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Pregnancy Column #4
Here is my fourth column for the Chinese pregnancy magazine I write for.
B
Body Changes
I have to confess, I'm terrified of stretch marks.
I've been able to take many of the other pregnancy changes in stride, but this one has me worried.
While some of my friends have defiantly posted pictures of their stretch marked bellies, showing off the hard-earned growth, I'm not quite so brave. I hate thinking about what my abdomen will look like after the baby is born and I longingly sigh over my still unmarked skin, wondering if I will ever see it again after the next few months. It feels a bit vain to worry about it when there is so much else going on, but I can't help it!
According to scientists, stretch marks are often hereditary, which doesn't bode well for me. My mother had stretch marks, she sadly informed me, which means that I also will likely get them. When I asked about how bad they were, she told me, "I never wore a bikini again after having you."
Having reached the point where my belly is expanding to recognizable pregnancy proportions, I've already encountered some of the bodily changes that go along with growing a baby from microscopic size to baby-size in just nine months.
In the first few months, most of the changes were internal, but the body has a way of signaling what is going on inside there. I've gradually encountered more and more instances of heartburn, and the time I spend in the bathroom each day has noticeably increased. I've discovered that the old idea that pregnant women are always running to the bathroom definitely was based in fact.
My appetite has swung from feeling nauseous at the thought of most foods to developing cravings whenever someone mentions any kind of dish.
Justin notices the changes in me now, too, especially since his work often takes him out of town so sometimes a week goes by without him seeing me. After one such trip, he returned to announce, startled, "Wow! Your belly is getting really big!" I've warned him that during pregnancy is the only time he gets to say things like that without getting in big trouble.
Sometimes the bodily changes are funny. There is a slightly uneven lump in my belly now where the baby likes to lean. And my friends get a lot of humor value out of the discovery that I'm not quite used to my growing shape yet. More than once, I've tried to maneuver through a space that is too small for me, only to realize that no, I can't actually fit between those two chairs anymore because there is a belly in the way now!
It's not all bad, though. While there are many things to complain about, there are also some good sides to all of the changes pregnancy does to a woman's body. My breasts have expanded to a size I'd always wished they would be. I'm definitely not complaining about that, even though it makes it much harder to find bras that fit! My hair is thicker and my fingernails have become so hard and strong that broken nails have become a distant memory. Everyone says that my skin looks rosier, too, which is probably a result of all the extra blood circulating through my system. I recently learned that during pregnancy, the mother's blood increases by 50% in volume.
Of course, the baby's body is hard at work, too. The fetus is growing incredibly fast now as it puts on fat and stretches out to its full length. Sometimes I think the growth must be so fast that the baby has a hard time staying comfortable in there. At the latest ultrasound, things in there looked really cramped for the baby, like there isn't much room to swim around anymore. Maybe that's why I feel so many kicks, punches and squirming around now.
One of the cutest things I've felt comes from the development of the baby's lungs, which have begun to suck in amniotic fluid and push it back out. This apparently helps the lungs and diaphragm strengthen and prepare for breathing after birth. Amusingly, sometimes this difficult lung work gives the baby hiccups, which I learned, to my surprise, can actually be felt by the mom. Sitting on the couch one day last week, I had to giggle at my little one's hiccups bouncing my stomach around in a little rhythmic pattern. It's things like this that make me reconsider all of the problematic changes that pregnancy brings on.
So, overall, despite some mixed feelings about my rapidly changing figure, I'm finding myself pretty proud of my now visibly pregnant body. I'm trying to view it as a visible display of all the important work going on in there.
But I'm still a little bit terrified of stretch marks.
