Pregnancy: The monster is not dead

A few weeks ago I had a pregnancy scare. It even sort of made it to the blog – I wrote on a Wednesday that I’d had lots of weird aches and pains, and was walking with a limp. At the same time I was very ill with a stomach bug (or was it something more?) I even managed to be four days late (very unusual for me) – but I’m not pregnant. Thank goodness. Although I look forward to meeting our future second child, this is *NOT* a good time!

And yet, the pain continues.

Pregnancy hormones can take a LONG time to leach out of one’s system – and given that my body is so fond of pregnancy hormones (the more the better) it’s little wonder that they’re still around in big enough quantities to be causing significant problems. Even when it’s been well over six months since I de-pregnantified.

I mentioned a limp. After vacillating for a while, it decided to dig in and get worse and worse. It became very difficult to walk, or pick up Louisette (which I do dozens of times a day) or walk up or down stairs (we have stairs between the bedroom/bathroom and the kitchen/living area – so again, dozens of times a day). The combination of baby plus walking plus stairs was very painful.

Last Friday I saw a physio and found out that the back pain was all referred pain from my left hip joint, which had separated due to – guess what! – pregnancy hormones (specifically my old friend relaxin, who causes muscles to flollop about in preparation for birth). She helped a bit (and I ruined it within hours due to looking after Louisette) and gave me exercises to do.

On Saturday and Sunday I didn’t lift Louisette once. On Monday and Tuesday I camped out downstairs as much as possible, keeping Louisette on my bed where I fed her, changed her, put her to sleep, and entertained her by any means necessary:

I *am* improving despite the impossibility of true rest, and I even managed to get a job (at a house with a ridiculous number of stairs). It’s horrifying but encouraging to know that hormones really are to blame for my startlingly still-pregnant-looking belly. . . at least there’s still hope for the distant future. All I can really do is lump this in with all the rest of the pregnancy horrors I thought I was done with, and say what I’ve always said about the horrors of pregnancy: It’s totally worth it.

My job is minding two young and adorable girls who live very close by. I started yesterday, and it is not merely survivable but highly enjoyable. Louisette is more than welcome – the girls chose me partly because they wanted to play with her – and she loves having new people to admire her.

Speaking of Louisette, she’s become very fond of blowing slobbery raspberries to express either disapproval or delight. That’s a lot of raspberries.