Heavy
“If the baby weight was checked luggage, we’d be verging on exceess baggage fees…”
This post is now available on my new Substack as well!
The baby is coming out, one way or another, in two to seven weeks. And at long last, it’s seriously hampering my lifestyle.
Pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel in both hands, plus overwhelming exhaustion, mean I should probably stop volunteering for manual labor in parks and gardens twice a week. I’ve also finally stopped climbing — my hands are so sore that I struggle opening the lever door handles in my home some of the time.
At night, my hands and feet are swollen enough that I sleep with an ice pack. The accompanying itching, fortunately, turns out not to be pre-eclampsia or any of several available terrible pregnancy rashes.
No, the doctor on the phone tells me. The little poison oak-like pustules appearing between my fingers and toes are not related to pregnancy at all. It’s scabies.
I’m not familiar. “Is there another word that might be used in another country?” I seek to clarify. “Bedbugs? Eczema?”
But no, it is indeed scabies: little mites that have likely been living on us for the last month or so and have now laid tiny eggs under my skin.
