Browsing Category: Pregnancy

“Next time I see you, you’ll be a mom”

Motherhood still feels quite a ways away. There are moments in the day when I’m caught up in work, or hanging out with Dean on the couch, and I actually forget I’m pregnant. Sure, the heartburn and ever growing stomach and giant swollen ankles serve as pretty decent reminders when Harley isn’t kicking up a storm, but there are periods in the day when I’m not thinking about being knocked up and what that means for the future. But then there are also massive reminders that sort of blow my mind, and this weekend I got one of them.

One of our awesome Lazygamer people, Darryn, doesn’t live in Joburg. That means that when rAge rolls around, he flies up to Gauteng to join in the cosplay and general fun times of the gaming weekend. Last year, he crashed on my couch and we had a whole lot of fun. Of course we wanted to repeat the fun time again this year, and thus he ended up on my couch again. We had a ridiculously busy few days together and then all of a sudden it was Sunday and time for him to head home. We were saying our farewells and one of the last things he said to me was “next time I see you, you’ll be a mom”. Holy. Crap. Continue Reading

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4 Comments Pregnancy

Why I won’t have a baby registry after all

A few weeks back, I wrote about my discomfort with the idea of a baby registry. It felt like begging to me and I worried that friends and family would think I was expecting them to pay for mine and Dean’s decision to procreate. However, thanks to some awesome feedback from people who read my words, I decided that it wasn’t begging, but simply a guideline for those who want to buy presents for my little munchkin. It is rather fun to buy baby stuff, and people like to feel helpful, so why not tell them what I want and need for those who are unsure of what I might want. I stressed to Stacey (probably way more than I needed to, but hopefully she knows I’m pregnant and apparently need to say things a million times) that I want the invite to say that while gifts are appreciated, they really are not required at all; I don’t want anyone to feel like an invite to the baby shower is actually me trying to dip into their pockets.

So, prepared to shop for all the fun stuff, Stacey and I set to work making a baby shower. WHAT. A. MISSION! We had already ruled out Baby City because they only allow you to make a registry close to the shower date, plus none of it ends up online so you actually have to go to the specific store where the registry was done and rummage in the registry bin. Instead, we went to another major baby outlet, and then another, and then another. Almost all of them let you register, but almost none of them have sites that list all the products that they actually stock. For example, on the Babies R Us registry, i could find a manual AVENT breast pump, but not an electric one. And I could find one model of Angel Care monitor, but not the one I actually wanted. All this despite the fact that I’ve SEEN the ones I wanted in the actual stores. Continue Reading

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5 Comments Pregnancy, South Africa

Real vs imagined connections

I have been desperate for Dean to feel Harley’s kicks. I can feel her moving, growing and generally doing her thing inside me and it’s so magical every time… except when she’s throwing her 3am dance parties. It makes the whole thing feel that much more real (and sometimes alien) and I want to share it with Dean. With her kicks getting stronger and more predictable, I tried to get his hand in the right spot at the right time to feel her movements. This weekend, I thought I had managed, but I think the movements were a bit too far under the surface as Dean said he couldn’t feel anything but gurgling that could have just been my stomach rumbling (it wasn’t).

That tiny disappointment, combined with a series of work disappointments was making me feel a bit down going in to the rAge weekend. For those who don’t know, rAge is a massive gaming expo that takes place each year in Joburg where tons of gaming media, distributors, community and fans gather in the ridiculously hot and sweaty Dome and get to play games, buy merch and generally have a rad time. I was feeling a bit down about it, mostly because there were a few people I had considered friends who had turned out to be lying to me. I was feeling like maybe I was wrong all along, and like the possible stomach gurgling, maybe my connections with people weren’t magical but were simply imagined. Thankfully, I was proved wrong. Continue Reading

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2 Comments Gaming, Geek, Pregnancy, Rambling

Pregnant in a bikini

I like to think that I’m a fairly confident person. I have no problem speaking in public, meeting strangers, and I’m mostly comfy enough in my own skin to wear what I like and flaunt what I’ve got. At the same time, I’m still a woman, which means that I have my own obsessions about how I look and plenty of days when I think I’m too fat to wear anything other than certain dresses or whatever that I’m comfy in no matter what (every person needs those outfits). Being pregnant, and more specifically pregnant with a girl, has made me need to reevaluate a lot of my own body issues, and get over myself.

I have always had a round figure. I’m fortunate enough to have round “squishy bits” as my husband likes to call them (I hate when he calls them that, of course), so I tend towards an hourglass figure… although that cinched in around the middle bit isn’t generally as small as I’d like. In particular, I hate my stomach and I always have. Even at my thinnest/fittest/healthiest, I have found my stomach to be my least favorite body part. Now, though, it’s filled with a tiny human, and that makes it better, but I plan to do even better with my body image stuff. Continue Reading

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3 Comments Parenting, Pregnancy

Am I bad at being pregnant?

Pregnancy is weird. Or maybe I’m weird, or maybe it’s a combination of both. I haven’t had a particularly difficult pregnancy, knock on wood. I haven’t had a lot of the symptoms that would have made this experience much more unpleasant – no morning sickness, minimal breakouts and while I have some moody days, they aren’t as overwhelming and omnipresent as they could be. But I definitely go in waves about the whole pregnancy thing.

Don’t get me wrong, there are moments that are incredible. I love going for the scans and see what she’s up to in there. I love feeling her little kicks, even when they’re at 3am and I wish she’d just go to sleep. It’s incredible to think that she is growing in there, a part of me and then one day will be separate from me. I am growing a human, even if I sometimes joke that she’s just a parasite. It feels incredibly alien, but also amazing sometimes. But today I feel like I’m bad at it all. Continue Reading

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4 Comments Pregnancy