2nd Pregnancy+Birth Plan (ish)
We are in week 32 of pregnancy. Third trimester.
“Being a parent, for me anyway, is a little like being buzzed. A saturated version of myself. The best parts get a little better, the worst parts a little worse.
I’ve had this kid for the last six months, and she’s become one of my best friends. She’s short, only a couple feet tall. Her fuzzy head snuggles me at night. I wake up to her face squished up to mine. Sometimes I wake up to her eating my chin. Christina once woke up to a hickey.
I’m thinking about making another tiny thing. Maybe with the next one I won’t smell what people ate the day before.”
I told myself this pregnancy, I would document my experience more thoroughly than my last pregnancy. I haven’t, though. I haven’t documented anything thus far, and I’m in the last two months. When Iris was living in my body, I typed notes every few days from the pos pregnancy test up until 13 weeks. Here’s what I remember.
To begin, the most distinguishable parts of this experience, ones that differentiated this kid gestation from the last one:
I thought I might be pregnant because I had a severe booger condition that was not accompanied by actual illness. Constant runny nose. Additionally, my regular PMS-feels weren’t present, like sore boobsies and some chin pimplies. I can't remember whether or not I felt waves of cramps happening, or any cramping happening, which sucks because I know during Iris’ pregnancy I had cramps for weeks and I wish I had something to reflect on so I don’t have to go onto message boards in desperation at two in the morning next time around.
I peed on a stick at 13DPO. I didn’t want to get to the point where I was feeling like my period was coming and spent time googling, “early pregnancy symptoms vs period symptoms.”
I used an app on my phone instead of tracking on paper, and I noticed a two day temp drop the month I got pregnant. Post O, my temp climbed for almost a week and then fell. It was .5 degrees lower for two days in a row, then spiked up.
We got pregnant on I think the 11th IUI. We skipped a couple of months over the course of 14 cycles. There were a few suspected miscarriages where my period showed up about a week late, but I didn’t want to test for most of our IUI-ing because I didn’t want to get addicted to peeing on sticks. In the end, we pushed up our IUI date to Day 17 from Day 16. Next time around will need to chart temps during this point in time better. The pee sticks were positive from Day 14-16. Need to consider OPK+BBT in conjunction next time to hopefully not spend an entire damn year+ trying.
My morning sickness was fucking awful this time around, not necessarily because I was really nauseous, but because I was drowning in boogers. I am still drowning in boogers. I threw up last week. The post-nasal drip, allergic-to-my-fetus thing is fucking disgusting and I didn’t have this with Iris. There were days I threw up multiple times a day. I have had to pull into the median to open the car door to throw up. This person inside of me is giving me severe drippy feelings aghhhh. Iris, I threw up a couple of times when I was really hungry and overexerted myself. This person.
On the same subject, I didn’t have the magical nose for the length of time I did with Iris. With her, Nob Hill smelled like a giant bag of fermenting farts until after I had her. With this person, I had a few weeks of debilitating olfactory powers, and then it dissipated. My ability to eat all things came back around week 13, but it was pretty terrible for about a month from week 9 on.
No aversions, no cravings for the last several months. Also, noticeably, no breakouts. Maybe my body is just much healthier. Maybe there is a person with a penis living in my body. Who knows.
My biggest whine is over my hips. I have had hip pain for much longer this time than last time, but no digestive issues. Would rather take my body feeling like it was going to fall through my legs than feel like my food would spill out my face if I lied down, so it’s fine.
This person feels less cute in my body than Iris did. Iris lied across my belly for most of my pregnancy, so I could basically hold her from the outside while she was in me. D’art’s placenta is anterior, so I felt their earliest movements weeks later than I felt Iris’. They also have been hanging out in my crotch this whole pregnancy, just poking at my cervix or kicking my ribs always. From the outside, they just aren’t visible in the way Iris was because of that snack pack. As I type this, they are wiggling their arms around my cervix. I have found myself having to roll around a lot more to get them to move out of my crotch and ribs a lot more.
What happens now?
I hang out for a couple months until I have the kid, I guess. I made a checklist a couple months ago that I need to review, and I have MORE checklists from our midwife. I don’t like the permanence of making daily plans in a book, but I do like the feeling of a checklist. Checkliiiiiiiiiiiist. We are planning for my partner’s mom to be here as close to the birth/during/after as possible, because my partner wants her own mom around this time. My mom was present for our last birth. After Iris’ birth with both my mom and sister, I thought it would be better for the whole naked/yelling party to do it as alone as possible, but Christina wants to share the birth of her grandkid with her. Hoping it doesn’t involve some unexpected hospital transfer/birth from hell so her mom can just be like, “Yeah, that is nice not having to leave the house and getting to cuddle with your family all you want.” I should write down what I envision for my birth plan. Hm. Here it is:
Get through the really fucking painful back contractions while be able to talk to cutie pie Iris in between.
Have a birth tub with hot hot water here to help with those contractions.
Have a short enough labor that I don’t need to go to sleep and wake up multiple days in a row with escalating contractions that eventually slow down and deprive me of all energy, leaving me to have the kid on my bed.
I don’t want another on-my-back labor. I want to have enough energy to have this kid on my own feet or in water. I want to not feel the back pain I felt last time that extended for over six months. I want to not end up with a yeast infection that makes peeing feel like my crotch is being torn open.
I want to have the energy to hold my baby after I have them. With Iris, I couldn’t lift her for days. I couldn’t pick her up because it hurt my back too much. She latched from an upright position and from a side position.
I want to get a nap with Christina and Iris. I want Iris to be there when tiny person is born, and I want her to get to help cut the umbilical cord and look at the placenta and wrap up a new baby and I want her to feel good about the new person in our house.
Less than twenty-four hours old, Iris.