think I might be frowned upon for napping under my desk.

Why, oh why, did I feel the need to eat so much sugar in the morning? The stupid thing is, I just got tested for gestational diabetes yesterday at my doctor's appointment. It's a routine check-up, so it's not that they're any more worried about me than they are about any other pregnant lady, but I do eat a lot of sweets (ice cream especially), so I'm a bit concerned. Maybe I'm just trying to eat as much sugar as I can before the test results come in, just in case they tell me no more until baby is born.

By the way, in case you're wondering how they test for gestational diabetes - they make you chug a large glass of orange-flavored sugar water, then test your blood an hour later. I'm serious. Modern medicine at it's best, ladies and gentlemen. It tasted like a thawed Icee.

In other news, I started volleyball yesterday. All I can say is, this is going to be a tough season for me - my light 40-hour work weeks are exhausting, and now I'm tacking on an extra 10-20 hours of coaching every week. I've already considered throwing in the towel - after all, better I do it now than a month into the season - but it just seems like I'm giving up too easily. I know I can do this; I'm just going to have to get a bit tougher. I can do that.

Alright, invisible audience, I'm going to walk around for a while and see if I can burn off some of this candy. I'll keep you up on my progress (heck, maybe I'll even let a few people know about this blog! Eventually...).