Pregnancy ain't easy

Not that I ever thought it would be.

First, there's this perpetual in-limbo state I find myself in. Waiting...waiting...and waiting some more. Waiting until my twenty-week ultrasound. Waiting to find out the gender. Waiting until I'm *really* showing. Waiting to buy the baby gear I want to purchase NOW. Waiting until I can afford the bigger-ticket items! Waiting to set up a baby room until I know the gender. Waiting for the holidays to get here. You get the idea. I remarked to someone today how I seem to be wishing my life away, at least for the next five or so months. I'm finding it difficult to enjoy the now, rather than constantly trying to look down the road. And I don't quite know how to stop.

Physically, it's hard to feel not at 100 percent for an extended period of time. I frequently catch myself wishing I felt more like my "old" self. But would I wish to not ever be pregnant? Not in a million years. I'm really sick and tired of always feeling exhausted all the time, even though I KNOW it's only gonna get worse. As a middle school teacher of 120-plus students, I'm finding it really challenging to keep up with everything, especially the ever-present grading of papers. (Perfect example: today my students generated four pages-worth of work during a 45 minute class period, making a grand total of yet another 480 pages for me to grade. It creates quite the stack. And there will always be more the next day.) Not that I'm *ever* in the mood to do it. It's one of those comes-with-the-territory evils, and one that's not ever going to go away for the next fifteen-or-so years. It's just harder to accept it when one is pregnant. And whatever happened to the so-called increased energy I'm supposed to feel during my second trimester, huh?! Haven't seen it yet. All I feel is more tired, a lot more hungry all the time, and even my boobs feel more sore, which is *definitely* not supposed to be happening right now. I'm chalking it up to a growth spurt or three on the part of this tiny little human sharing space in my body. *sigh*

I am also finding it somewhat hard to be pregnant by myself. I did anticipate that this would be challenging, and I was right. It's still a ton of fun to dream and imagine what it's going to be like, especially this newfound mission of shopping online for all things baby. But there are also a lot of times when it's downright lonely. The people around me don't want to hear about all the pregnancy-related thoughts spinning around in my head, and for the most part I don't talk about it except to answer random questions now and then. (The most annoying one by far is constantly being asked, "So how are you FEELING?" Um, fine, thanks.) When it comes down to it, women have been going through this for eons, and there is DEFINITELY more to life than being pregnant. Even though right now it's foremost in my brain.

I hope this post doesn't come across as being too complain-y, because I don't mean it to be. I still wouldn't trade this opportunity for anything in the world. But this blog was intended to be a safe place for me to process some of these thoughts flying through my head, and these are all thoughts that I've found myself burying (and not really talking about) until now. It feels great to put them into words and nail them down to this computer screen. It'll be interesting to reread them after the baby is born. :)