37 WEEKS

Sometimes I feel totally normal. Other times I feel like when one gets to be 9 months pregnant, they should be quarantined in some community with other 9 month pregnant women, left to be as cranky and nervous and excited as needed, whilst waddling/limping around with gigantic bellies. I know that being pregnant is extremely natural and all of that, but recently I’ve started to feel more and more like a freak. I mean, come on, a girl spends 28 years of her life NOT being pregnant, and then all of a sudden her body morphs into something almost unrecognizable in a span of nine months, and even if she KNOWS it’s normal, it doesn’t always feel that way.

Whenever I imagined what it would like to be pregnant, I didn’t fully understand or realize how hard the belly actually gets. When women would say that they have trouble bending over or shaving their legs or seeing their toes, it was puzzling to me, and now I see it’s because I had been imagining a pregnant belly to be like a fat person’s belly – just more fat and skin. But that’s not it at all!  It’s more like – especially these days – I’ve strapped on a very large bowling ball or a rock to my stomach. Can you imagine that? Picking up my phone that dropped on the floor is no easy feat if you have a large and heavy bowling ball occupying the space between your boobs and pelvis. You can’t bend! It’s awkward to even lean over the bathroom sink to rinse after brushing my teeth. Washing the dishes is much harder because I am that much further away from the sink. And turning from one side to the other side while sleeping is a production; it requires extra effort and hands to help balance the turn. I shall never take for granted the feeling of living life without something so hard and large be a part of the front of my body. Amen.

It’s been extremely hot and humid these days in Richmond, but I am blessed to live in a time and place where air conditioning is plentiful, so it's not terrible. Plus, it’s all the more excuse to eat more watermelon and ice cream. It’s frustrating not to be able to do as much, and it drives me crazy that my back starts hurting because I carried a bag of comforters upstairs, but such is the pregnant life. Unpacking is slow, but that's okay. I have 3-4 more weeks until baby comes and that is a good amount of time to unpack/organize/clean/nest, right? Right.