Awkwardly Social

Well, no one ever said producing a movie while you’re 8+ months pregnant would be easy.  Especially one set in the desert.  Where you actually shoot in the desert.

My feet and ankles have reached new swelling potential.  It’s a sight to see today and they kind of feel like they’re going to split open.  It’s pretty terrible, actually, but given that I’ve had almost zero issues, I’ll take it.

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.  She did an ultrasound (the last time I’ll get to see him on the inside unless I don’t deliver before July 8th) and while I didn’t see his profile I saw his beating heart and his chest rising and falling doing practice breathing.  He’s head down, measuring at about 4 1/2 pounds.

We’re still about 6 weeks away from meeting him, and most of that time I’ll be working, but it’s starting to feel really close.  REALLY CLOSE.

I get one of those pregnancy update things and today they were like, “Your baby is the size of a durian fruit and you have 49 days until your due date.”  And I was like, durian fruit? The hell?  And then I let the 49 day thing sink in and woah…  Also there was an adorable little “milestone.” It said in 3 weeks I’ll go to my last day of work.  Snort, laugh, roll eyes. (PANIC QUIETLY because I’m going to be working until 39 weeks.) Everyone I’ve talked to is always very sure that working until your due date is the very best thing you can do because people like me are prone to flipping out and obsessing if we don’t have other things to keep us occupied.  Everyone except one woman I work with who has 3 kids.  She said in kind of an exhausted voice that she was SO happy when the 36 week mark rolled around and she could just sit around and not have to work all day.

I have a nice heat rash under my boobs right now, which promises only to get worse as it gets hotter and I continue to not have air conditioning in my car.  So, that’s nice and comfortable.  Seth, Allie and I scored some free tickets to a Dodger game, the first and maybe last I’ll get to go to this season.  I ate a Dodger dog, a soft pretzel, peanuts and Cracker Jacks and was totally suffering all night.

The womb expansion is getting impressive, even though I saw someone I knew in film school and after I told him I was 33 weeks, he said, “oh you don’t look that pregnant!” I assure you, dude, I am.  I really am.

Last year my mom was alive.  A quick check into my archives reveals nothing, did I talk to her?  I must have called her.  Maybe I didn’t.  My mom was vocally opposed to Hallmark holidays, but now that I think about it maybe she secretly liked them. In the moments after I got the call from my sister that my mom was gone, I frantically tried to remember the last time I had talked to her.  Those days, weeks, months before she died were filled with a miscarriage, failed IUIs, and crazy making fertility drugs and I still don’t know what the last conversation I had with her was about.  I remember her feeling really terrible that I was having so much trouble and the uncanny way she didn’t ever bring up adoption or “just relaxing” or any of those trite things that moms can say while trying to be helpful.  She wasn’t always a perfect mother, but she certainly knew how to mother me while I was trying to become one myself.

I’m about 8 weeks away from giving birth, and coincidentally about 8 weeks away from the anniversary of my mom’s death. Life has a way of just going on, doesn’t it?

This week was a particularly rough one.  I worked about a 60 hour week, plus my night job of producing a movie, and then Lula got skunked (and I considered letting her loose and forgetting I ever owned a dog) and then I got sick with a man cold and no one was here to take care of me, so I just kept keeping on.  Because, what else are you going to do, quit? As a horse trainer would say, “She ain’t got no quit.” Which isn’t actually true, I have plenty of quit, just not stocked up on it right now.

So single digit number of weeks left until my due date…. Here’s where everyone who had their first baby 2 weeks late is like, oh, lady, you’re so dumb.

I wake up tired, I am tired all day, I come home and put my feet up, and then at 12am I am still unable to go to sleep.  Part of that is not having Seth around, part of it is making a horror movie is full of horror all on its own, part of it is I purposely tried to scare myself to help us figure out a scary scene in the movie and now I actually AM scared, and part of it is this baby is really fucking uncomfortable in there.  Or so it seems from the kicking.

I’m not sure if this video will make visual sense, but I was laying on my side and shooting side ways.  Basically you should tilt your head to the way left.  Anyway, at about 20 seconds in he really lays into me. This had been going on for about 45 minutes.

And here is the bump.  I don’t see much difference from last week, but uh, the scale does!