Summer Rise
I count any temperature above 20C as hot weather, prompting my beloved Australian to call me his "delicate winter flower." But our one-windowed apartment has no hope of a cross breeze, and it's 28 today. I've been making sourdough bagels, and the dough rises fast.
I learned from my recently-pregnant friends that the placenta can attach in one of several positions in the uterus. Mine is anterior, described as a sort of pillow between the fetal movements and our ability to perceive them. I was sad about this originally, but this little one seems to be compensating.
As far as I can tell, the fetus is awake most of the time now. Cute flutters have transitioned more to grape stomping revels. When we visited Hamburg for a long weekend, baby's kicks were strong and consistent enough that both my sister and her husband could feel them.
The developments are fast. I recently met a new friend for after-work drinks. She's only a couple of weeks behind me in her pregnancy, but is still in the "I think I might have felt something" phase.
Over our non-alcoholic beers (hers a canned IPA, mine something on tap— surprisingly available and decent at the local pubs), we discussed both of our careers in environmental nonprofits before joking about how to get to the hospital for labor. They're not that far away, and staying active is supposed to be good for you. We could walk there, pausing for contractions. Her Dutch boyfriend offered to take her on the back of his bicycle.
It's refreshing to talk shop and not just babies. Prenatal yoga feels strangely cultish: a full room of swollen-bellied vessels breathing through postures designed for fetal positioning and labor practice.
The body is doing a lot, of course. I'm seeing a physical therapist about the pelvic joint issue, and it means I can walk more than a couple of blocks without sharp pain now. She has determined that my whole left posterior chain is weak, so I have several sets of stretchy-band exercises to do at home.
In the meanwhile, my blood pressure is shockingly low (though not in a way that triggers medical concern). At night, in the heat of our loft, my feet and ankles swell to puffy. The right ankle gets big enough that I try to think of an inciting incident, but I think it's just the resurgence of a misstep in Portugal this January.
For all that, the more I do, the better I feel. I half expect someone to call me out at the climbing gym for bouldering with an obvious baby belly, but nobody does. I'm careful. I lift weights. Joint stability improves. The trouble is, if it turns out I overdid, I spend the whole next day exhausted and ravenous.
I eat thick-sliced tomatoes roughened with salt, cold plums, Ryvita with cheddar and apples, spicy Turkish pickles. I salt everything and down electrolyte water, but my blood pressure won't rise. The frozen peas I'm using to ice my feet don't do much, so I eat them with butter. I'm writing, working on a middle grade book, but it's a full-time job failing to take care of myself.
This belly: it feels big, and it's got four more months of growing. I'm working out just to keep up with the symptoms. I'm getting better at giving grace, taking naps. I need to.
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