31 Day Writing Challenge 2014,  On Pregnancy

My 5th Pregnancy–A Little Bit of Humor

31-days-humor-imageEvery pregnancy is different. This is my 5th pregnancy, and in the beginning, I was so sure I was going to have a boy. I was positive. Because all I wanted to do for the first three months of this pregnancy was sleep, eat, play video games, and have sex.

When I found out it was a girl, I was just a tad disappointed. When I am pregnant with girls, the morning sickness is more severe, and it doesn’t go away as fast. I am more emotional and irritable, and I gain more weight.

I thought I was doing pretty good with the weight gain this pregnancy (I don’t have a scale at home), but my very sweet doctor told me gently and tactfully that I was gaining too fast. Ten pounds in four weeks. “Everything is fine,” she told me. “Except for your astronomical weight gain.”

(I swear, if you tell a woman she’s gaining too much weight, she’s just going to eat more food! I don’t know why, it’s just the way we are. Luckily, it’s pretty easy for me to lose the weight after I have the baby… I will write another post on how I lose the baby weight later this month.)

Plus, this is the first pregnancy where I am “elderly.” That’s right. All my paperwork from the doctor says, “High Risk Pregnancy: Elderly.” I am in that category now. My friend who just had a baby told me that her paperwork said, “Geriatric Pregnancy.” I don’t know which is worse.

I mentioned in an earlier post, which has pictures of my pregnant belly, here, that I’ve had this weird foot pain this pregnancy. When I first get out of bed in the morning, I can hardly walk. I have to lean on furniture to get to the bathroom. After about ten minutes, the pain goes away and I can walk fairly normally. The only thing that helps? High heels. It helps so much to have my weight on the balls of my feet! So here I am, 9 months pregnant, taking my kids to the library to do their homeschool lessons, and I’m wearing high heeled wedges.

At this point in the pregnancy, hardly any clothes fit me. Today it was 95 degrees where I live. I must look so conspicuous with my big belly, tight tank tops, long skirts, and high heels. I really wish I could wear pajama pants with high heels, because I would be wearing that every day if I could. Maybe I’ll post some selfie photos in the comfortable outfits I wish I could wear while I’m pregnant.

I have this one maternity dress that is comfortable, but my 9-year-old daughter hates it. “I wish you would stay in your seat and do your work,” I told her last week during her lessons. “And I wish you’d take off that hideous red dress!” she yelled in a joking tone. It was so rude, but it made me laugh. She was right, it was hideous. “All right, I’ll go change my clothes and you go sit down and get your work done!”

People love to comment when you have a lot of kids, and that is great. Most of the time, strangers are very encouraging and helpful. But sometimes people say rude things, and you just ask yourself, “How am I supposed to respond to that?” I was laughing with the other homeschool moms at my daughter’s Christian academy yesterday because one of the sweet pregnant moms couldn’t get over people’s reactions to her being pregnant with her 4th. She said her neighbor kept asking her these questions like, “Really, you are pregnant again? Why? What are you going to do? You are too old! Why another? Too many weddings!” She was like, “Why is it so strange for people to get pregnant? People can have all these cats, or they can be taking all kinds of drugs, and no one will say anything to them! But if you are pregnant, everyone has an opinion about that!”

Oh my gosh, I needed a good laugh.

Chelsea Rotunno is the author of Goodnight to My Thoughts of You, a novel about life as a Christian teen searching for true love.

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