Diary of a Preggo: Pregnancy makes people forget their manners

 Pregnancy Makes People Forget their Manners!

Now that everyone knows I am pregnant (18 weeks), I’ve noticed some strange reactions from well-meaning people.

For example, shortly after the “congratulations” go around, some women love to start talking about my weight. Now, I haven’t gained much yet - the normal amount of weight for being this far along. But even before I’d gained a couple pounds, women started focusing on weight as soon as they found out I was pregnant.

I’ll need to give you a little history here which explains why this bothers me so much. Since shortly after high school, I’ve struggled with my weight. I gained a little in college and spent a couple years kind of chubby before figuring out it was the stupid birth control shot I was on. As soon as I got off that, the weight melted off in like two months without changing anything. But that time period was still damaging to my self-esteem. I spent the next 8-9 years as happy and skinny as could be, without even exercising. Then my marriage and finances started to take a downhill turn and I became depressed. I could tell my metabolism had also slowed as I neared 30 years old. What do you know, the weight started coming back on, a little bit every month. I made some feeble attempts at exercising but didn’t have a gym membership or a gym buddy, so it was hard to stay motivated. Every time I tried to run, treadmill or not, my exercise induced asthma kicked in after 10 or less minutes and I quit.

Instead I started surviving on carrots, slim fast shakes, protein water and the occasional yogurt, eating like 800-1,000 calories a day. I was starving and miserable all the time and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t lose even a pound. After seeing a nutritionist and fitness experts years later, I learned I had actually broken my metabolism by eating less than half the calories I should have been taking in every day. Plus, being so hungry and depressed makes it really hard to get motivated to workout. If I had eaten enough calories of nutritious food plus practiced a good workout plan, I’m sure I would have been able to lose the weight. But I had no idea what I was doing and was too emotionally traumatized with everything in my life weighing on me to figure out how to fix it.

When I finally made the decision to separate from my ex-husband, I made a lot of other big, life-changing decisions. I would do whatever I could to not be back in that horrible place. Some of the weight melted off immediately, probably just a reaction to not being in crazy stress 24-7. I also talked to my doctor to figure out why I couldn’t breathe when I ran. I signed up for fitness classes and went to the gym by myself, even though I felt totally incompetent there. I started running outdoors, with the help of my new inhaler, and forced myself to push through the hard moments when I  thought I couldn’t breathe after one block. Getting away from negative influences and finding newfound hope in life gave me the happiness and peace to be able to sleep at night, giving me more energy during the day. I started getting interested in nutrition, and read up on how to eat right. I may have been broke and in a small apartment, but I had cheerios, laughing cow wedges, and drawers full of fresh fruits. My apartment gym was a walk away; I always ran there and back. I made new friends who were fitness oriented. I made sure any guy I even thought about dating was also active and interested in fitness. I needed a life partner who had the same goals as I did.

And what do you know, the pounds continued to melt off. Fast forward two years, and I’m at my happy weight, doing triathlons and 5K’s and married to a wonderful man who takes bike rides and runs with me daily.

With that history, you can see why I am a little sensitive when it comes to weight. I’ve always been careful about what I eat and would never call myself lazy, regardless of the couple of times I have gained weight. But it hasn’t been easy for me. I have never been the kind of girl that can eat dessert regularly or not pick and choose every little thing that goes into my mouth.  At  5’2 I am petite but also short and stout, so even two extra pounds is obvious on my small frame. Some women haven’t worked out a day in their life and stay skinny. Me, I have logged everything that goes in my mouth in a food journal for like two years. I work out most days a week, and if I didn’t, I would gain weight, even while eating healthy. But instead of taking the hand life dealt me and focusing on how “unfair” that is, I fight back with fitness and nutrition.

Normally, it wouldn’t be socially acceptable for people to walk up to me for no reason and say “how much weight have you gained?” or other comments on my body. But for some reason when I am pregnant, women think they can make rude comments like this all the time.

Women, hear me: Someone’s pregnancy does not give you a license to talk about their weight or give them unsolicited opinions on pregnancy weight gain. It’s rude. If anything, pregnancy is a time when women are even more sensitive about their weight. If they are like me and spent their whole life trying to keep it off, the prospect of gaining it on purpose, even if you have to for the baby, is incredibly scary.

The one I hear the most is “I gained 60-70-80 pounds when I was pregnant, that was such a mistake. I was stupid. It was SO hard to get it off. I’ll never do that again. Don’t be like me. Don’t eat everything in sight...”

Seriously?

How much of an idiot do you think I am? Of course I would never “eat everything in sight” or gain 60 pounds on purpose! What an insult to my intelligence! I mean yes I am much hungrier than usual, which is normal, but I’m eating a lot of protein shakes and healthy foods and not like entire pans of brownies (like Jenny McCarthy said she ate every day in her pregnancy book – yikes).

The only reason I may gain a few more pounds than I’d like is due to decreasing my exercise level. My first trimester I could hardly move and even now, though I’m back into a workout schedule, I often have back pain or other sickness that prevents me from doing as much for as long as I’d like. Even on the bad days I will sometimes force myself to power walk on a high incline for 40 minutes or do a yoga DVD, but that’s nothing compared to the almost daily 5k’s I was running in my neighborhood.

However, even if I do gain more than planned, I will be back at a major diet and fitness routine as soon as my doctor says I can. I’m already signed up for a 5K in October, giving me two months to train. I already have not one, but TWO jogging strollers given to me by friends and family. (one that has seats for two kids)To be honest, I’m only 4 and a half months and chomping at the bit to get back to my normal workout routine. And, I’ll be burning 500 calories a day breastfeeding. So suck on that.

I’ve also heard this a couple times: “I only gained 15 pounds. Just because the doctor says to gain 30, you don’t need to do that. Back in my day, pregnant women didn’t gain that much.”

Please, don’t pretend to be smarter than my doctor. The only way I could gain that little is by dieting, which is dangerous during pregnancy. I am not underfeeding myself so that my baby can leach calcium from my bones and cause me osteoporosis in later life. Babies will find a way to get proper nutrition to survive, it’s science. And modern science has seriously evolved since “back in your day.”

Oh, and with all due respect, shut up.

Last but not least, for those women I hear going around telling everyone in earshot how much weight they gained during their pregnancy and how dumb they were, I’ve noticed that each and every one of them are at a healthy weight. Not one person who has come up to me and said that was slightly chubby or overweight. So, obviously it was a temporary situation for them and not the end of their life.

So please, women, stop running your mouth and trying to scare the crap out of already sensitive first-time pregnant women.

And if you ask me “how much have I gained,” I will smile politely and say something vague, because I am not going to give you that answer. It’s none of your business.

Diary of a Preggo: Weird Symptom Day

Weird Symptom #1: Feeling like everyone wants to murder the hell out of me.

(Because sometimes pregnancy symptoms are so strange, they need further explanation.)

Okay. So I choose to believe this symptom is not just a side effect of my crazy self, but instead my elevated maternal brain that is now wired to keep my infant safe. I don’t know, but it is definitely a huge difference from my former somewhat rebellious/fearless self.

So here’s one example. When I’m in a parking lot, daytime or night, I’m pretty sure any person that comes near me or any person surreptitiously sitting in a running car -- male, female, teenager, whatever -- is planning on stabbing me to death and/or dousing me with a bucket of acid (yes, I read too much weird Yahoo news).

I used to be scared of men in parking lots raping me, and now I’ve jazzed it up a notch because I don’t seem to be too worried about rape. Nope, I am pretty sure they all want to kill me. Don’t they dare even hold my stare too long or I’m about to start running in the other direction. Or hurt them with my pepper spray or pointed metal thing attached to my key ring … or blow the really loud whistle also attached to my keyring and embarrass myself when they were just an innocent walking person.

Then there are those scary public places with lots of people. When I’m in a movie theater, or mall, or high school, or pretty much any place where there have been mass shootings, I think one is going to happen when I’m there. I look for the exits and think of spots that I will dive for cover. I ponder the thought in my mind: If I am face-to-face with a gunman, will I tell him I’m pregnant and beg for my life, or will that make it worse and make him want to kill me more since he is obviously trying to create enough destruction to make him famous?

Yes, I’ve played out that not helpful scenario in my head more than once.

Also, if I am anywhere near a driving car – it could be like 500 meters down the road – I am pretty sure it is going to run me over, maybe even purposefully. I look at a car and hesitate like a million times before I cross a road or busy traffic area. They probably just think I’m nuts since I’m not visibly pregnant. But regardless, I am pretty sure everyone on the road is a drunk and/or reckless driver who wants to kill me.

One time, very early in pregnancy, I almost had a major anxiety breakdown because a speeding driver ran through a red light two cars in front of me and my husband (a few more seconds and it would have barreled into us!!), and then it ran into a light pole and careened into a building. The light pole fell, and a sparking fire fountain like the fourth of July replaced it. Now, I was a little shook up but doing okay because it wasn’t very close to me. All we had to do was proceed through the intersection and keep going, since it was to the right of us and a little down the road.

No problem, right? That is what any normal person would do – get away from the accident.

 NO.

All of the sudden my hubby, against my very stringent and pleading advice, decided he was going to TURN RIGHT and DRIVE in the DIRECTION of the ACCIDENT and FIRE, because “someone might need help.”

Well good Lord I needed help after that. I thought HE was trying to kill me. I freaked out on him so hard, I was shaking and screaming at him to turn around until he finally pulled into a parking lot across the street and got out of the car to walk over to the accident. 

No, thank you very much, I did not feel like hanging out near a car that might explode. Nor did I think it was a good idea in my nauseous state to see some mangled bloody body crawling out of a car.

“Now is NOT the time to be a hero!” I told him. “Someone else will help them! Do not drive towards accidents and fire with your pregnant wife in the car!”

Now, maybe I was being selfish, I don’t know. Hormones don’t always make for sane behavior.

 But I do know I felt like I was going to puke and cry for the next two hours and it was on Thanksgiving and that was not fun.

Funny note, later on the news it said that the driver of that vehicle was pregnant, transporting a man with an urgent medical situation to the hospital. (Miraculously, they were okay.)

Who does that, anyway? Not this pregnant lady. Too dangerous. You better call an ambulance with your injured self!

Diary of a Preggo: A snapshot of daily life

December 19, 2012 (7 weeks, 4 days)

I jotted down these notes in my paper journal in December, so I thought it would be funny to share them here as a snippet of an “average day” of my first trimester. Enjoy J

•  Woke up @ 5:50 a.m. for no reason.
• Refused to get up that early and instead watched hubby get ready and leave for gym.
•  Attempted to fall back asleep for another 20 minutes.
• Failed.
• Got up feeling queasy and hungry at the same time so immediately downed a glass of milk with carnation instant breakfast powder and a hostess donut stick (damn hubby for buying those things!)
•   Got back in bed and fell into a weird half-asleep state for another half hour.
•   Got up and put dirty hair in a ponytail to run to campus and get in line for some football team signature tickets hubby wanted. Drank decaf coffee in the cold pretending it was caffeinated.
•   Got tickets @ approx 8:15 a.m.
•   Hungry again so went through McDonald’s drive through to get an egg McMuffin.
• Went back home and ate it with orange juice.
•  Took a hot shower because I was so incredibly cold.
•  The hot shower made me incredibly tired and so I got back in bed with wet hair and a robe on and fell back into a fitful sleep for approximately another half hour.
•  Woke up. Gave in and slammed a cup of Earl Gray tea because I needed some sort of caffeine just to get moving.
•  Got ready for work.
• Worked in a fog-like state from 10:30-7:45.
•  Ready for a nap @ 4p.m. Stared listlessly at internet instead.
•   Went home exhausted and went to bed at 9:30 p.m.

Diary of a Preggo Introduction

Diary of a Preggo Introduction: Finding out you’re pregnant and why first trimester sucks

I’m in my second trimester of pregnancy! Now that I’m feeling better, I’ll be blogging about my experience. Sorry, it’s not all pretty. But it will be honest. And hopefully funny at times.

Holy Crap.

It worked? Is there really a baby in there?

In a nutshell, those were pretty much my first thoughts when seeing the faint positive sign on the test. 

Granted, it was a happy “holy crap.” I mean, I’d been waiting for that test to finally become positive for what seemed like forever. But soon, that happy holy crap quickly turned into a holy crap, holy crap.

Let me be more specific: It doesn’t matter how long you try to have a baby or how long you’ve discussed names and dreamed of decorating nurseries, the moment you find out you are actually pregnant, the next moment involves a minor freak out.

How am I going to pay for this?
How am I going to be off work for three months?
How am I going to give my baby to daycare strangers and go back to work?
What if I have a miscarriage or genetically abnormal baby?
What if my husband decides to leave me?
What if I get fat? 

What if I’ll be a terrible mother?
Will I ever get to have any fun anymore?

And that is just a small percentage of some of the crazy things that start whirling around in your head. If you’re like me you get over these thoughts pretty quickly and move on to the acceptance and excitement phase.

If you’re like my husband, you go into instant denial and think a faint-line-is-not-really-a-line, so you’ll make sure by waiting for the blood test. But then again the way men deal with pregnancy is a whole different blog that I’m definitely not qualified to write. J (FYI, now he is very excited and even installed a “dad app” on his phone to track my pregnancy!)

Soon after your freak-out moments and subsequent mental bliss, you then hit the reality of the physical and mental issues that are the first trimester. (Picture the words “first trimester”’ spoken by a loud, deep, booming voice like that of a scary movie trailer announcer. That is because I’ve been through it and it really was like a scary movie.)

Women always talk about being sick to their stomach. That is literally the only thing I had heard about in regards to first trimester side effects. But in reality there is so much more.

There is the insane tiredness that is not just sleepy tiredness, but also a constant fatigue that makes you want to become one with the couch all day long and makes any small task seem incredibly stressful and insurmountable. For me, it truly felt like a mental and physical depression.

Forget motivation of any sort, forget things that used to be easy like cleaning or painting your toenails or putting on eyeliner. Nope. Too hard, don’t care. Exercise? Psshht. Walking up a flight of stairs? Didn’t matter that I’ve ran triathlons, I was out of breath at the top.

There is the incredibly embarrassing acne that you can do “nothing” for, according to my doctor.  

There is being ridiculously cold all the time.

The insane boob pain. Seriously...I could not even accidentally rub against the armchair of the couch. Searing pain.

The bloating. The dry mouth. The constant dizziness and lightheadedness and, if you get it bad like I did, the possibility of blacking out and fainting in public.

Waking up at 4 a.m. for no reason with a painful kind of hunger/nauseous feeling in your stomach – two feelings that really don’t go together. 

The crazy cramps and other painful twinges that you get as your uterus grows. The smells that make you want to puke on everyone for daring to bring that nasty smell near you (fish, body odor, cleaning fluids, etc.).

Don’t forget about the lower back pain that hurt so bad it prevented me from bending over to pick something off the floor or grab something from the bottom of the fridge.

Oh and the jackpot - the greasy hair that hit me in month two that regular shampoo would not wash out no matter what I did. (the answer – Dawn dishsoap. Thank God for pregnancy advice forums).

 Last but definitely not least, you get these fabulous pregnancy hormones that make you feel incredibly sensitive and vulnerable so you cry for no reason.

Add to all of that the fact that even though all of these things are on your mind constantly, you can talk to NO ONE about what you are going through because you aren’t telling people until the second trimester (if you’re like me and have miscarried before), and that makes you become seriously anti-social.

 Also if you get sick (like of course I did) you cannot take medicine for any colds, sleeplessness, or aches and pains. Plus you have no obvious baby bump so you get sympathy from no one and everyone at work probably thinks you are a forgetful lazy slob who stopped putting eyeliner on.

And then you have those women who tell you how perfectly fine they were in their pregnancies. No, no, they were never sick to their stomach, and they ran five miles a day up until nine months …. acne? Haha, they laugh, of course not. Oh, and they only gained 12 pounds even though the recommended amount is 30-35 pounds.

Trust me, these women will make you want to punch them.

I absolutely love it when someone says to me, “I was sick my ENTIRE pregnancy,” because it makes me feel more normal. I've had people tell me they missed tons of work in their first trimester, and that makes me feel better too. I may have been late a few times, but I never called in sick purely because of pregnancy symptoms.

Now, my disclaimer here is that pregnancy is different for everyone. So apparently some women really are fine in their first trimester. But a lot of women aren’t. So this is my story. And it can be summed up in one sentence: I was not myself.

Now that I’m in the second trimester and am feeling better every day, I still look back and think I have no idea who that person was. It was like I was just in survival mode, walking around in a fog. I kept saying I hoped I had twins because we are only having two and I did not want to be pregnant ever again. Thankfully, I discovered ginger pills which took away a large majority of the nausea early on.

Some things haven’t gone away though. 

The wild hormones, for example, pop up randomly here and there in the form of a short temper or grumpiness or this weird laugh-cry thing I do when something is funny (but not that funny to warrant crying). But it’s not constant. Sometimes I have good, happy, energetic days -- more like my old self.

The tiredness still plagues me. If I’m busy or running all day or if it’s past 7 p.m., I can fall asleep like nothing. In fact it’s tough to do anything after 7-8 p.m. because all I do is yawn and think about being in bed. Sometimes I take a mid-day nap on a weekend if I can’t fight it anymore. (I was not a napper pre-pregnancy). 

However, the horribly lack of energy, motivation, and constant fatigue has dissipated. So has the majority of the acne J

And that is my sob story. Apparently my hair and nails are about to get amazing, and the second trimester is about to be the “best part of my pregnancy.”

Let’s hope those stories are true!

Rest in Peace

One of my students was brutally murdered this year. This is my letter to him.

Dearest Christopher,

It's taken me a while to be able to express the words that I wanted to share with you since February.

Your death came as a complete surprise, as you were a good student. 

Maybe because I didn’t think good students get murdered, especially not the way you were. 

Maybe it was so shocking because it shook up my preconceived notions.

I reacted worse to your death than I ever thought I would to a non-family member.  You were a student, yes, someone I knew fairly well and someone whom I nurtured for nearly four years. 

I guess I didn't realize the emotional connection that I do have to my students, and their lives, and the situations they come out of - or don't.

I guess I was surprised that, upon hearing of your shooting murder, it felt like a large boulder of pain had dropped on the center of my chest. Why did I break down sobbing uncontrollably, first in my car and then at my desk, unable to even form the horrific words to tell my husband on the phone what happened to you?

Why did I feel compelled to craft a passionate and somber letter to our city’s mayor, calling on him to find your killer and fight the increasing violence in our city? 

Why did I spend weeks kicking myself for not properly thanking you when, on the day before you were shot during a basketball game, you were the only student to show up and help me set up at our annual conference? 

And kicking myself some more for not sitting down with you more often, just talking, digging deeper, mentoring, and helping you? For being so busy with so many work tasks and the undulation of daily life that I missed something so big – this is the worst part of all –  that I didn’t even know you were possibly mixed up in something or someone bad? 

Why do I find myself so close to tears when writing this even now, nine months later? Why did I solicit money for your family, read your journal over and over, lead students to plan an anti-violence walk in your name and pack up all your items to send to your family?  Why did I struggle so hard to comfort other grieving students, because I was grieving so much myself?

What, pray tell, do you tell a teenager who is crying because their best friend was shot in the head several times for no reason, anyway? What kinds of cliche words could have possibly made them feel any better, or safer?

But enough of the why's. Your loss was huge for me. It still is. The fact is, I think of you often. Sometimes I can shake it, and push your face out of my mind. 

But you were my student, and I do take some responsibility for your life. You were violently killed for no apparent reason in the city I grew up in. And the city has moved on.

Your killer is still at large. 

I can’t believe this sick person still walks among us, maybe at the mall, at the grocery store, or maybe he is even one of those teenage boys that stare in the car next to me at stoplights.

Some days I dwell. I fear this unknown person. I wonder what he looks like.

I wonder what could have been of your young life.

I recall all the questions you had about college. How on track you were with your applications. How you and your mom stayed late and re-filled the financial aid form with me, twice, after the computer froze on you. So you’d have the money to go to college.

I wonder how your freshman year would be going. I wonder how you would have changed, blossomed, and matured -- as kids in poverty often do when they leave this town. 

I picture you a young man away from the darkness of this city and his pieced-together family, a young man turning into a burgeoning, educated person, surrounded by different college-minded friends with bright futures.

I think about how close you were (two months shy of graduation) to this reality.

But instead of walking across the graduation stage, you landed violently into a coffin.

Instead many people walked against violence in your name this summer under a hot sun, standing in the park you were killed in. Then they went home and moved on. 

Instead your face sits soul-less staring out from a t-shirt (red, the color of the pavement beneath your head when they found you) folded in the bottom of my dark dresser drawer. A t-shirt I have no reason to ever wear again.

Instead your killer gets to have a life. 

He gets the freedom to continue a violent life and kill, again, and again …. and again. 

Do you know who your killer is, Chris? Can you tell us please?

See, the thing is, he freely roams in my city where my other students roam, where my family and my friends and my nieces roam. He has ample opportunity to take away more young lives.

I often see our mayor at the gym, energetic, stretching after a run. The one with the goofy smile who went to private school his whole life and graduated from Harvard. The same mayor who never responded to my letter about you.

Sometimes I want to walk up to him and start screaming. 

I want to ask him: Why is our police force so inadequate that a teenager(s) can get away with murder in broad daylight in a park? Or, do the powers that be just not care about deaths like his on that side of town?

That is the real question.

That is the question that haunts me. Does it haunt you, Chris?

I think of my faith, and it’s perseverance in the face of some of the traumatic things I’ve been through the past few years. I know the taste of setbacks and hurt and disappointment. I know our lives don't always go as we would hope. I want to believe that God had a plan for you and that plan just couldn’t play out here on earth. 

And although I try to warn my students of the dangers of the world, I know I can’t prevent it all. I know I can’t save everyone. I know it's not up to me. All of our lives ebb and flow -- we are but stones tossed into the unpredicting swell of the river that is life. I do believe we all have a predetermined ending. I am not afraid of death itself. 

But what I don’t get is the capability of random hatred and violence in human beings. It’s something I struggle with.

Your death made me feel something different that I haven’t felt before. Your death made me want to change something. Your death shook up some of my ideas of “home.”

It made me want to rise up and fight something. 

Chris, your death has left a knot as blood red and angry as your t-shirt, down deep in my being.

Do you feel this too? Or are you at peace now?

Your memory made me remember the importance of my job. It made me remember that, even in the busy crazy times, I’ve got to sit down and really talk to my students about their lives.

It changed me as a person, as tragedy does.

I guess what I want to say is, even though people don’t talk about you much nine months later …

You are not forgotten.

I remember you.  

I’m sorry that I didn’t do more for you when you were alive. 

You deserved the chance to go to college and have a good life.

I’m sorry that they still haven’t found your killer. 

I care, even if they don’t.

And I’m so sorry for what happened to you.

Sincerely,

Miss Melissa