Truth and Normalcy
It’s coming up on 10 weeks and I’ve started to get used to this bump on my belly. It’s here and it’s not going anywhere. Not for another thirty weeks at least!
It’s been an interesting week, actually. I’ve been alone all week as my partner has been away on business. It’s given me time and space to just *be* in, which has helped to contextualize some of what I’ve been feeling.
I’ve been much more positive, mentally, than in previous weeks, in light of having had the worst day of nausea to date on Tuesday:
I was coming home from an appointment at about ten thirty at night and while I was in the cab, I kept feeling like I was going to lose my dinner. I would breathe it down, talk myself out of it, and then it would threaten again. On three separate occasions throughout the ride home, I came just a moment away from asking the driver to pull over so that I could be sick on the side of the road. Eventually, I made it back to my apartment complex without having to do that. The walk up the stairs was another feat and then when I arrived at home, I suddenly felt better. About five minutes later, however, the recovery was a lark and I was bent over at the toilet retching where I stayed for about fifteen lonely minutes. Nothing came up. I just dry heaved like you do when you’ve had too much to drink but have already gotten everything out of your stomach. (Oh, I shudder at being able to remember that feeling from my days of partying. Yuck!) Anyway, following this, I was relatively fine. Slightly weak, of course, but I was able fall asleep without any other nauseous waves.
I have had a fairly calm few days since with little to no bouts of nausea. So far so good. I think it’s because I’ve taken to eating small meals and lots of snacks. This has helped. Even just a few crackers or a piece of toast and I feel instantly better. As soon as I’m a bit hungry, it’s accompanied by the nausea. I find it so bizarre to simultaneously want to chow down on everything in sight while also wanting to puke up everything I’ve chowed down on! What I am taking from this experience is just that: the uniqueness.
We have to champion our unique experiences here, don’t we?! How lucky am I that I can now say that I’ve experienced that!!
(Here’s to positivity…)
In other news, I have started to tell my extended community back in my home country and the response has been beautiful. Lots of warmth and love, even from my once-bitter ex-partner who only recently started speaking to me again. Wonders abound! Sharing the news is really rewarding even if no one can really hold the reality of the news in the way that we do here, in our home, in our intimate lives. That’s to be expected, of course. Everyone is wrapped up in their own lives and our news is just a small part in their worlds while, in our world, it is news around which we are orbiting daily in anticipation and excitement. But even if it is just a momentary bubbling email or a happy smile, they have made all the difference. It’s really lovely to feel community springing up in my mind like spring flowers, especially being so far away and sometimes feeling the desertification of distance. Self-imposed, I know, but dry, Beijing-style distance all the same.
One of my friends back home who I actually met in China (love that!) is the mother of two beautiful little girls and she wrote me this:
“The one thing that I firmly believe is that a woman should never doubt her pregnant body (or any other form her body is in). Whatever you are feeling, be it a desire for a western dill pickle 🙂 or not wanting to be touched, or fatigue, have the confidence to listen to your body and know that it is telling you the truth! Every single thing a pregnant woman feels is right. No book will ever give you the right answer of “is this normal” because if it is happening to you, it is normal.”
What precious words to read at a time when everything feels so foreign to me, namely my whole body! And then add to that being surrounded by a foreign culture that dishes out foreign advice and ideas and imperatives as though there’s no other way to do things. Yes, “normal” is relative and I need to remember that I am truth because I simply am. The truth is what is.
This is the truth.
Next up will be making sure we have our appointment booked properly for the 12 week marker. I can’t wait to see movement on an ultrasound monitor!! Two more weeks and they’ll surely fly by. Between now and then, my in-laws are coming for five days and there’s lots of business to take care of. I started writing this blog at only 5.5 weeks and we’re already coming up on 10 weeks. I can’t believe it!
But it’s the truth.