The inability to whine

So, here's the thing about being pregnant after you've lost a child: you feel incredibly guilty about complaining.

After being blessed with a healthy, normal pregnancy, a second chance rainbow baby, it very much feels like I've lost my right to complain. I've now spent a lot of time with women who have experienced loss, or multiple losses, or are struggling with seriously ill children or infertility, and it makes many of them very angry when women who are having normal pregnancies complain about the downsides of being pregnant.

I get that. I've felt that, too.

But what do you do when you're, frankly, kind of miserable in the last few weeks of pregnancy? When that healthy, big, baby boy is crushing your pelvis, wreaking havoc on your internal organs, fostering agonizing heartburn, and just generally making you uncomfortable?

It makes me realize, ironically, how spoiled I was with Harper. She was such a tiny little thing, we never reached this last miserable stage together. Plus, I was so over the top with anxiety about her medical conditions and fear of her arriving early that I barely had time to think about my own condition. Every pain and twinge immediately made me worry something was wrong with the baby.

The spawn is not tiny. And he is making me intensely uncomfortable. I ache all over, and I can't sleep. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, "Am I done yet?"

And then I remember.

How desperate I was to get to the full term mark with Harper. How scary the idea of a premature baby with a heart defect seemed. How horrible life in the NICU was. How lucky I am to be pregnant again, with a healthy baby. How others I know are not so lucky.

So, I bite my tongue.

The anxiety doesn't help. The way I deal with anxiety is to get things done. It makes me feel better. It's why the days and weeks after Harper's death were a whirlwind of cleaning and organization and errands. Every fiber in me itches to combat the paranoia I feel about these last few weeks of pregnancy with similar activities.

Impossible to do when one can barely move. Swollen, lumbering, painful me is physically incapable of getting the stuff done that I want to, I need to, get done. It's part of what keeps me up at night. That, and the baby trying to break my ribcage and pummel my kidneys.

Everyone tells me to take it easy. Slow down. But I can't do it. When I stop, I think. And thinking is not good, right now. Thinking leads to worry. I'd rather be doing.

But I'm just so damn tired...