Hooray for Gaviscon - 33 Week Update ⇒
As soon as this baby is born, I am having a feast of Greek food including garlic toast with chocolate for dessert. If you ever hear a pregnant woman complain about heartburn again, I hope you will have the utmost sympathy for her. If you've never experienced severe heartburn or acid reflux in your life consider yourself lucky. Someone asked me what it's like and the best way I can describe it is it's like throwing up in slow motion, about every 5 minutes with nothing coming out for, say, two hours at a time while you're trying to sleep. I didn't experience this until I was pregnant with Elise, and now, lucky me, with this pregnancy. At least I know it will end when the baby is born. All I can say is Hooray for Gaviscon. Like Buckley's cough syrup, it tastes awful but it works.
The heartburn seems to be caused by garlic and chocolate (hence the post-birth feast planned above). Garlic is hard to avoid unless I make everything myself but it often sneaks in when I'm not paying attention (in store bought salad dressings for example). Chocolate is easy enough to avoid from a practical point of view. It isn't very cleverly disguised. But from a psychological perspective, it's difficult. 3:00 p.m. "Well maybe it will be ok if it's good quality chocolate" 1:00 a.m. "Damn you Purdy's and your hundredth anniversary!"
As it turns out, one of the reasons I probably have heartburn is that this baby is still resting really high. Most second pregnancies are carried a fair bit lower but not this one. Admittedly, if I wasn't carrying high, I would likely be complaining about too much pressure on my bladder or something so I know I couldn't win either way.
Other than the heartburn, though, things are going very smoothly with the pregnancy. I am in severe nesting mode at the moment and finding it quite stressful as there is neither the time nor the energy to get as organized as I need to. I just don't feel like our Nest is very peaceful and that is making me very tense (poor Erin). In my defence, though, at least I haven't asked him to paint any rooms in our house or tell him the garden has to be spotless...today! Any projects that are being undertaken right now (new vents for the bathrooms) are his own initiative.
Then there's Elise who toddles along in my wake "uncleaning." I say "Oh the kitchen is so untidy" and clean it and Elise says "hmmm, I think I'll go see if there are any different lids in the Tupperware cupboard. By the way...I"m hungry again." Me: "Oh the living room is so untidy" Elise: "hmmm I think I'll do some colouring and put all my crayons on the floor. Ooops I missed a spot. Maybe the purple crayon would look good over there." Me:"Ahhh the laundry is all folded at last" Elise: "Hey cool! Folded laundry! Whooopeeee!" Me: "well, that's the bathroom cleaned" Elise "aha! A whole roll of toilet paper!"
Well....only a few weeks to go before the Curveball arrives. The sleepless nights due to heartburn will be a memory that I'm recalling while I'm awake at 3:00 feeding someone. And in a couple of years, I'll likely be wishing I could do it again....but I won't.