I scared myself the other day when I realized I don't remember my pregnancy very well, nor Mabel's first few months with us. I hope I don't have amnesia. And I hope that when I got electrocuted by a faulty vacuum cleaner cord last month that it didn't mess with my brain. Maybe, just maybe, Mother Nature makes us not remember so that we will decide to get pregnant again and thus keep the human race going.
Now when I say I don't remember, I don't mean that I don't recall ANYTHING. Of course I remember giving birth (I explained it in some detail in my last post, actually). And I can remember coming home, and Mabel drinking out of those teeny newborn bottles. I also recall writing all her feedings down and how they were about 2.5 hours apart. And I have memories of the baby swing, and that vibrating bouncy chair, and some of her really cute outfits.
But a lot of the details are gone. And yes, that probably means I should have started blogging earlier and when I did start, I should have written more. I don't really remember how I felt every day. And I wish I could still hear-- without looking at videos-- what her coos and even cries sounded like back then. I truly don't remember. I wish I knew what shows I watched when I was doing an in- the- middle- of- the- night feeding, and what little systems J and I used to get things done effectively (I do remember we would take turns making a bunch of bottles at once and storing them, but that's really it). I wish I knew how often she napped and for how long, as those details are sketchy at best, scrawled in a notebook I found the other day.
As for pregnancy, I think: sciatica, heartburn, and 1st- trimester- nausea. I remember being huddled over the toilet praying that I could throw up because the nausea was so constant for a while. And I remember J and I buying the economy- size Tums because we both had heartburn, and mine came on anytime I lay on my back. Even if there were other bad parts to pregnancy, they've been washed away somehow. I'm sure I felt tired a lot or maybe even had aches and pains, but I really don't know now. And I wish I could recall how those first few kicks felt-- the first time I ever felt a baby move inside me.
In terms of post- partum stuff, I do remember bleeding for 5 weeks (sorry, but it's true), but I really have no memory of to what extent that bothered me. I don't know what clothes I wore to keep me comfy post- birth (yoga pants? maternity clothes?). And I have no idea when my body started going back to normal (and no, I have not yet lost all the weight). But at some point, I lost a good deal of it, yet I don't know when. I had that "linea negra" thing down my belly for a while, but I'm not sure when it went away finally. And I don't know when my scary pregnant lady boobs started to go back to some semblance of what they once were.
While a lot of this lack of memory makes me sad, I guess it's good I don't remember all the gruesome stuff. Maybe people are right that some force makes you forget-- maybe it's all evolutionary. It's just such a weird phenomenon how fast pregnancy seems to have gone by in retrospect (in the moment, it's not flying). And the same goes for a baby's growth-- how did Mabel go from this really teeny, completely dependent, little sack of newborn chub to a toddler? And why can't I recall every step of the journey? Guess I should stop being a control freak and let Ma Nature do her thang.
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