Week 28: Do you catch my drift?

In case you haven’t had enough of my over-sharing, I thought I would really let you in on my biggest struggle of each day. It trumps the battle of the bladder, the terrible night sleeps and chub rub I have been introduced to between my upper thighs—like where did that come from?! I can deal with those things, although very annoying. What I am referencing in painfully hard to deal with, painful because it causes legit pain … in my stomach and beyond … because I am prudish and wont let it out. I’m talking about gas and the wonderful thing that is letting go of that terrible, terrible air that builds up inside of us pregnant people causing sheer agony.
Goodness. I am VERY sure (for me) I have never referenced farting with such disgust and praise all in the same thought. The lady in me cringes with fright and the bulging belly screams, “RELIEVE ME OF THIS TORTURE!” All I can think about when I get home from work is how to avoid this situation until my husband is asleep. I never went there in our relationship and continued to be a closet farter (literally) after we got married.
Now, in my third trimester, I can’t imagine becoming this round, smelly sad person letting it all out. I wasn’t prepared for this situation, and I don’t want to start doing that in front of him—at least not when he consciously knows it! I also do not want to kill him, and due to the slowness of my GI Tract, that stuff is rank. I don’t think I could look at him with a straight face after some of them sneak out. He thinks he can handle it, but he has no idea!
Let me say that Matt does NOT care about that and practically begs me to fart, like on command. “Just do it now; I know you need to. Let me show you how it’s done.” No, thank you. I wake up in the middle of the night with my nose practically bleeding from your “free-ness” you feel. This is a “me” thing, and I’m just not into it. My punishment for this is knife stabbing, debilitating pain that often times ends up in my upper ribcage somewhere. While I am lying flat as a board in bed with the covers sealed around me, I count to ten each time gas attempts to escape. I take a deep breath and pray for it to be over. Eventually it disappears, and I can return to regular life of watching Hulu. This pattern repeats itself until Matt falls asleep, and I can finally let my poor body do what bodies do.
My advice is to not be like me and get over your fear of farting in front of your partner. If you are still going to be like me and refuse, maybe live in a space that’s larger than a 750 square-foot loft. There’s not too much room to hide if concealing the fart is your preferred method. I don’t know how many times I have pretended to get something out of the refrigerator or check to make sure the door is locked. You can also light candles, or just the match, 20 times a day. Nothing eliminates a bad odor like blown-out fire! I’m not sure how realistic this is, but I am telling myself we all go through this and can relate to the woes of pregnancy gas and the painful moments that come with it. At the very least, this is something we can laugh at together and look forward to life with baby, minus the farting.