Friday – Thighkles
Oct. 8th, 2010 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
.
As of today, my son has been in the world for 6 years and I am a week away from unemployment. My head is a whirl of reminiscing, celebrating, and anticipating; no wonder I feel exhausted. Six years ago on this date, I was happy the whole pregnancy thing was finally over with, that I could see my feet again without straining, and that they were starting to look like my feet again. Since I had just had a Cesarean section, I was also stoned out of my goard.
Let's start with the fact that my ankles and feet were enormous. A month before my due date, they were perfectly normal. Then one day I looked down and could no longer tell where my calves ended and my feet began. I was standing in the women's restroom in a bar when I noticed it. Yes, I was in a bar, at 8 months pregnant (for the record, I wasn't drinking). It was after the funeral of my friend Patty's roommate, Amanda, and instead of gathering at the home of the family like a normal funeral, everyone in Patty's circle went to a sports bar and grill to crank up the jukebox and get the organ music out of our heads.
The people in this group did not look like they had come from a funeral. Most of the men did not own a suit, and 4 of the 6 pall bearers had worn blue jeans and black t-shirts (3 of those t-shirts had sleeves on them). The fire that took Amanda's life had destroyed the house Patty lived in, and all the surviving inhabitants has scattered to the couches of other houses. Amanda's mother lived in a ramshackle trailer house down the road from where her daughter died, but the place was falling apart and no one wanted to go there. So Molly's Pub it was the setting for the post-funerary meal and socializing. Most of the group was dressed for that venue than church, anyway.
I was dressed in a black peasant's blouse and black Capri pants. It was the most funeral-appropriate outfit I could put together out of my maternity wardrobe, which was geared toward nothing more formal than office casual. This meant that I was more dressed up than most people there. Patty had shown up wearing a red tank top and shorts, clutching a volley ball that had survived the fire by being a few feet far enough from the blaze to melt. Her son had written a heart-felt message on the ball in ball-point pen about his house burning down and his friend dying and she wanted to show it off.
"She was too happy! She never wore black! I was NOT going to wear black to her funeral!" Patty sobbed. She missed the point, of course. You dress up for funerals out of respect for the deceased and the family. It's not about dressing how the deceased dressed in life; it's about acknowledging the somber fact that they are no longer alive. Clutching her volley ball to her chest, with her hair in a pony tail on top of her head and tears running down her face, Patty looked like she was attending for the world's most depressing beach picnic ever.
After the funeral and the burial, standing in the ladies room at Molly's Pub, I glanced down at my feet and gasped, "My ankles!"
A few of the women I was with looked down and commiserated. "Oh, yeah. Wow. That happens. They weren't like that earlier?"
"No. They were normal this morning!"
"Put your feet up when you get home," someone suggested, "Sometimes that helps."
It didn't, though. My ankles stayed big for the next month. In fact, they got bigger. And bigger. In my last weeks of pregnancy, walking from my car to my office made my feet as if I'd walked a mile in bare feet over cobblestones.
"I had cankles," I told Jeff after our son was born, admiring my then dainty-again ankles. Cankles is, of course, and portmanteau word that combines calves with ankles.
"Cankles? No, honey, you had thighkles!" he whooped. I glared at him and stuck out my tongue. Eventually I forgave him for saying that, because it was true. The pregnancy bible, What To Expect When You're Expecting had told me to expect to weigh about 15 pounds less coming home from the hospital than I weighed walking in, accounting for the weight of the baby, the placenta and the amniotic fluid. As soon as my son was born, I began to lose the water I'd been retaining for the last month. I went home 30 pounds lighter than when I checked in. I knew my case was extreme when a nurse walked in on the second day to check on me, moved the blanket covering my feet, and looked disappointed.
"They told me to expect stage-3 edema in here, but these don't look that bad," she said glumly.
"You missed it," I told her. "They've changed the catheter bag about 5 times since I got here. You should have seen them yesterday." Actually, I don't remember how many times they changed the catheter bag; they gave me a Demerol drip after my C-section, and the next couple of days were kind of hazy. Still, when a nurse who works in a maternity ward and who sees swollen ankles every day has been told that your case is something special, you can take it to mean that your case really is something special.
Six years later, I am happy to report that I still have ankle bones and that the stretch marks on my ankles have faded and can no longer be seen. Yes, I had stretch marks on my ankles.
The stretch marks on my heart and my view of the world since my son came into the world are still growing and spreading, though, and I suspect they will continue to do so for a while yet.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
As of today, my son has been in the world for 6 years and I am a week away from unemployment. My head is a whirl of reminiscing, celebrating, and anticipating; no wonder I feel exhausted. Six years ago on this date, I was happy the whole pregnancy thing was finally over with, that I could see my feet again without straining, and that they were starting to look like my feet again. Since I had just had a Cesarean section, I was also stoned out of my goard.
Let's start with the fact that my ankles and feet were enormous. A month before my due date, they were perfectly normal. Then one day I looked down and could no longer tell where my calves ended and my feet began. I was standing in the women's restroom in a bar when I noticed it. Yes, I was in a bar, at 8 months pregnant (for the record, I wasn't drinking). It was after the funeral of my friend Patty's roommate, Amanda, and instead of gathering at the home of the family like a normal funeral, everyone in Patty's circle went to a sports bar and grill to crank up the jukebox and get the organ music out of our heads.
The people in this group did not look like they had come from a funeral. Most of the men did not own a suit, and 4 of the 6 pall bearers had worn blue jeans and black t-shirts (3 of those t-shirts had sleeves on them). The fire that took Amanda's life had destroyed the house Patty lived in, and all the surviving inhabitants has scattered to the couches of other houses. Amanda's mother lived in a ramshackle trailer house down the road from where her daughter died, but the place was falling apart and no one wanted to go there. So Molly's Pub it was the setting for the post-funerary meal and socializing. Most of the group was dressed for that venue than church, anyway.
I was dressed in a black peasant's blouse and black Capri pants. It was the most funeral-appropriate outfit I could put together out of my maternity wardrobe, which was geared toward nothing more formal than office casual. This meant that I was more dressed up than most people there. Patty had shown up wearing a red tank top and shorts, clutching a volley ball that had survived the fire by being a few feet far enough from the blaze to melt. Her son had written a heart-felt message on the ball in ball-point pen about his house burning down and his friend dying and she wanted to show it off.
"She was too happy! She never wore black! I was NOT going to wear black to her funeral!" Patty sobbed. She missed the point, of course. You dress up for funerals out of respect for the deceased and the family. It's not about dressing how the deceased dressed in life; it's about acknowledging the somber fact that they are no longer alive. Clutching her volley ball to her chest, with her hair in a pony tail on top of her head and tears running down her face, Patty looked like she was attending for the world's most depressing beach picnic ever.
After the funeral and the burial, standing in the ladies room at Molly's Pub, I glanced down at my feet and gasped, "My ankles!"
A few of the women I was with looked down and commiserated. "Oh, yeah. Wow. That happens. They weren't like that earlier?"
"No. They were normal this morning!"
"Put your feet up when you get home," someone suggested, "Sometimes that helps."
It didn't, though. My ankles stayed big for the next month. In fact, they got bigger. And bigger. In my last weeks of pregnancy, walking from my car to my office made my feet as if I'd walked a mile in bare feet over cobblestones.
"I had cankles," I told Jeff after our son was born, admiring my then dainty-again ankles. Cankles is, of course, and portmanteau word that combines calves with ankles.
"Cankles? No, honey, you had thighkles!" he whooped. I glared at him and stuck out my tongue. Eventually I forgave him for saying that, because it was true. The pregnancy bible, What To Expect When You're Expecting had told me to expect to weigh about 15 pounds less coming home from the hospital than I weighed walking in, accounting for the weight of the baby, the placenta and the amniotic fluid. As soon as my son was born, I began to lose the water I'd been retaining for the last month. I went home 30 pounds lighter than when I checked in. I knew my case was extreme when a nurse walked in on the second day to check on me, moved the blanket covering my feet, and looked disappointed.
"They told me to expect stage-3 edema in here, but these don't look that bad," she said glumly.
"You missed it," I told her. "They've changed the catheter bag about 5 times since I got here. You should have seen them yesterday." Actually, I don't remember how many times they changed the catheter bag; they gave me a Demerol drip after my C-section, and the next couple of days were kind of hazy. Still, when a nurse who works in a maternity ward and who sees swollen ankles every day has been told that your case is something special, you can take it to mean that your case really is something special.
Six years later, I am happy to report that I still have ankle bones and that the stretch marks on my ankles have faded and can no longer be seen. Yes, I had stretch marks on my ankles.
The stretch marks on my heart and my view of the world since my son came into the world are still growing and spreading, though, and I suspect they will continue to do so for a while yet.
