If it’s true that each pregnancy is different, there’s one similarity: each one is a process of highs and lows and ups and downs. What’s true today won’t be true tomorrow. And even though women tend to remember their pregnancies in absolutes (“I was sick the entire time with Caroline!” or “For all nine months, I slept twelve hours a night with Jonathan!”), we all forget the details. There are just too many to remember.
I’m living the process now.
I’m in Week 31 of my pregnancy, and I’ve felt the range of just about every emotion these past eight months.
There have been days when I felt invincible, when I wanted to call up each of my friends with less than four kids (yes, about all of them) and tell them that pregnancy is so easy when you have the fruit of your labor (well-adjusted, well-behaved kids) to inspire you. Why would anyone stop with just two or three when you could love the dickens out of five or six or an even dozen? A family! A mother! This is what God has called me to do.
And then there are the days that pregnancy and the promise of another infant is completely overwhelming…when I’m sitting on the wet floor of a public bathroom, trying to wipe the poop off Sam or Ellie with see-through grade toilet paper, and a flashback of myself as a writer pops into my mind. RIght then it seems like I will never again have another moment to myself to do anything but clean feces from bottoms. And I want to sob.
Like every pregnancy, there are days that I have the energy and creativity of ten mamas and can whip the kids into a playroom-cleaning frenzy that includes age-appropriate learning activities for each of them, while also building their self-esteem, faith, and identity in the family.
Lately days like that have been outnumbered by those where I fail to get dressed, relent to the fact my kids just won’t get summer reading time this summer because they’re too busy arguing over my limp body sound asleep on the playroom couch.
There were days of craving blue cheese, pickles, and olives. Recently a craving for cinnamon has dominated my life. Not just cinnamon, but Cinnabon pecan rolls. Because I’m pregnant and huge and why not add a little frosting in hopes that guilt and sugar would get me off the couch?
This week, as a fun surprise, I also found out I had gestational diabetes.
Oh.
I’ve had this before, so I should have known that when Cinnabon was making me feel unusually sluggish and tired and like my insides were sweating, there might be a problem bigger than just a tired day in the Pregnancy Process.
And now on to a new part of the process! Ridding my diet of smoothies and chocolate milk and Kashi peanut butter bars and grilled cheese sandwiches in favor of high-protein diabetic-friendly meals.
Goodbye for now, Cinnabon. Don’t take it personally.
It’s all part of the process.
