Here we go again…..

My husband and I have recently decided to try to have another baby.  Hooray!  I get to be pregnant again!  Oh joy!  Nine months of gestation!  Nine whole, glorious months!

If you suspect that the previous paragraph is dripping in bitter, acidic sarcasm- you are very clever.  Or, you have been pregnant before.

I’ve hated few things as much as I hated being pregnant.  Puppy killers………….yup, that’s about it.  Pregnancy glow?  Sure, I was glowing.  From rage.

Here’s a fun anecdote:

Around my seventh month, I waddled out one afternoon to get a mani/pedi( remember those?).  The nail salon was at the top of two, relatively short flights of stairs.  Up I went, thoughts of shades of plum in my head.  It’s important to note here that my pregnancy was wrecking havoc on my blood pressure and blood sugar, both of which would routinely plummet to sub-human levels.  I’m fairly certain that I was legally Undead at least twelve times.  At the top of the stairs, as I entered the salon, I knew I was in trouble. My blood felt as if it had rushed in a panic to my feet.  The trembling began.  It was then that I should have turned and fled to the backseat of my car to lay down and tremble and see spots in front of my eyes in privacy, like a normal person.  Instead, I walked to the nail polish wall, determined to shake it off.  I concentrated on not passing out. Concentrating on not passing out accomplishes nothing.  You must get your head low to the ground.   I had two options: lay on the floor in the middle of a nail salon or, don’t lay on the floor in the middle of a nail salon!

I went with option two, but increasingly regretted it.  The manicurist had called me to her station, but I was unable to move, staring at the spot on the floor where I knew I would soon be laying in a heap.  I mumbled something about not feeling well and she put her arm around me and began to guide me to the pedicure chairs so I could lay down. Great idea, but mere feet from the chair, my vision started to go, my blood was heavy and I sunk to the floor.

I wish I could tell you that I fainted dead away.  I’d like to say that I wasn’t near paralyzed, and seeing spots but still painfully aware that I was curled around the basin of a pedicure chair and wondering how many toenail clippings were embedded in my face.  I could hear the Vietnamese proprietors buzzing around me terrified.  If you haven’t had the experience of collapsing while noticeably pregnant, let me enlighten you:  people go bat-shit.  Somewhere out there I heard an ambulance being called. Because I was visibly trembling, it was assumed that I was cold and an enormous fur blanket that weighed no less than forty pounds was produced( where was THAT being stored?) and laid on me.  Truth was, I was hot, but my english wasn’t much better than their’s at this point.

The EMT’s arrived, and I was slowly moved to a sitting position. My blood pressure and blood sugar levels were very low.  Only because my husband is a physician and on his way, were they willing to not take me to the hospital.  I saw the clear beginnings of a laugh start on Alex’s face as he entered the shop, and then quickly morph into the official ” oh my goodness, are you alright” look.  There I sat, in the middle of the room, women in all stages of being pampered, staring, a fur blanket wrapped and tucked around me, with oxygen tubes sticking out of my nose.  Glowing from the miracle of pregnancy.

Alex couldn’t help but suppress a laugh because lucky, lucky me, this was not the first time I’d experienced this  “quirky side effect”.  Oh no, there was the time in the aisle of the movie theater,  the time on the bench in the mall, in the parking lot of the grocery store and my personal favorite, the time on the ground outside a hockey arena.  There, I lay outside, in January, trying to exude an attitude of normalcy.  Hey, pregnant ladies lay down on the cold winter ground in the night outside sports arenas all the time!  They bought it.  Note to self: Never have a real medical emergency around a bunch of college kids.  You will die.

Look at me, giving all this attention to my fainting spells.  Honorable mention must also be given to the twenty weeks of 24 hour/day nausea, heart-burn, bizarrely intense hunger pains that I told my doctor gave me visions of my stomach as a fish out of water, flopping around for air.  Nerve pains in my butt, gas like a truck driver, and last but definitely not least, The Taste.

Have you ever eaten fourteen packages of Smarties, a bottle of soda and a bag of Gummie Bears?  Of course you haven’t because that would be disgusting and would leave a very sour, awful taste in your mouth.  Imagine that flavor and multiply it by seventy-four, and you will have arrived at The Taste that plagued me MY ENTIRE PREGNANCY.  It was so bad in the first half, it would wake me out of sleep!  I had to keep a pack of mint gum on the nightstand to battle it.  The Taste made me very angry.  My sister often received terse text messages like this:

TASTE.  Or….

THE TASTE!  Or…..

This M*&^er#^&%ing Taste!!!!!!!!!

And while I’m griping, let me mention the “Others”.  You know the ones, who ” love ” being pregnant?  Who ” feel so fabulous and healthy and I ran a marathon the day before I gave birth” types?  I have a proposal.  What if there was an island, a nice island, a sunny, warm island, but a remote island where they could all be kept until their babies were born so that we( me ) don’t have to see them? They’d love it!  They could all frolic and glow together and then viciously turn on the inhabitants who have begun to have “symptoms”, and vote them off?  I’m just throwing out ideas…..

It may come as a surprise to you after reading this that I want to do it again. You’d be even more surprised if you’d witnessed how I harassed and harangued my husband into agreeing to it.  Apparently I’ve lost my mind.  I’m focusing on the sweet little kicks and the cute “bump” and the never having to lift anything or move at all if not absolutely necessary. And yes, yes, it is all worth it, it really is, but I really, really wish I didn’t have to do it again.  How much does a surrogate cost?…….

 

 

 

 

Heather Bogolyubova

About Heather Bogolyubova

Heather Bogolyubova has an un-pronouncable last name. A Maine native, she's returned to the Pine Tree state after several years in New York. Now, she's a newlywed, has a new baby, a new job, and lots of fancy shoes she can never wear in the snow. The job: Stay-at- home mother and wife. Its hard. She's going to tell you all.