Your Pregnancy Week By Week: The Second Trimester

Week 11 – Your partner thoughtfully greets you at the door after work with freshly made lamb stew saying “I made you dinner”, presenting a dish that you loved prior to being pregnant. You respond with “No you made YOU dinner that you are going to eat OUTSIDE”. Lamb is off the menu for the next seven months.

Week 12 – Welcome to cravings week at baby making central. Forget gestational diabetes that creates giant sugar babies, after consuming five avocados in the span of a couple of days, your baby is going to be two parts guacamole.

Week 13 – You’ve switched from avocados to eating ten kiwis in a sitting. Your baby is definitely coming out green. And possibly hairy, because who has time to peel sixty kiwis in a week?

Week 14 – Your partner now recognizes your “Puke Face” having seen it so many times in the past weeks. Car rides are peppered with this conversation “Are you ok? You look like you’re going to chuck. You’re not answering, I’m pulling over.”

Week 15 – Consuming an entire bag of movie theatre popcorn yourself (Don’t question it, you’re pregnant) causes your feet to slowly swell up like Jiffy Pop bags until your shoes no longer fit. Good luck walking back home.

Week 16 – Get ready for a big life change, after spending your whole life being cold, thanks to those two extra litres of blood, the need to peel off layers of clothing leads to this ensemble.

Folk Fest

Individually the clothing pieces make sense; UV shirt- smart, bathing suit bottoms at a music festival- smart, compression stockings – necessary to prevent the whole Jiffy Pop feet recurrence, however together with the sunglasses, you resemble a fashion challenged Lady Gaga, or maybe a partial nudist with sun phobia. Regardless, weird looks are both received and deserved.

Week 17 – Remember when you were fit and active? Those words have different meanings now; you once hiked ten kilometers and biked twenty in a day, now after five kilometers of trails you are exhausted and your bike ride is a nap in the car.

Week 18 – Your pants and all of your clothing have suddenly gotten too tight. In the words of your partner “You look like you could be pregnant or you might just have a pooch”. In other news your partner may never get any action again. Especially when he admits that when you are backed up (welcome to your pregnant colon), your abdomen becomes a “double bubble” and at one point pats your tiny fetus reassuringly after you’ve used the bathroom and asks “Are you ok in there? Did the poop baby squish you?”

Week 19 – Your colourful top that makes you appear youthful and outlines your burgeoning belly draws the attention of a group of women lunching. The words “She’s nineteen” are hissed at you while the women’s heads snap trying to maintain a judgmental stare as you walk past. This is made funnier by the fact that you turned thirty this past February.

Week 20 – Essentially you’ve become a celebrity as you puke repeatedly on the grounds of a swanky hotel, only replace cocaine and paparazzi with prenatal vitamins and a Kodak happy mother.

Stay tuned for weeks 21 to 40 and in case you don’t remember weeks one to ten. And who could blame you? I published it months ago! Here’s the link.

https://iamthegreatunwashed.com/2015/11/15/your-pregnancy-week-by-week/

 

 

Now I know it looked like the end of the post back there but I think we all need to take a moment to appreciate the atrocity that is my rendition of myself in Microsoft’s Paint.

Folk Fest

It’s so bad I had to post it a second time.

Initially I was going to post the actual picture but then Tex was all “Would you put that up at work?” to which I replied “You are extremely difficult, unreasonable and unfair when you are right” hence the toddler like drawing.

The hair was easy. Curly hair is curly hair is curly hair; it’s messy and does whatever the hell it wants to, in whatever direction it wants. The hands on the other hand were not as easily replicated. I decided while drawing that I would take a page out of Matt Groening’s book and only give myself three fingers and thumb for simplicity’s sake.

BartSimpson4

See? Only four digits. Whoever created humans was clearly an overachiever. (Photo Credit: http://www.simpsoncrazy.com)

But even that proved too tough so my other hand became a skin mitten which sounds super gross but is easy to make on a touch pad. The picture was larger than my mini netbook’s screen so the sign is just hanging out in midair and it’s also the reason why I look like I’m doing some sort of Elvis Presley hip thrust; I was only able to see and thus work on half of the picture at a time.

Initially the lenses of my sunglasses were the same size and shape because I copied and pasted but afterwards I decided they weren’t large enough to deserve the description of Lady Gaga so now they match my wobbly misshapen mouth. Also I realized that the section between my legs didn’t get filled in when I inserted the picture into the post. A more detail oriented person who cared would have changed the image. I didn’t. My final comment and piece of advice is – if you squint and stand really far away, whilst wearing another person’s glasses it might look like a Jackson Pollock.

I’ve Become a “Yo’ Mamma” Joke

Despite not being one of those glowy, happy women who loves being pregnant and has never felt better in their life, I’ve felt good about the experience thus far.

Not me, not even a little. Photo Credit : mommyish.com

Not me, not even a little. Photo Credit : mommyish.com

Despite the fact that most days I’ve felt like a combination between a swamp monster

In fact this picture was taken while I walked to work this morning. Photo Credit: hask.org

In fact this picture was taken while I walked to work this morning. Photo Credit: hask.org

And a pumpkin.

 Not like this pumpkin, it’s far too cute and reasonably sized. Photo Credit : instructables.com

Not like this pumpkin, it’s far too cute and reasonably sized. Photo Credit : instructables.com

Like an over-sized pumpkin advertised on signs for a fair, that people buy tickets to gawk at.

There comes a point when one needs to ask “Should this get bigger?” Photo Credit : bajiroo.com

There comes a point when one needs to ask “Should this get bigger?” Photo Credit : bajiroo.com

I mean, I stopped being able to get up off of the futon by myself about a month ago. Admittedly our futon is awkwardly shaped and low to the ground and ultimately a futon, which is to say it’s a piece of furniture that makes neither a nice bed nor a nice couch. Somehow I was able to move past this fact, although not physically obviously; Tex has frequently cupped one of my buttocks while saying “Alley–oop”, to help me off the couch. But mentally, I forgave the futon, well not so much forgave as routinely beat the living daylights out of, when I left the bed to sleep on the aforementioned uncomfortable not-bed, because Tex and my bed was too soft, hard, warm, small, smooth, or whatever other conclusion my crazy pregnant brain had come to at 2 am. I would then release my insomniac frustrations on the futon by kicking and punching my way back to sleep.

That was before last week when I realized that I was too fat to get out of bed. If I’m being honest, I’ve probably been too fat to exit the bed for some time now, however I wasn’t aware of this until my mountain of pillows rearranged itself to form a kind of barricade.

You know, I think I’d be more comfortable if I had just one more….Tex give me your pillow- the time has come. Photo Credit : sodahead.com

You know, I think I’d be more comfortable if I had just one more….Tex the time has come- give me your pillow. Photo Credit : sodahead.com

And I was unable to use my patented, pregnant technique of rolling sideways out of the bed so my feet landed on the floor. “Uuuurrggghhhh” I cried. “Ahhhhh”

“What’s wrong?” Tex asked, bolting straight up in the bed just because he could, what with not being six months pregnant.

“I’m too fat to get out of bed” I cried plaintively as my sweet husband reached over to help me to a sitting position.

So that’s it then. I’m now a “Yo’ mamma” joke, I shall commence my muumuu wearing tomorrow.

Hop On Pop

I’m twenty-five weeks pregnant which means at the best of times I feel like a sausage blimp; some sort of gas filled entity stuffed into too little skin.

Picture a zeppelin with a skirt and you have me. Photo Credit : theatlantic.com

Picture this zeppelin with a skirt and you have me. Photo Credit : theatlantic.com

And at the worst of times I’m a vomit fountain.

Which for the record is the opposite of this kind of fountain which can brings scads of people sugar coated joy. Photo Credit: commons.wikimedia.org

For the record, is the opposite of this kind of fountain which can bring scads of people sugar coated joy. Photo Credit: commons.wikimedia.org

And at all times I am tired.

Today the role of Unwashed shall be played by this character. Photo Credit : affordablehousinginstitute.org

Today the role of Unwashed shall be played by this character. Photo Credit : affordablehousinginstitute.org

However despite this, I agreed to go out to dinner with Tex and his friend. The restaurant was only a third of a kilometer from the apartment so Tex decided that we should walk. Tragically, a half an hour beforehand, my body decided that I should sleep. This was how Tex and I found ourselves shuffling along while I kept my eyes closed.

One hundred meters from the apartment I stopped and refused to go any further. “I want a piggyback ride!” I demanded. Sensing that he was a second away from dragging his pregnant wife’s supine body down the sidewalk towards the restaurant, Tex agreed.

 It would have looked exactly like this if Joy was wearing a cowboy hat and wrangler jeans; Tex is just as chipper and I was just as motionless. Photo Credit : infinity.wordpress.com

It would have looked exactly like this if Joy was wearing a cowboy hat and wrangler jeans; Tex is just as chipper and I was just as motionless. Photo Credit : infinity.wordpress.com

I’m not sure whether it was my bulky jacket that made me forget about the giant basketball that is now my midsection or whether I was that drunk from exhaustion, regardless Tex knelt down and I jumped as high as my heavy body and intense acid reflux would allow which wasn’t high at all. I made it halfway onto his back before my belly caused me to slide off and I remembered that I was five and a half months pregnant.

It was at then that I started laughing the maniacal hysterical laughter of the exhausted and was so loud that passersby turned to take in the commotion. Happily, I ended up giggling myself the rest of the way to the restaurant.