SS Ashley Makes Berth

So today marks three more weeks left of my pregnancy before C-Day! I have some minor apprehensions about undergoing surgery again, especially knowing I will have a long healing process ahead of me. I am lucky though as my Dad will be flying out for three whole weeks to help us and I have been spending the last few months preparing for it, so I’m about as ready as I can be. I know what to expect this time around both during the surgery and afterwards. In order to both give me something to look forward to (apart from our baby, that is a given!) I’ve started thinking of all the wonderful things I will be able to do once I’m no longer pregnant.

1. I want to see my feet. They’re down there I’ve been told. But I can’t paint my toes. Or reach them (but I couldn’t really touch my toes before my pregnancy so that’s not really a big loss). It’s not really a priority honestly, but that seems like the obvious one.

2. I want to drink wine again. I miss it. Let’s be honest, this is really #1 but I didn’t want to seem too eager. I’ve spent the last two weeks slowly but surely restocking my wine rack from Costco and Bevmo’s 5 cent wine sale. I’m also really tired of the nasty awkward looks I get when I buy wine at eight months pregnant. I’m not drinking it now, people!

3. I’m quite tired of the judgey looks I get from people in general while pregnant. Yes, I’m drinking coffee. The wine in my cart is for cooking, not drinking. Yes, I’m having another child and my daughter’s only two. Yes, I can carry my own gallon of milk, but thanks for checking. No, I’m not having a boy. Yes, I can have cold medicine. No, you can’t touch my belly.

4. I want to be able to wear pants again that don’t look like I borrowed them from Comic Book Guy from “The Simpsons” and be able to wear one or two tank tops without my belly button popping out through the shirt. Or have to deal with the fact that my shirts don’t always cover my stomach, unbeknownst to me and I’ve been walking around not only with coffee stains down my front (because I only own three shirts that WILL cover my belly and they all have stains on them at this point) but with my lower belly hanging out. Pretty sure I’m on peopleofwalmart.com now.

5. I’m kind of a coffee person in the morning. Like the kind of coffee person that makes a cup, drinks it for an hour, then makes a second cup, and if I’m having a really bad day I pretend that I didn’t have half a cup after that. I’m tired of calculating how many milligrams of caffeine I’ve had during the day to try to figure out if I have to forego an afternoon glass of icy cold diet pepsi….mmm…

6. I know this will take awhile, but I can’t wait to be able to do back-to-back errands, take my kids to the park, go to the zoo, tackle a household to do list without having to take a couch break after an hour or give up and go home because cleaning the toilet AND  carrying Olive from the car to the driveway is too damn taxing. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy a good vegging out session with a glass of something cold, some chip dip, and my DVR, but I don’t like to be forced to be a couch potato. If it becomes a necessity I become resentful. And I eat too much chip dip.

7. For some reason both Blue and Olive seem to understand that I am severely physically limited. This means that Olive thinks its hilarious to wait for me to take off her diaper and then run away from me giggling and continue in a “keep-away” game and watch me waddle after her. Blue thinks this is equally fun, but he’ll grab a toy or piece of trash and then wait for me to get within two inches of his mouth and then gallop away to another part of the house.

Whatever. Eat your garbage. Don’t wear a diaper. I don’t care. If I’m lucky, maybe Blue will eat the toddler poo later. I may have used this tactic already earlier this week when the cat vomited on the floor. I waited for the cat to eat it later and when he didn’t, I just let the dog in. Its called working smarter, not harder.

8. I love my pregnancy pillow, it’s large and envelopes me at night like a super comfy boyfriend pillow. I think my husband would remind me that I shouldn’t need a boyfriend pillow when I have a husband but that’s beside the point. It takes up far too much of the bed (two thirds of a queen size bed) and I’m sure Matt will be glad to see it go.

9. I would like to be able to not have to pee every ten minutes. I almost peed my pants yesterday, because Blue blocked my entrance into the hallway and refused to move out of the way so I could open the baby gate to go use the bathroom. I’m also too pregnant to be able to physically move the dog myself (actually I’m too small to do this even when I’m not pregnant). He literally had me trapped in the living room with no way to get past him. I may have gained twenty pounds, but those twenty pounds are currently resting on my bladder  and Blue still has forty-five pounds on me on a good day. On a bad day he has more. He was upset because he thought I was going to leave him in the living room alone for the rest of the night, but he didn’t understand when I explained I just needed to pee. I almost started crying. It was super embarrassing. I finally had to grab treats and chuck them into the living room and then make a run for it. I felt like Sam Neill in Jurassic Park when he throws the flares over the bridge to distract the T-Rex. I also sort of felt like the lawyer on the porta potty who later gets eaten by the T-Rex. I was that desperate.

10. I know its supposed to be a good thing when the baby is moving and its supposed to be this magical experience feeling the baby kick. I realize I’m not going to get the “Mother of the Year” award for admitting this, but I’m over it. I’d like to be able to eat a handful of Skittles or try to take a nap without getting jabbed, kicked and somersaulted from the inside in the ribs, spleen, and hoo haw. And after five months of it I literally feel like Sigourney Weaver in “Alien.” Like at any moment a hand or foot (or for all I know an alien head) is going to pop its way out of my stomach, probably demanding more Skittles. If that happens, is it still considered a “natural birth”?

11. I’m tired of being a vessel. Some women love being pregnant and relish the whole experience. Their body is this mystical vessel and they are growing new life inside of them. I just want my body back. And I don’t mean because its swim suit season. I want to be able to do all the things I did before I was pregnant without having to worry about whether its OK for the baby. It sounds bad and selfish, but its true. I don’t want to be a vessel anymore. I’m not a vase or a boat. I’m a person.

I know I have plenty of other awesome things to look forward to once I’m not pregnant anymore. Like having two kids, instead of one. Being a family of four, instead of three. Olive will get to be a big sister. But I also like to find joy and purpose in life’s little things too. Like a couch, a glass of Francis Coppola, a nice spread of goat cheese, and a full DVR queue waiting for Matt and I after the kids go to sleep. And that’s kind of hard to do when I’m also a vessel.