Maybe if I keep repeating that to myself, I'll start to believe it.
At the risk of sounding ungrateful about my current gestating condition - double gestating - I'm going to whine a little. I'm tired of being BIG. And I still have about 7-8 weeks to live like this, getting larger each day.
Honestly, I'm thrilled to be having babies. I'm grateful beyond words for the opportunity to mother two more precious children. I get emotional every time I really visualize myself holding and nursing and caring for these little angels.
But seriously... these last 2 months might just seem like an eternity. I want my body back! I want to be able to jump and sprint and lay on my back and wear normal clothes and sleep comfortably....
Of course bearing children is ultimately worth any sacrifice. I feel guilty whining because my pregnancies are SO much easier than 98.742% of the others I hear about. I'm still running every morning and have decent energy levels and I don't need my own zipcode yet. So I'm basically a horrible person to still be complaining.
I came across this article in Parent's magazine online. I get several of those "your baby this week"-type emails, and the headline caught my eye. I thought it would help me get a better attitude.
Too bad it was obviously written by someone who has never actually been pregnant.
Here's the article, followed by my commentary:
25 Great Things About Being Pregnant
By now you've probably had it with always being tired and carrying around extra weight. But why not consider all the reasons to celebrate these nine months? In case you're too grumpy to think of any, here's a list:
1. You're guaranteed to stop traffic whenever you cross the street. Um, not in Utah! I'll get run over just as easily as anyone else by these crazy drivers.
2. People look at your stomach and can't help smiling, as if the mere thought of your being pregnant has actually made their day a little bit brighter. Nut-uh! Most people avoid eye contact with my belly! I think they've had or heard of bad experiences where a pregnant woman gets ticked off and goes ballistic. My large belly makes no strangers happy.
3. You can eat a whole pint of chocolate-chunk ice cream and not feel guilty. Every night. Yeah, if I want to LOOK like a chocolate chunk.
4. You can -- no, you must! --take naps. Lots of them. Please explain that to my 2-year-old.
5. Getting to name another human being. PRESSURE! Times two!
6. Watching your husband turn into a father when he kisses your belly good night, reads to the baby in utero, or stays up until 3:00 a.m. putting the crib together -- just in case the baby decides to come eight weeks early. He's allowed to touch my belly to feel the babies move. Kissing the belly would just be weird. Staying up with a crib til 3am would signal a major OCD red-flag.
7. Sex: For once in your life, you're neither worried about getting pregnant nor trying to get pregnant. You can have sex just for the pure fun of it. Yeah, because I just feel SO attractive with these 25 extra pounds on me.
8. Buying a bathing suit. It's not about hiding your flaws; it's about flaunting your belly. Ew! Sorry, but any pregnant woman wearing anything with her belly hanging out just screams trashy. A classy one-piece, please. Possibly with shorts, unless you're one of those girls that DOESN'T get pregnant-in-the-butt along with the belly. In which case, I hate you.
9. Those wild, intense, amazing pregnancy dreams in which every remote person from your past makes some sort of appearance. None of these dreams can even begin to be analyzed or understood. Wild, intense, FRIGHTENING/HORRIFYING dreams, waking me up sweating with a racing heartbeat.... just lovely.
10. The amazing anticipation. It's like all your previous birthdays and holidays rolled into one. No, because I know the day after my birthday and all holidays I'll still be sleeping 8 hours/night and not be recovering from being sliced open in a sensitive area.
11. Imagining the possibilities. Or freaking out about potential tragic scenarios.
12. More personal space! And you have no qualms about claiming it. Oh yay! No one can really hug me cuz my belly gets in the way...
13. You eat healthier, drink more water, and carefully read ingredient labels. Suddenly, it matters more to you what you put in your body. Like I need any more reasons to be a nutrition nazi.
14. In the middle of a boring meeting at work or a meaningless argument, you feel your baby squirming inside you and the sensation takes you away. It's your own secret communication. Or creating an awkward moment for everyone as I smile and yelp at a sudden kick.
15. Getting to hear the swish swish swish of your baby's heartbeat on the Doppler. And waiting in increasing degrees of paranoid agony as the nurse takes a billion minutes to find the heartbeats every time.
16. Playing "Guess the part sticking out," usually at bedtime, when your baby starts moving furniture around or whatever it is he does in there. Gee, I wonder if it's her foot or her head or her arms making painful jabs at my bladder... and my sweet little boy, punching (or is it kicking?!) my ribs and lungs so I can't breath easily... this is SO much fun guessing body parts!
17. The extra attention you get from everyone -- your husband gives you more foot rubs, and your friends call to check in more often. Neighbors offer to help; coworkers volunteer to get lunch for you; little presents (a bottle of water, an afternoon snack) mysteriously show up on your desk. And I feel pitied and handicapped. Not great for my sense of self-reliance.
18. The pregnancy beauty package: thick, silky hair; long, strong nails; beautiful skin; big boobs. LIAR! Besides the big boobs - which I don't really want - I have none of those.
19. Getting to skip to the front of the line in public rest rooms. If I was that rude...
20. Shopping for a person you haven't met yet: tiny clothes, all-new furniture, and adorable room decorations. By "shopping" they must mean accepting hand-me-downs from generous family and friends. Because nothing is fun about spending lots of money on stuff that will only be used for a few months.
21. Dreaming about the first time someone calls you "Mommy" and the first time you hear someone call your husband "Daddy." But then they'll turn 2 and discover my name is Chelsea and start calling me Chelsea just to annoy me.
22. Baby showers! They remind you how special your friends and family think you are. Ok, fine. This one is true. I like getting all my friends together and graciously accepting gifts from them :)
23. A continuous sense of accomplishment. You can answer "What did you do today?" with cool things like "I made ears" or simply "I'm making a person. What did you do?" No... nope. Definitely not. If I get nothing done all day and spend my time sitting on my big bum like a slob, trying to console myself with statements like, "I grew babies today!" isn't going to make me feel better about my lack of productivity.
24. Spending immeasurable amounts of time trying to remember all those nursery rhymes, children's songs, and lullabies. Annoying nursery rhymes with very questionable origins! We stick to primary songs. And I get frustrated when I can't remember the words to them.
25. Knowing that all the bad stuff -- the heartburn, swollen ankles, backaches, and the rest -- doesn't last forever. And that in the end, it's all worth it. Yes, extremely true. It's all veryvery worth it. So I'll stop whining now.
As embarrassing as it is, I'm posting a picture of our lawn. It's horrible. Our Provo lawn was so easy to take care of, and actually thrived despite some abuse from us (ie, the squash plants taking over). But our lawn here is rough, soggy, weed-filled, easily killed, prickly... and I have no idea what to do. We already spent a lot on hiring a guy to aerate, fertilize, power rake... and I spent a bunch on a trimmer and some Turf Builder from Home Depot. Brian actually really enjoys using it and feeling all manly doing yardwork. 
Our lawn isn't the worst looking in the neighborhood... the foreclosed homes make us look better. And the rental homes with shoddy property management companies. But our neighbor just two houses down, Doug, has a lawn and yard right out of a magazine. It's painful to compare ours. I never thought I'd care so much about something as seemingly trivial as our lawn. But it really bothers me (as evidenced by this long-winded and relatively pointless post dedicated to it). OH - and our TREE - this is the weirdest part. Look closely - the leaves STOP halfway up! The last few feet of every branch are BARE and dead! But you can see the neighbor's tree across the street looks good. So do most of the rest of the trees on the street. We're just the lucky ones. 
g
n
nt) adj.
