pregnant lady problems.

[These are all pointless complaints that I want to keep track of to show the nugget someday.  You don't have to read them.]

As soon as I'm fully dressed [we're talking buttoned my pants and everything] I  immediately  have to go to the bathroom.  And if I don't, the nugget takes it upon herself to not-so-gently remind me - by kicking me straight in the bladder every few seconds.

Who am I kidding?  None of my pants button-up anymore.

I wake up at 5am, regularly, because the nugget has decided it's the perfect time to practice her Thriller moves.  The problem?  Even after she's settled back down I can't fall asleep again.  And then, just when my body has relaxed enough that I can mayyyybeee get into that half-asleep stage, she's back at it.

My feet swell.  A lot.  It's gross, and it hurts, and it takes a full day of just laying around for them to feel better.  [Not for the swelling to go down, that only takes a couple hours.  Don't panic.]

I can't comfortably cross my legs.

Sometimes I tell the nugget to stop kicking/punching/kung-fu fighting my displaced organs and she listens.  She listens so well that I won't feel her for hours, and then I start to freak out and beg her to do something, anything, just so I know she's still there.  She also listens to that, and the cycle repeats itself.  My only comfort is that, while she does seem to have too much of John's loophole-finding skills in her, she may actually turn out to be a very well-behaved baby.

Getting dressed has become a legitimate chore.  There has always been too many layers, and now elastic bands and pant-expanders, and camisoles, and extra-long shirts, and belts to prove to the world that I still have some flattering attributes...  It's a work-out.

Baby registries are the worst.  How am I supposed to know what kind of bottle she'll like or how big her baby-sasquatch feet will be?  I also hate Target.com.

Another qualm with the baby registry is that we don't really know when the nugget will get to come home.  Or how big she'll be when she does.  I'm assuming that babies recovering from open-heart surgery tend to be a little on the small side for a while.  But then I look at my baby pictures, and even sickly I would have been a mammoth.  So I decided to be optimistic and act like I'm going to bring home a normal-sized baby, maybe four to six weeks after she's born.

I'm hungry all the time.  Especially in the morning, when just the thought of food makes me feel queasey.  And at night, when I'm too tired/lazy to get anything to snack on.

The nugget went straight from practically motionless to training for the 2024 Olympic diving team.   Really, I think I just missed out on the whole "fluttery" stage of her movements.  Nothing feels much different than it always has, she's just getting stronger.

I can't shave my legs in the shower.  I have to be sitting, and it takes twice as long.  I don't even want to think about shaving once my belly gets really big.

I have to sleep on my left side, snuggling with a body pillow to support my belly and legs, with another big pillow behind me to support my back and deter me from rolling over, and a huge blanket wrapped around everything to keep it all in place.  John loves it.

I have to go to the bathroom all the time.  Which I expected.  But I have to use the bathroom at all sorts of strange places.   And since we've already discussed how difficult getting dressed is, now we have to add getting re-dressed in a dirty, smelly public bathroom at Balboa Pier.

Snacks are only allowed to be healthy.  Apple slices and carrot sticks instead of Snicker's bars and potato chips.  Peeps don't count, they're 95% air.  Same with Slurpees.  And water instead of soda and juice.  Water is the least delicious beverage ever invented.