Waiting For The Golden Trimester - A Reflection Back To Pregnancy

This is a mommy and a baby heartrock. I found them both yesterday morning when I was walking my perfect Doberman. I was thinking about babies - I had just babysat the past two days for a quite delicious baby on one of the days and a now one and a half and running around and oh so cute toddler on the other - and I looked down and there they were, nestled right next to each other among many other, non-heartrock rocks. I picked them up and put them in my pocket and then added them to the collection of heart shaped rocks that I have on the window sill in my kitchen. And that was it.

Until later yesterday when I was driving home from a really lovely day in Santa Barbara where I first got my new computer fixed. The operative word here is new. The space bar and the period were not working on the keyboard which I learned has been a problem with the new - and thin and sleek and light - Macs because, to make them so light and sleek and thin means it is very difficult to protect the keyboard from dust and grime. Hence a small bit of said dust got under the spacebar and alas, it did not work. Nor the period. But it got fixed with a bit of forced air from a can which the Apple Genius said I must purchase of my own for future needs. 

Funny story, I was dictating to Siri about my space bar and my period not working and she kept making a space and putting in a period rather than writing "spacebar" and "period." She's funny.

So, I did that, and then I went to this amazing consignment shop where I actually sell a lot of my clothes and instead - just to shake things up - I bought these quite extraordinary Alexander McQueen pants. And a few other things that I need. 

And then I met my middle daughter and a friend of hers and we spent the afternoon at Earth Day. We ate yummy food and listened to good music and sat in the sun and walked around and held a HUGE boa constrictor and met some great people.  

I came home and rearranged the clothes in my closet to make room for those necessary pieces I just acquired. And then I started this writing, the night before the Monday morning that my writing is shared with you, because it was on my mind.

So, the Golden Trimester. 

I want to say it is a lie. But that is not true. There is such a thing as the Golden Trimester, but I remember, and this could just be me, that it is not a trimester in length. It is much shorter. And I do not think it came right when I entered the second trimester. Which is what it is. The Golden Trimester is the second one. The first one is the: I am newly pregnant and - as was the case with the same middle daughter I just had this lovely day with yesterday - I spent a lot of time "coughing in the toilet" as my two and half year old son would call it while I struggled through my morning sickness. 

Trimester number one was also the trimester of being really tired. Like really. And achy because things are stretching that have never stretched before. Like a uterus. And breasts. Like pre-period achy breasts but more because they are also growing. So they are heavy. So achy and stretchy and heavy and tired and possibly a bit of toilet coughing. And hungry. 

And as you get close to that twelve week mark you can see the outline of gold in the distance. And it is beckoning you along to what is promised to be the best trimester. The Golden one.  But alas, it does not come at quite twelve weeks. If I remember correctly it came at more like fourteen or fifteen weeks. 

And then, at sixteen weeks it was gone. Poof. 

This could Just be me again because I was one of the biggest pregnant people that I know. Truly. I am not kidding here. Short waisted and small boned (not tiny boned, but small) my babies showed up on me quite early. Like first trimester early. And so my theory is that I was a second trimester baby carrier in girth during my first trimester and so became a third trimester baby mama at about week sixteen - right in the middle of what should have been the Golden Trimester.

Let me take a bit more time to talk about how big I was... in my belly. My feet did not swell, my rings still fit, my face stayed thin (I'll skip the keyboard analogy here) but turn me sideways and I could not fit through a door. I got stuck in bathroom stalls because the doors open inward and so I had to face towards the back as I opened the door. I did not fit under the desks at my law school and so they had to bring in a special table and chair for me at the back of the room. I was stopped in the street at around six months with a well you certainly look like you are ready to pop! Nope...three more months to go. The entire third trimester actually.  

So you can see that the Golden Trimester (notice I keep writing this in capital letters - to give it the reverence it deserves) well, it was fleeting.

This is not to say that I did not love being pregnant. I LOVE being pregnant. Truly. I mean, a life is in my belly. With a personality that comes forth even before they come forth. It is, by far, the most amazing experience of my life being a mother to these first in my belly and then babies and then children and then adults of mine. And worth ever bit of every thing that went along with it.

Well maybe not the clothes.

Because back in the nineties  the maternity clothes - they sucked. At least they did where I lived. There were bows and bears - on clothes for me!?!? And god forbid you were able to find a diaper bag that did not have little animals on it. Cool, trendy, good looking maternity clothes were not easy to come by back then. And, considering the fact that clothing is my art form, well, this was not good.

But everything else, worth every second.