Pain.

When I found out I was pregnant, and for the years and years beforehand that I worked around pregnant women and imagined what my own pregnancy would be like, I immediately thought of the pain of labor. I NEVER in my wildest dreams considered the fact that pregnant in and of itself would be painful, and yet, it can be and currently is. Almost intolerably so.

Now before you start calling me a whiner (amongst other, less blog-appropriate things), I'll elaborate a bit. I expected the backaches, though not quite to this extent. I expected my feet to hurt from supporting the extra weight and my newly-shifted center of gravity. What I did NOT expect, however, was my left wrist to become almost unusable for weeks on end. Two years ago, in the summer of 2007 when it rained and rained and rained all summer long, I broke my wrist. Lame story, right? Well, how about this. I slipped at the Barton Creek Greenbelt (a fantastic summer spot, btw), and broke my left wrist while breaking my fall. Having consumed a bit of alcohol I brushed the injury aside, had a bit stronger of a drink, and didn't bother shuttling myself over to an ER until it became two to three times it's normal size a couple days later. See? I'm not a huge wimp after all! While that incident alone wouldn't really stand out from any other broken bone stories, four weeks to the day later (and incidentally the same day I got my little makeshift cast off), I slipped again on some wet outside stairs and BROKE IT AGAIN. No joke. The doctor even recognized me at the ER. I explained to her that she was not, in fact, having a deja vu, but that yes, I'd been there before. That same month. With the SAME issue. I'm pretty sure she thought I was a junkie, since that's far more likely than the concept that I'm actually dumb enough to have the same injury twice in one month to the same exact bone. After that, the doctor sent me to see an orthopedic surgeon (or something like that...) to see how bad the break was, and he informed me that while I wouldn't need anything drastic like surgery, my wrist would probably never perform to it's previous level of greatness again, and that any significant impact could easily break the bone over and over and over. Awesome. While it's never been too much of an issue before now, other than the occasional volleyball game or typing marathon, IT HURTS LIKE HELL NOW.

The lovely and amazing (NOT) hormone relaxin, that's currently being pumped through my system to loosen up my joints and such in preparation for childbirth, has surged several times in the past month, leaving me to feel like I've broken it all over again, but this time, without the lovely assistance of painkillers to see me through. Not so fun. Also, despite never having had a back injury, I'm pretty certain it's messing with my back as well, since this isn't your mother's backache. This is a, "D, I'm absolutely incapable of getting off the couch to get so much as a glass of water, so can you please help me?" type of backache. I'm pretty over it.

So, in conclusion to this long, rambling and probably pointless diatribe about how much being pregnant sucks sometimes, I leave you with this: Being pregnant sucks sometimes.