Editor's note: Jenna is blogging about her adventures through pregnancy. Here's this week's installment of Jenna's (Baby) Food for Thought.
It's hot. I mean, it's REALLY hot. It's a steamy, sticky, soupy, sweaty kind of hot. It's a "please don't stand too close to me," "let's all stay indoors," "I think I'm sweating outta my belly button" kind of hot. So let’s all respect each other’s personal space (I’ve got a built in barrier with this baby bump), let’s think twice before any random pregnant-woman-stomach touching and (to all the ladies out there), let’s just acknowledge it’s going to be series of bad hair days this week. It’s just too hot. Add to that this extra large cantaloupe attached to my midsection... and it’s that much worse.
The heat index this week is slated to hit over 100 here in New York. It was 95 on Sunday, the day we had our "friends and family" baby shower ... outdoors. (We also had our absolutely lovely TODAY baby shower outdoors earlier in the week, so clearly we’re not learning any lessons here.)
We planned it months ago and at the time, I think my thought process was pretty simple:
CATERER AVIVA: Are you sure you want to have the shower outside?
ME: I feel like as long as it doesn’t rain, we should be fine.
CATERER AVIVA: What if it’s hot?
ME: How hot can it be? So we’ll just be a little warm. No biggie.
Well, I guess “a little warm” was one way of putting it. I wore this cute little green cotton dress, which went great with the not-as-cute little pools of sweat under my arms, around my belly, down my back and up the sides. (Mental note: Do not wear cute little green dresses during a heat wave.)
It was too late to move the shower indoors, so we sucked it up, commiserated with the other guests, and hoped that the intense heat combined with the sangria would go right to our friends’ heads and they’d forget it was hot. It would take a second, more brutal heat wave to forget this first one, but we still had a nice time. And now we have nice leftovers. A lot of leftovers.
So while battling the heat, I’m also battling some other hot topics in the last six weeks that I have before this baby comes…
1. The inability to sleep. I can’t sleep on my right side, on my back, on my stomach, on my left side, standing up, leaning on an arm, propped up, wedged up with pillows or hanging from my ankles ... so that leaves exactly zero adequate sleeping positions and it results in zero minutes of sleep.
2. Finding clothes to wear ... especially on TV. There’s only so much stretching cotton will do! At what point does an XXXXXXXXXXXXXL T-shirt and stretchy shorts become a fashion statement? What’s that? The day after never? Sounds about right.
3. Smells. Oh, the smells! I don’t know why or how this happens, but when you’re pregnant, your sense of smell is superhero-esque. I can smell garbage from 30 city streets away. I can smell sweat from 30 people away, and I can smell underground subway stench from 30 stops away. It’s awful. If there was a way I could harness this ability, turn it into powerful vision and save it for post-pregnancy, I could probably make some money off it. But for now, I’m just stuck smelling my way through this heat wave.
4. The "nearing the end" advice you get from people who "absolutely know everything":
You’re carrying low. You’re definitely having a boy. (I’m having a girl.)
You won’t have back pain; you’re in too good shape. (I had back pain.)
You have to get an epidural. There’s NO other way to have a baby. (Really?)
Do NOT get an epidural. That’s NO way to have a baby. (Really?)
Breastfeed!/No, don’t breastfeed.
Make baby food!/Don’t waste time on baby food.
Thank you, world, but I think Steph and I will take it from here. The best experience comes from experience and we have to gather that on our own. We’ll trip and we’ll fall and we’ll get back up and learn from our mistakes and hopefully do it better the next time. I’m far from perfect. My kid will be far from perfect … but I wouldn’t want it any other way.