Things you may not have known about being pregnant (or more specifically things you may not have know about ME being pregnant)

1. You don’t get to do anything fun anymore
2. No booze, no delicious blue cheeses, reduced caffeine intake, etc
3. No cold medicine despite your lowered immune system
4. It makes you barf
5. Indigestion all the time
6. When you make off-color comments, you know, like how you ALWAYS have? People will look at you like, ‘OH MY GOD YOU’RE A MOTHER NOW YOU CAN’T SAY THINGS LIKE THAT ANYMORE!!!!’
7. People you have just met 10 minutes ago will touch your stomach, even though you are only 4 months pregnant and barely showing and that is not okay but you will be so stunned that someone who just met you thinks it’s okay to touch your stomach that you won’t say anything possibly setting a very dangerous precedent.
8. Being pregnant makes you want pierogi and pierogi are kind of tricky to find in south-east London.  I managed it though, there’s a tiny grocery store by the Dulwich Library that able to hook me up.  Unfortunately their definition of vegetarian isn’t as strict as Jeremy’s definition of vegetarian, so no pierogi for him.
9. Heartburn.
10. You’ll have dreams wherein Steve Perry from Journey is your homicidal ex-husband who not only wants to kill you but all the orphans you’re caring for, orphan who, by the way, are tiny spies who are able to pass through walls and dimensions.  One of whom lost a leg in a horrible portal malfunction.
11. Candy will make you feel sick.
12. It’s just weird okay?
13. There’s a baby inside you and it has legs and arms and fingernails anda nose and hands and feet (and all the other appropriate appendages) and IT’S INSIDE YOU flipping around and hanging out and playing solitaire and whatever else it is that fetuses do while they’re baking.  And that is weird, because mostly you feel the same, except for the barfing and the heartburn and the indigestion and the no blue cheese business.
14. But it’s pretty cool too, so long as I don’t think too much about it.

Oh, today.

Some days you wait for with dread.  You know they’re coming and you feel a fist closing in your chest.  Or I do anyhow.

If you’re lucky you don’t have many of them, but most people have one or two I’d think.  They probably get easier with time.  No, they absolutely do.  There are days that used to leave me a weepy mess that now pass unnoticed every year.

But today, today is a properly miserable day.  Never mind that it’s sunny and warm out.  Today marks a full year during which life has gone on in a world without my dad.  And, really, that’s a shame.  I’d like to give today back.  Get a do over on this day last year and the month leading up to it.

It’s just so completely lousy knowing that my kid won’t get know my dad.  My dad who has a proven track record of being a pretty great Grandpa.  It’s not fair, that’s life though right.  He’d have been the first to remind me of that, probably while pretending to play the world’s smallest violin.

 

I miss him too much today.

 

Top Secret No More

So you know how awhile ago I was all like, there is top-secret stuff in my life and I can’t talk about it?  Yes, no?  Well if you don’t remember, there was top-secret stuff in my life and I couldn’t talk about it.

But now I can, so I will.

If you are lucky enough to be my friend on facebook then you already know this, but here it is again anyhow.  I am knocked up.  Got myself in trouble.  Up the duff.  The rabbit died.  There is a bun in my oven.  Etc.

I’m about 13.5 weeks pregnant, specifically.  And this is both very awesome and very weird and kind of terrifying.  When we went in for the first scan last Friday the kid was being uncooperative and would only stand on his/her (we don’t know yet what exactly we’re getting) head which meant we mostly saw a pair of very tiny legs kicking around which was pretty amazing (understatement).

This also means that while we were in Venice I did not have any coffee or wine.  Please pause for a moment and appreciate the super-human restraint required for me to accomplish such a feat.  No coffee, in Italy, home to the beloved cappuccino and espresso and macchiato.  NO COFFEE!  And no wine, in Italy, home to chianti and montepulciano and like 5 kabillion other delicious wines.  I mean, seriously, I deserve some sort of medal of honor for this business.

Someday when this kid is 14 and trying my nerves with all that ‘But Mo-om . . .’ business about dying her/his hair blue or staying out till dawn I will remind her/him of the sacrifices I made in the Autumn of 2011 on her/his behalf and she/he will almost certainly not care at all.  But I will still bring it up.  Often.

I will also bring up all the sickness and nausea and etc of my first trimester, because these last few months have not been very much fun.  Apparently it gets better.  Fingers are crossed.

All sacrifice and puking aside though, I am really excited about this (and scared too).  It’s a new and very big adventure and I can’t wait to meet young Wiggles and yogi when he/se comes out to see the world in May.