healthy, wealthy, and wise

3 hour glucose test (last week) – annoying, but not brutal.  Though they lie – it’s actually FOUR hours and you get stuck with a needle FOUR times.

And WHEW! I do not have gestational diabetes.  I realize it wouldn’t have been the worst thing ever, but the idea of having to monitor every moment of my eating throughout the day & giving up that which I love most (not sugar, but carbohydrate-heavy fall vegetables) gave me chills.

I have less than 10 weeks to go and thus far I am the picture of perfect health.

WAIT! I know some of you are poised to send me annoying emails & comments about how so many things could go wrong yet or you, too, were the picture of perfect health up until x weeks or whatever.  Seriously.  Suck it.  I KNOW.  I freakin’ know that plenty could go wrong and things might not go my way and blah blah blah.  I’m not an idiot.  I just choose to enjoy the moment and think positively.

This is the lesson that I’ve learned throughout my pregnancy:  A huge majority of pregnant women (and women who’ve recently had babies) are downright competitive and negative.  They do not want you to have a better experience than them, or for things to go right for you that did not go right for them.

I say I want to go natural, and I get lecture upon lecture from people who say, “Oh, I wanted to go natural to, but x happened and blah blah blah, so don’t get your hopes up.”  (Let’s never mind all the women that plan on natural childbirth and HAVE natural childbirth – even like my friend, J, who was determined & refused drugs even when they had to use a vacuum to get her daughter out, a kind of pain she can’t even describe after hours and hours and hours of labor.)

I say I’ll be using a diaper service & cloth diapers (I will, I’ve already chosen & spoken with a service) and I get those “knowing” looks & comments from women who act like I’m a naive little girl and OH, how I’ll change my mind once the baby is actually here.  (Never mind the fact that my mom used cloth diapers and I’ve researched thoroughly and talked to her about it and it AIN’T THAT BIG A DEAL and maybe my priorities are just different from yours?)

I mention that the midwives told me that he’s in position already, head down, and I get comments that he could flip and go breach, just like theirs did.  I say I feel fabulous & I get, “Oh, I felt great to up until such and such week.  Just wait.”

You get the picture.  Really, what is WRONG with these people?  I have a small handful of friends & acquaintances who have managed to perfectly balance the art of sharing their experiences without being all… you know, know-it-all-ish and negative.  There’s a couple people whose opinions I highly regard specifically because their morals & values & personalities so closely mirror my own – I could see my experience taking a similar path to theirs.  But the nay-saying is far more negative than the encouragements and the “good for you’s!” and the positive reinforcement.

To which, again, I say SUCK IT.

Soon, my baby will be born and then I’ll get to be a goddamn know-it-all, too.  Except, no – there will always be women ahead of me, who’s babies are months older than mine, who’ve experienced everything first so of course everything that happened for them will happen for me, too, because god knows all pregnancies & women & lives are exactly the same. Right?

Yeah, I’m a little cranky.  All my life I expected pregnancy to be a terrifying experience that would have me increasing the frequency of my psychiatrist/therapist appointments.  I expected to be miserable & a physical mess, to hate my body & have to fight back demons of eating disorders past.  I expected to want drugs and to just get the damn birth over with and then to never do it again. I thought I’d have a difficult pregnancy after all I’ve put my body through over the years, all the horrifically dark moments & self destruction and drugs.

But it hasn’t been that way.  At all.  I’ve found that pregnancy has brought me the most unexpected feeling of calm, a zen that I’ve spent thousands of dollars on therapy to find.  I’m healthy & I make it a priority to be healthy.  Rather than fearing the whole birthing thing, I’m totally down with it.  I don’t want to miss a moment.  I know it’s not going to be fun or painless.  I KNOW THIS. I know it might be worse than I expect.  But I also believe, very strongly, in the power of positive thinking & a certain mindset and I don’t really care what YOU did that didn’t work for you because I’m not you.  I follow my instincts about what’s right for me.  My life has been hugely different from yours.  I know what works for me.  I know what doesn’t work for me.

I’m not blindly jumping in thinking, “Oh this is how it’s going to be,” and refusing to accept that something might happen that I didn’t anticipate.  I’m simply, as I said, enjoying the here & now, enjoying that I feel great and that I’m not scared and that whatever happens, I can handle it.  So I don’t need women raining on my parade or imparting their incredible wisdom of all that can go wrong that I would NEVER think of on my own because I don’t know a single other person who’s had children or a mother who I can talk to about these things.  THANK GOD for the nay-sayers, right?

And when I say that I feel great, how much worse can it get?  I FREAKIN’ KNOW.  The last few weeks are horrible, blah blah blah.  Maybe some people just complain more than I do.  I’ve always had a talent for ignoring & neglecting discomfort – my back hurts and I think he’s started kicking the shit out of my lower back.  There, are you happy?  I have discomfort.  But I don’t focus on it, that’s not what I talk about most.  So maybe the last few weeks will be full of incredible suckage, but that’s not what I’m going to focus on.  In my mind, I’ve already decided that I’ll be two weeks late, I’m mentally prepared (my mother predicted Dec 1) so if I go on time or less than 2 weeks late, won’t that be a pleasant surprise?

Oh, I know.  You’re making that face.  You’re thinking, “She thinks she’ll be fine with being two weeks late – just wait, she’ll see.”  I didn’t say I’d be fine, I said I’ll DEAL.  Focusing on the negative doesn’t do much good, does it?  And, come on – I’ve already defied the odds, haven’t I?  My pregnancy has already been pretty atypical.

And if that’s what you really think, then just wait and see yourself and you can gloat all over town if I say, “This sucks.”  And you can feel happy to know that I’m miserable, just like you said I’d be.   If something happens and I, god forbid, need to have a c-section or some such, you can say, “I told you so,” and feel very proud of yourself.  Deal?  But for now, I choose to be happy.  That’s a choice I’ve never been in a place to make before.

And I solemnly swear – after Nugget is born and I talk to other women who are pregnant or contemplating pregnancy, I will be positive and encouraging.  I will focus on the good, promise that it’s not that bad & even if it is, you’ll get through it.

Because this weird competitive bullshit between women just doesn’t work for me.