Friday 12 April 2013
Confessions of a Pregnancy Novice
Being pregnant is an incredible phenomenon and a perfectly natural, everyday occurrence, all at the same time. Of the approximately 50% of the population who are able to experience it in their lives, 4 in 5 in the UK will choose to do so. So that’s 40% of the population of the UK who will go through pregnancy on one or more occasion in their lifetime. Not exactly a rare occurrence, then. And yet it’s quite something to experience it, especially for the first time. It seemed about time I put some of my experiences down on screen in order to remember them in years to come, offer help, advise or amusement to others in my situation, educate that other 50% of the population, should they wish for it, or merely just to relieve the burden of the many things going around in my head by splurging them out via the medium of keyboard. As is the nature of blogging, generally.
So here it is – at this point in time I’m a shade over halfway there, yet it feels I’ve been pregnant for-EVER. So I am sure there will be plenty of time for a number of instalments in this, my pregnancy blog.
I don’t even know where to start to be honest. Let’s see. The bewildering gamut of emotions I am experiencing on a daily basis? That could keep me busy for quite some time. Sometimes I feel as though I am already so completely devoted to the tiny creature currently growing inside of me, I don’t want to see, experience or feel anything other than that little life form in my arms, for the rest of my life. At yet other times, when I’m busy, stressed, or having a good time, I could almost forget it’s even there. Until I look at my emerging bump of course. Which I’m surprisingly proud of. As an exercise enthusiast, nay, obsessive, I had always imagined that losing my figure whilst pregnant would be a source of horror for me. Instead I find myself throwing down Thorntons chocolates by the handful, and indulging in around about nine or so meals a day with reckless abandon, blithely unconcerned by the fatty deposits gleefully layering themselves on and around my stomach, hips and bottom, suctioning themselves to me like soft, squishy limpets ready to come along on this wild ride with me.
Although it isn’t so wild after all. A social butterfly in my previous incarnation (as a NON-pregnant female), I have found that nothing, repeat NOTHING, is as good as curling up on my sofa at home, a good series on TV, husband at my side, cake in my hand. I am, quite simply, losing the will to socialise. Is it because I cannot indulge in my regular pint of Strongbow whilst at the pub? That probably has quite a lot to do with it. After a stormy initial few weeks of pregnancy where I battled with my very suddenly imposed ban on the booze – over Christmas, too! – I have since had little or no interest in alcohol – except for when out at the pub. Then I find myself a boring, tired version of my former self, unable, or unwilling, to maintain conversation with others around me who are riding the merry train to tipsy land. I’m just not on the same wavelength anymore. So why bother? It’s a bind. I know I will come out the other side, hopefully with some of my more patient friends remaining, but in the meantime, please accept my blanket apology for being tired, grumpy, boring, or otherwise engaged at any or all social functions. It's not my fault. I just rely on booze to make me interesting.
And exercise! My former pal, fitness! They tell you to do plenty of exercise when you’re pregnant. Ha! Pre-pregnancy I had always sworn to myself I’d be one of those pregnant women who worked out up until the day she dropped, all perfect round bump and not an ounce of fat anywhere else. Give me a break. Every time I stand up, I get a head rush to the point of falling over. Motivating myself to put on something vaguely sporty and actually execute a series of vigorous movements that might constitute a workout has become a mountainous challenge. During my first trimester, I awaited with anticipation the purported glow and energy rush of the second, when I was sure I’d be up at the crack of dawn to work out in the spring sunshine before heading off to work full of the joys of impending motherhood.
Pfft. That went well. Deep into the second trimester and aside from a few half-hearted stabs at the punchbag (mainly just to take out my angry pregnant lady frustrations) and sporadic unenthusiastic efforts at my regular street dance class, and I’m still as lethargic and unmotivated as I was before. Add to the equation my rapidly expanding girth and the complete lack of aforementioned spring sunshine and I’m fighting a losing battle. I used to be a keen swimmer but the thought of donning a one piece lycra costume and taking to the water terrifies me – in this weather? With PEOPLE around? Er, I’m good thanks.
Did I mention the fear? The cold, creeping awareness that I’ve bought a one-way ticket to PAIN. That however far away it seems, there will come a day in the now not-too-distant future in which I’m a sweating, writhing, wailing, bleeding, bloated mess of a woman. And that it will hurt. A LOT.
But let’s hold that thought for a moment (but, but… the PAIN?!) – NO – let’s hold that thought, in fact let’s tuck it away, locked down in that little box called denial, until some other day, one of those days when I feel like an all-conquering Earth mother who can do anything, squeezing out a tiny human just a blip on the radar of my greater purpose within the world (there will BE one of those days, right?). Yes, let’s shelve the images of myself in horrendous agony to ponder all the nice things about being pregnant. Because really, there are quite a few, that all too readily become lost amongst the reams of material online and in books about what not to do, what not to eat, how not to lie, what drugs not to take (ALL of them) and all the niggles, aches, itches and mood swings that accompany this joyful nine month hiatus from your normal life.
Good things about being pregnant:
1) The eating. Okay, I’m aware I’m in a very lucky minority to have not suffered with morning sickness, at any point thus far. But at one point or another during pregnancy, most women will find themselves past the sicky phase and ready for food. And I imagine they, like me, will tell you – food has never tasted better. Oh no. The delight with which I am enjoying simple things such as beans on toast, a cheese toastie, a jam doughnut… It’s fantastic, and as a body conscious person, this is one of the few times in my life I get to legitimately enjoy all the foods my body (and my hungry inhabitant’s body) desires. Cravings are there for a reason and when you’re pregnant it’s your right, nay, your DUTY to indulge them to the best of your ability. So pass me that cake, yes, why not, chuck me a chocolate bar, for they are full of energy, calcium, and the promise of tastebuds dancing, alive with flavour, one of the great pleasures in an otherwise mundane existence. Bring it on, baby. All of it. With icecream.
2) People. People are really nice to you. It could be construed as patronising if you were that way inclined, perhaps a little too independent or feminist to really appreciate it, but the concern shown to you by others is really quite touching. People go out of their way to carry a heavy bag for you, open a door, enquire as to your health, or generally smile and glow at you. I even received an apology for someone’s bad language the other day! Imagine! I can swear like a trooper myself but all of a sudden I seem to have unconsciously begun garnering the kind of respect you would reserve for a lady. A proper one too, not a pretend one like me who watches sport, drinks pints and wears a hoodie to work. It’s all rather lovely.
3) The baby. It’s what it’s all about and it may seem like an obvious one, but there’s something quite breath-taking about the first time you feel movements within that are most certainly not your own. And not even in a chest-protruding Alien sort of way. Now I’m almost 21 weeks and I know my baby’s routine – it has a lie in of a morning (like its Mum), becomes particularly active after some tasty food (like its Mum) and never much feels like settling down at night (er, this child is already disturbingly similar to me). I can already tell we’re going to get along great. The kicks, prods, stretches and wriggles that are going on inside me are precious, every last one, and remind me constantly what all this is for. It’s like having a little buddy travelling with you all the time. You can never feel alone when you’re pregnant.
Which of course leads you to the end product. The life-changing, earth-shattering moment when you see your child for the first time and realise that nothing in the world has mattered up until this point. The moment that makes the hours of pain (oh my god, horrendous pain) all worthwhile. In 19 weeks and one day, (if the baby were to come on its predicted due date – which it undoubtedly will not) I will be there. And I cannot wait.
I have been writing for some time now and realise I haven’t even scraped the surface. The conversations about names (conflict!), the vast, endless array of goods you are forced to start considering purchasing (bewildering!), the annoying need to get out of bed every single night to urinate (too much information!). These are topics on which I will impart wisdom, or lack of it, to you my dear reader, in the coming weeks and months. Please come back and find out exactly how fat I am, which part of my body I have injured in my new-found clumsiness and even which gender of child I have most recently been predicted to be bearing! See you soon.
Monday 18 February 2013
Self Help 101
Friday 30 November 2012
Movember: a short statement
Friday 6 July 2012
Return of the Hockey Novice – This Time it’s Physical
So what is it?
- I'm going to carry on blocking shots anyway, because that's all I know how to do
This is what Dek looks like! When I'm not playing, that is.
The verdict?
Thursday 29 March 2012
Daylight Slayings: NRG Canny Belters v Glasgow Maiden Grrders – Part 2
Tuesday 27 March 2012
Daylight Slayings: NRG Canny Belters v Glasgow Maiden Grrders - Part 1
It was a few weeks prior to my third live roller derby experience, and I was starting to feel like a bit of a failure. If you included the B team bouts, I’d technically received four whole competitive roller derby-ing’s and I’d even had a go at it myself (albeit that was mainly just the trying to stand up on wheels part of the game). I wasn’t a newbie anymore – I should be some sort of expert by now, surely? Slightly alarmed by the fact that I still didn’t know what the blithering hell was going on for much of the time and with a pathological need to know more about sports I joined the ladies at their pre-bout training session to be put through my paces by senior team member Kalamity James, who schooled me on rules and tactics, and left me feeling like a bit more of a roller derby geek, armed with such phrases as ‘taking the knee’, ‘man on’ and ‘bridging’. I will be eagle-eyed and on the lookout out for these plays on Saturday and with my new-found understanding of the depth of the game (three days revision dependent) I shall bring to you in glorious technicolour the blow-by-blow account of the action between Newcastle Roller Girls and their Scottish opponents.
I even went above and beyond the call of duty, reading and digesting the admittedly slim 43-page rulebook prior to the bout. I’ll be honest, I haven’t read the official rulebooks for many sports, but I’m sure it has to be the only serious sporting rulebook that contains multiple uses of the word ‘booty’, feels the need to actively define choking, biting and kicking as illegal moves, and seeks to penalise someone who is the victim of being tripped or pushed over, merely because they land in a sprawling position. Heaven forbid! Also illegal, apparently, is extended touching to an opponent’s illegal target zone. Oo, and indeed er. This sport is pure filth. Nevertheless I found it thoroughly enlightening, plus it had a glossary to which I will be referring frequently in my post-bout write-up. So expect to hear things that make me sound like I know what I’m doing!
Now, on with the action!
B Team Bout: Whippin’ Hinnies v Furness Firecrackers
The jams kept on rolling for the Whippin’ Hinnies and they extended their lead to 20 points without reply, playing a simple tactical game, picking up lead jammer and making one full pass of the pack to gain four points before calling off the jam. They were clearly sticking successfully to their game plan, the first deviation coming when the Firecrackers finally picked up lead jammer, but she proceeded to fall and was unable to pick up any points, Carm Like A Bomb pouncing and picking up another 4 to punish her opponent’s mistake.
The bout kicked up a gear, as a no-pack situation caused by Furness allowed Guinefear of Jamelot (fabulous name) through to lap the opposing jammer and score five points to the Firecrackers’ 1. 37-2. The first full two minute jam came shortly afterwards, Penny Bizarre making two successful passes, slowed by the opposing blockers on her third but still crashing through, picking up 15 points and allowing the Hinnies to storm into a 46 point lead. Some feistiness started to creep in and penalties began to be dished out, and the home side showed their first signs of weakness, no-pack issues allowing Furness to pick up four points to take their score into double figures. However with Carm Like A Bomb picking up lead jammer on the next jam any worries were soon laid to rest, one of the blockers laying a good hit on an opponent to allow her teammate through to take the score to an impressive 65-11, Carm calling off the jam before Furness were able to pick up points. Some good blocking from Newcastle minimised the visitors’ chances to extend their lead and despite the jammers trading penalties just before half time, both teams were able to pick up a few more points each to go into the break 74-16.
It would take some sort of monumental collapse for the hosts to lose this, surely? You would think, but nothing can be taken for granted in roller derby where a good jam can see a team pick up 20 points or more, so the Hinnies would need to be careful and continue to stick to their so far very well-executed game plan. The teams traded points early in the second half, Furness with a couple of powerjams, some selfless blocking from Meli McSly leaving her on her way to the penalty box but preventing the Firecrackers from a rout of a jam as they started to creep back into the contest. That's taking one for the team if ever I saw it.
Photo by Idene Roozbayani
Wednesday 21 March 2012
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
I’ve had my ups and downs with American sports over the years. I’ve always thought baseball seemed like a crass version of cricket without any of the intricacies or skill of the latter, and that it seemed interminably boring. During my time living in the States I maintained a mild interest in American football and even got to the point of understanding some of the rules. I watched high school basketball. But I quickly lost interest in both once no longer surrounded by them. Football is LONG. I mean, it takes a really long time to accomplish anything. Gameplay occurs for just a few seconds at a time and is punctuated by long periods of time where teams change from offence to defence, discuss tactics, and generally just fart about. And there’s SO MANY of them. Squads of 100 players appear from the benches once a game is over to slap each other on the behind, and for the amount of play that actually goes on, that’s just too many.
Basketball is the polar opposite. It’s fast, fluid and the squads are small. It has much more of a purity about it. But despite the fact that I think it is a far more athletic and skilled game than football (aside from the quarterback and running back positions who I accept require a modicum of speed and talent) it bores the trousers off me; it’s repetitive and so high-scoring the results often seem arbitrary. Plus the sheer absurdity of the physical dimensions of the folk who engage in the sport at a top level is so mind-boggling it's hard to feel any empathy for them as athletes.
So I chose baseball for my live sporting experience. Something about the idea of seeing a game live had real appeal: beer and hotdogs, sitting in the bleachers, trying to catch a ball when someone hits a home run; it’s the stuff movies are made of, the real authentic American sporting experience, and I wanted me a piece of the action. The timing couldn’t better, with just a couple of weeks to go in the regular season, and my visit to San Francisco coinciding with a three-game series with their long-time rivals the LA Dodgers.
My First Baseball Game
The first two games of the series had not gone the Giants way. They were low-scoring and both went in favour of the South Californian side. It wasn’t looking promising. Having spent almost three weeks travelling around the US I had had a chance to learn my stuff. And learn I had. Sports bar after sports bar I visited, selflessly, all in a bid to ensure readiness for my mission – to understand the rules by the time game day came. I was of course forced to purchase beer products from these establishments in order to spend time utilising their television facilities, but I put myself through this physical abuse in the name of learning. I even did some extra-curricular studying, sitting on patios with even more beer products (forced upon me by local store owners, I hasten to add – you just can’t say ‘no’ to these people!) studying rules on Wikipedia and scores on the MLB website. And so I was ready.
One of the first things you notice about large groups of sports fans in America is the level of general optimism. It could be argued it’s to do with the ridiculously high amount of sugar and E numbers rushing around the bloodstreams of all Americans, but I don’t think so. The quintessential American sporting experience is a much more chipper affair than a dreary Saturday afternoon in November watching a football match, surrounded by a bunch of grumpy blokes whinging about the quality of the pie-filling and shouting abuse at referees. Being a British sports fan can quite often be a depressing experience. In San Francisco by contrast, despite coming off the back of two straight defeats to their arch rivals, you still get a stadium full of happy, friendly people, who want nothing more than to enjoy a nice day out with a vast array of heart-attack inducing snacks and beverages. It’s refreshing.
I can’t fail to mention that the date was 9/11/11, exactly 10 years after the terrorist attacks on the USA, and there was an appropriate amount of respect paid, with flags, banners, relatives of some of the victims, soldiers, a flyover, and a great many nationalistic songs. I would normally be gently scathing in my reaction to Americans, well, being American, as British people tend to be to overt acts of nationalism on home soil, but this was something else, and it was moving to be a part of it all.
The game itself got underway in a massively understated way. Two pitches had occurred before anyone really realised it had started and I was keen to get involved straight away. I paid full attention and was thrilled to discover I actually knew what was going on. The studying had paid off. The first innings passed by without any scoring and I felt fully acclimatised (or ‘acclamated’ as the Americans say. Mystifying). The fans in the bleachers were friendly and the atmosphere was buoyant, if not particularly boisterous. One thing we DO do better is chants. Crowd singing didn’t extend beyond ‘let’s go Giants’ and ‘Beat LA’, but there was plenty of music played over the tannoy along with the traditional Hammond organ, and plenty of ‘audience cam’ amusement including the most bad-ass grooving popcorn-seller I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. There were games, highlights from other matches, players stats and even an adorable piece in which the home players described their own personal anthems, which even featured some singing from one of them – a really nice touch.
In the second innings, I wondered why it was the second innings, as nothing discernible had really changed to speak of – I’m still to figure out how and why innings start and end. Some seemed to go on for an age and others flew by. Both teams scored in the second and the atmosphere picked up. The Giants’ pitcher seemed to be doing a fine job at not letting the batsmen hit many balls (get me totally being down with the lingo!), and also in his favour was the fact he was named Madison Bumgarner. Yup. Ah who am I kidding, I’m not going to go into any detail about the actual game as I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, plus almost half a year has passed since the game, but I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that we won 8-1 (yes, WE – I’m a Giants fan, dontcha know).
We absolutely crucified them!! It must have been me. They were miles better than LA who couldn’t score to save their lives and whenever they did get a good hit were despatched clinically by an almost faultless fielding performance by the Giants. Their pitchers struggled to contain the Giants’ on-form batsmen despite trying some cynical tactics which massively backfired on them, (‘walkin’ ‘em in’ according to the bronzed biker dude next to me who seemed quite happy to adopt us as fellow fans despite our total cluelessness). It was a schooling, plain and simple. How this team had lost the two previous matches to this bunch of no-hopers was beyond me!
I don’t know if I’d necessarily call baseball players ‘athletes’. There are certainly a number of them who ran pretty fast. There are others, equally, for example the popular Pablo Sandoval, who are how shall I put this? A tad rotund. He sort of walked fast, from base to base rather than ran. But he scored points so who am I to argue? Their bodies may not be their temples, but they can sure throw fast and sport a baseball cap jauntily. So from the interminable yet exciting 5th and 6th innings, suddenly it was the 7th innings stretch – I still can’t figure out what THAT was all about other than everyone got up and danced. The last two innings flew by, people left, we were sunburnt, the place was a total trash can, the sun went down, we went out for beer. A good day was had by all. Except the LA Dodgers.
To conclude, I’ve no idea why it’s taken me this long to publish this other than that I returned to normality, ice hockey and to a lesser extent football took over my life once again, and I immediately lost interest in anything baseball-related. Would I go again if I was over in the States? Absolutely. Do I actually care what’s gone in in the MLB since, or will go on this season? Not a jot. But I sure as hell enjoyed being a part of it for a short while.
About Me
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The Finishing Touches: Part 2 – Gardiner Conference - *First published on 31/08/2012 on **http://www.ukamericansportsfans.com/* Yesterday I considered the completed squads of the Erhardt Conference. Today I wi...12 years ago