BABY, BABY, MAKE MY BRAIN GROW!

My extreme pregnant amnesia may be in its final few weeks. Read this.

And if you didn’t bother, (which is perfectly acceptable by the way) I’ll give you the cliff notes version. My brain is actually set to grow after I give birth. The only thing I have to do is interact with my baby because the research showed the mother’s brain wouldn’t grow unless this occurred. Gee, tough job. I’ve only been carrying you around for thirty-six weeks, rubbing you when you have hiccups, singing to you, washing your nappies, writing you letters, breathing through your now rather uncomfortable Braxton Hicks that keep me up most of the night, and telling you daily just how much I already love you, that I think I’ll find it really difficult to interact with you once you’re an official human.

This is a piece of good news for a mother-in-training who was actually going to write a blog about feeling like a beached whale. A water-retaining hippopotamus, a custard arse, a jelly belly, a (yes I have to admit my brothers may be right) big unit.

Pregnancy, I suspect, is designed to make a woman grateful for what she had. I saw a picture of me when we first arrived in Australia earlier this year, right before I fell pregnant and look, a model I was never in danger of being, but the muscle tone I had was really quite nice. Rumour has it, I can get it back, but the midwife did warn me that if I started running too soon I risk developing a prolapsed uterus. According to the dictionary, prolapse means a slipping forward or down of one of the parts or organs of the body, and oddly enough, having half my uterus hanging out of me does not sound like an ideal situation.

But (and this could evoke some dissent amongst the ranks) my only criticism with the pre-natal care I’m enjoying (free, I might add, thanks to the Australian healthcare system) is their extreme nervousness with post-natal exercise in general and running in particular. Blah, blah, blah, I know it’s bad for your knees, and the trauma of birth can really be, well quite traumatic, but it’s got to be all relative doesn’t it? I mean sure, if you’ve never run a day in your life I don’t suggest you pick it up after a 36-hour labour or an emergency caesarian, but I’ve been running on average, five days a week since I was about four years old. It’s in my blood, in my probably pre-arthritic bones, in my system instead of anti-anxiety medication which I would surely have been popped on at various stages of my life had I not been able to throw on my sneakers and a smelly old singlet and run my troubles away. 

I saw my neighbour return from a run yesterday and felt such a wash of envy as I waddled to the car, that for five seconds I even considered getting out there and giving it a bit of a go. 

But it would be so unsatisfying; rolling over is currently an Olympic event. Getting out there and sweating and panting till I can’t sweat and pant no more is probably at least a depressing two months away. And now, as I sit here on my ever expanding derriere, writing about the exercise I’m not able to do, I realise I should lever myself up and head out for a low-impact walk.

Four weeks to go folks, and though I’ve had a bit of whinge today, I do recognise that thus far – touch wood – mine has been a textbook pregnancy. With any luck, the baby will walk right out of me, I’ll be stitch free and polishing my running shoes as my baby sleeps perfectly by my side. 

Yeah right.