Antsiness Becomes Exhaustion

Yeah, I'm still pregnant. No change there. No real change in the major discomfort that is "lightening," either. You know, it's been a really long time since I last encountered a more ironic word. In case you missed out on the definition of that word in a recent post, I'll share it again. It's the technical word used for the point in pregnancy when the baby drops down into the pelvis. The irony comes in when you realize that there's nothing "light" about it. It puts pressure on places you weren't even aware of before. For example, I'm not a waddler. Never have been, and I was pretty proud of that. Now that lightening has occurred, though, I think I may be waddling. It's stronger than I am. I cannot control it.

I can't sleep either. I wake up every hour-and-a-half throughout the night to find a better position (of which there are only two, anyway - left side or right side). Oh, and did I mention that lightening allows the baby to squish my bladder in very uncomfortable ways? That means that more than once those nighttime wakenings include a trip to the potty (as we call it around here). This has left me with a feeling of exhaustion that I've never experienced before. I wake up and eat breakfast, and I'm about ready for a little nap. Even having a newborn to feed and diaper in the wee hours isn't this bad (am I possibly jinxing myself, here?).

Then, there's the fact that the baby's weight is cutting off circulation to my legs. This causes them to lose feeling when I sit down for too long or when I even sit for a few moments in just the right (wrong?) position. As a result of all this, I have to say that, even though I'm all for my little bun baking as long as necessary to come out healthy, I'm really hoping it'll be before my actual due date. Not sure I can handle at least two more weeks of this without having a nervous breakdown in front of the kids. This, of course, is what I get for recently thinking to myself how comfortable I have been throughout this pregnancy. It was literally the very next day that the baby dropped. Ha! Joke's on me. Thanks kid. As my mom and I have decided, the baby's just warming up. It'll soon be cooking up many, many more ways to bug me. Even so, I still can't wait to meet the little fella/gal. I have friends who absolutely love being pregnant. I'm not that way. For me, it's just a means to an end. Luckily, I at least have very easy pregnancies, in general, or I may have stopped at one. And, this late in pregnancy, I'm always ready to have it done with and be holding the sweet little wee one in my arms already. Can't wait! But I have to. Nature's cruel joke, right?

Even with all this discomfort, I did force myself to get a few things done these past couple of days. I'm actually prewashing baby clothes today. Imagine the efficiency! Unheard of around here, but we don't want the baby to be swimming in packing dust, if we can avoid it. And, yesterday, I spent some quality time in the jungle that is our garden. The weeds have pretty much taken over large sections of it, and it's amazing it's still producing things for us to eat, but I just don't have the energy, and Muttonchop doesn't have the time to deal with it. So, even though I did no weeding (unless you count pulling up a few here and there), I did harvest quite a few lovelies. Got our first ears of corn for the year - red ones. I'm very curious to see what that'll be like. Steaming them right now for lunch. Then, of course, there was the regular ton-and-a-half of different varieties of tomato. Amazing. Truly amazing. A lot of the tomato plants look half-dead from either the heat wave we had or from some disease, yet, they still happily throw out some tomatoes when they can. I ain't complaining. Low maintenance is what I'm all about at this stage of pregnancy.

Then, there were a couple of zucchinis, bell peppers and a few green beans. Just enough to throw together some vegetarian chili with some beans I cooked the other day. Yum. And, the most wonderful surprise of all was a beautiful melon. I would have taken a picture to show, but I just didn't have the energy for it (plus the lighting was bad at the moment I wanted to chop it up). It's a variety of melon called an "Old France Melon." Local variety, I'd assume, and it was quite tasty. We've got a few more in various stages of ripeness out there, and it's confidence-boosting to see that we're finally getting some good ones.

No knitting news these days, but I have been seriously thinking about doing some knitting. Does that count? I may even try some today. I think I could use the distraction. It's just not something I can really do lying down, which I seem to need more of these days. And, I haven't forgotten about the Barbie pictures I promised. I'll try to get that taken care of soon, too. For now, I must get dinner on the table.