This morning at the bus stop, one of the kids looked at me and said, “WHAT is in your belly?”

Me and my belly have been at the bus stop every morning and afternoon for two weeks, but for some reason he JUST NOW realized that I’m a dead ringer for Humpty Dumpty.

My first instinct was that I had something ON my belly — coffee or remnants of breakfast — so while I frantically surveyed the acres of t-shirt covering my belly, his mom whispered, “She’s going to have a baby.”

I smiled and said, “Yes, I’m going to have a baby soon.”

And then, as if confirmation from TWO adults, who he trusts to tell him the details of things like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus and TO GET HIM TO THE BUS STOP ON TIME, wasn’t enough, he ran to David and whispered, “Does she really have a baby in there?”

I was THIS CLOSE to saying, “Make sure to ask your mom how the baby got in my belly. And how it’s getting out!” But I’ll save that for later.

I’m actually closer to 28 weeks in the above photos. I posted them without explanation so you’d think, “Wow! She’s 31 weeks? She barely looks a day over 30 weeks!”

Did it work?

Isn’t it funny and awful how, even in pregnancy, women judge their own bodies and the bodies of others even though everyone carries and grows differently? And a woman who is tall or on her fourth pregnancy will look completely different than a petite woman in her first pregnancy? And it has nothing to do with her activity level or health of the baby or mother?

Ok, that was an unplanned rant. BUT SERIOUSLY.

This is 30 weeks. I wear these shorts every single day.

At 30 weeks, two days I am very prone to spontaneous rants, but besides that I’m feeling very, very good. I’m achy and can’t bend at the waist, but the good news is that strangers let me cut in line for the bathroom, and everyone always offers me the good chair.

My children, on the other hand, do not care that I’m pregnant. If I lay on the couch, Thomas straddles me and tries to ride me like a horse, and Mary Virginia still demands superfluous trips up and down the stairs for stuffed animals at bedtime.

Just like my other pregnancies, my main symptom is that I’m tired. I sleep from about 10:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. every night, and I wake up feeling like I was out drinking and spent the night on the sidewalk.

The other day I mentioned something about the baby coming in nine weeks and Tom was kind of shocked, “Nine weeks? Really? It’s that soon?”

It feels that way. Nine weeks will fly by and suddenly we will be a family of six. But those nine weeks (let’s be honest, probably 10 weeks) will also drag. They are the longest, most exhausting and uncomfortable weeks of pregnancy.

This is probably my last pregnancy, and so I’m trying to enjoy it instead of dwell on the discomfort. Pregnancy is such a funny mix of being overwhelmed with gratitude and also completely physically grueling.

Every night when I lay down in bed, I feel the baby move and kick. Sometimes my days are so busy I never notice her movement because I’m too busy figuring out how to contort my body to get Play-Doh from under the dining room table. But when I lay down and everything is quiet, it’s almost like baby and I get a little bit of alone time. I turn over a few times, heaving my body around trying to get comfortable, put my hand on my belly, and thank God for this beautiful responsibility and blessing.

Share this:

Facebook

0

Twitter

Pinterest

0

email