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psocoptera1. At 31 weeks, I have no stretch marks at all on my (large, round, that's-no-moon) belly, but I got them *months* ago on my (somewhat larger, but not dramatically so) butt.
1A. I actually kind of like them. (Having figured out they're not some icky infectious rash.) I primarily use my butt for a) sitting and b) propelling myself forward via my legs and not c) modeling thongs or something, so I don't really have any sentimental-drivel notions about the silken skin of my back (::grin:: to all one of you who catches the reference), and a meteor shower of red streaks is kind of neat-looking. It's like a free, spontaneous, highly personalized tattoo. I sort of look forward to them showing up on my belly - I can think of much worse tattoos than big red jagged bad-ass lightning bolts. (Having said that I will now become the first woman in the history of pregnancy whose stretch marks look like hearts and flowers.)
2. Having to get up in the middle of the night is not a problem. In fact, getting up is great - a little stretching, a little peeing, gulp down a bunch of water to fight overnight dehydration, switch up which hip I'm lying on... *not* waking up during the night, however, means my morning starts with an achy hip and the sensation that I might burst like a water balloon before I make it out of bed. Failure to wake up in the middle of the night sucks.
3. The inside of my belly button is soft and endlessly fascinating. I'm never going to be able to use "navel-gazers" as a pejorative again.
4. I knew I was likely to have vivid, scary dreams, and I knew I was likely to be weepy, but I did not ever put this together into "a nightmare that makes you cry every time you think about it". I am actually kind of impressed by this dream for its grandiose scale and blatancy, so if you are curious it is recorded here:
I was back at my parents house, packing things up into boxes (a lot of my dreams these days seem to start out with the boxes), but something was really wrong, it didn't make sense for us to be doing this. It turned out that we were trying to pretend we were all going to be going on a long voyage somewhere and were packing things up in preparation, but really the world was going to end. There was a whole bit where I couldn't find my wedding ring (which in real life I stopped wearing as of the trip in case my hands got puffy on the plane) and I wanted to be wearing it at the end. We finally found it and then my mom and I had a conversation about whether we believed in an afterlife and whether the baby would be there. (Dammit, days later I still can't think about that part...) At this point I woke up. But after Josh got up to go to work I fell back asleep and had the second half of the dream. We were all outside, and it was daytime, and we were waiting, and I was looking at my watch, and just when I said, hey, maybe nothing's going to happen after all, the light from the sun went *dim*, and I cannot convey the shock and terror and awe of this, and then it flared bright, and the sun sort of stretched bigger, and then the sun went out, collapsing in on itself in a shower of white sparks, while the sky faded to a night sky of stars. And I thought "that's it, I'll never see a blue sky again" and then of course "even if we don't freeze to death civilization is about to crash and we're all going to perish of starvation and riots", and Josh and I were trying to decide if we should induce labor, even though it was way, way too early, just so we could see the baby's face before we all died, which is the other part I can't think about.
I love that the point here wasn't even left to subtext, that it was pretty much spelled out: if something really bad happened it would be bad *because it threatened the baby*, the other six billion people in the world don't even merit a passing thought, end of the world = loss of the baby. It really could not have been more explicit if a stewardess had gotten up to announce that in the event of a crisis, your priorities are your mate and your child, please proceed to the nearest exit. Which, thank you pregnancy hormones, I did not actually need you reinforcing this, although props to the special effects department which really went all out on the sun visualization. (And, okay, I have to admit, if I'm going to get losing-the-baby nightmares, I am secretly proud to be coming up with mega-scale apocalypse scenarios instead of run-of-the-mill my-husband-left-and-then-the-baby-was-deformed stuff. I mean, at least I worry *big*. ::grin::)
1A. I actually kind of like them. (Having figured out they're not some icky infectious rash.) I primarily use my butt for a) sitting and b) propelling myself forward via my legs and not c) modeling thongs or something, so I don't really have any sentimental-drivel notions about the silken skin of my back (::grin:: to all one of you who catches the reference), and a meteor shower of red streaks is kind of neat-looking. It's like a free, spontaneous, highly personalized tattoo. I sort of look forward to them showing up on my belly - I can think of much worse tattoos than big red jagged bad-ass lightning bolts. (Having said that I will now become the first woman in the history of pregnancy whose stretch marks look like hearts and flowers.)
2. Having to get up in the middle of the night is not a problem. In fact, getting up is great - a little stretching, a little peeing, gulp down a bunch of water to fight overnight dehydration, switch up which hip I'm lying on... *not* waking up during the night, however, means my morning starts with an achy hip and the sensation that I might burst like a water balloon before I make it out of bed. Failure to wake up in the middle of the night sucks.
3. The inside of my belly button is soft and endlessly fascinating. I'm never going to be able to use "navel-gazers" as a pejorative again.
4. I knew I was likely to have vivid, scary dreams, and I knew I was likely to be weepy, but I did not ever put this together into "a nightmare that makes you cry every time you think about it". I am actually kind of impressed by this dream for its grandiose scale and blatancy, so if you are curious it is recorded here:
I was back at my parents house, packing things up into boxes (a lot of my dreams these days seem to start out with the boxes), but something was really wrong, it didn't make sense for us to be doing this. It turned out that we were trying to pretend we were all going to be going on a long voyage somewhere and were packing things up in preparation, but really the world was going to end. There was a whole bit where I couldn't find my wedding ring (which in real life I stopped wearing as of the trip in case my hands got puffy on the plane) and I wanted to be wearing it at the end. We finally found it and then my mom and I had a conversation about whether we believed in an afterlife and whether the baby would be there. (Dammit, days later I still can't think about that part...) At this point I woke up. But after Josh got up to go to work I fell back asleep and had the second half of the dream. We were all outside, and it was daytime, and we were waiting, and I was looking at my watch, and just when I said, hey, maybe nothing's going to happen after all, the light from the sun went *dim*, and I cannot convey the shock and terror and awe of this, and then it flared bright, and the sun sort of stretched bigger, and then the sun went out, collapsing in on itself in a shower of white sparks, while the sky faded to a night sky of stars. And I thought "that's it, I'll never see a blue sky again" and then of course "even if we don't freeze to death civilization is about to crash and we're all going to perish of starvation and riots", and Josh and I were trying to decide if we should induce labor, even though it was way, way too early, just so we could see the baby's face before we all died, which is the other part I can't think about.
I love that the point here wasn't even left to subtext, that it was pretty much spelled out: if something really bad happened it would be bad *because it threatened the baby*, the other six billion people in the world don't even merit a passing thought, end of the world = loss of the baby. It really could not have been more explicit if a stewardess had gotten up to announce that in the event of a crisis, your priorities are your mate and your child, please proceed to the nearest exit. Which, thank you pregnancy hormones, I did not actually need you reinforcing this, although props to the special effects department which really went all out on the sun visualization. (And, okay, I have to admit, if I'm going to get losing-the-baby nightmares, I am secretly proud to be coming up with mega-scale apocalypse scenarios instead of run-of-the-mill my-husband-left-and-then-the-baby-was-deformed stuff. I mean, at least I worry *big*. ::grin::)
