There are a few points in pregnancy which, if I were graphing them, would make huge mountain peaks. Mostly, pregnancy (for me, and knock wood) is a long, plodding process with very few dramatic changes. When I was pregnant with Trombone, no symptom escaped my scrutiny, no bodily quirk, no matter how minor, was unconsidered. This continued throughout, until that last week when I was analyzing every scrap of toilet paper, hoping something would look like bloody show already. But for all my analyzing and examining and photographing, things mostly happened silently, while I was going about my life and then I would go to sleep one night and when I woke up the next day, have an “Aha! I am pregnant!” moment, having altered in my sleep. Really. Overnight.
I took one of those great leaps the other day, Thursday, I believe it was. I woke up and I was no longer a “maybe she is – maybe she isn’t” pregnant woman. I was a “we can ask confidently about her due date without fear of getting smacked” pregnant woman. I wasn’t really aware of the change until I was at work and being spoken to and clapped on the back by virtual strangers who felt, suddenly, as though they could ask me personal questions and give me advice. Aha! People are meddling in my bodily functions! I must be quite pregnant!
Friday, I had this discovery on a more personal level because I suddenly realized I was waddling. No, not really waddling, but that precursor to waddling where, instead of striding when you walk, you shift your weight from side to side. Then, after sitting and eating lunch for 30 minutes, I stood up to find my hip had locked and I could no longer climb stairs. I had a hot chocolate in the afternoon and felt quite certain it had been drugged with some kind of sedative because I was unable to lift my head from my arms on my desk for the remainder of the afternoon.
Aha, I thought, with far fewer exclamation marks, I must be quite pregnant.
Saturday morning, I lay abed, enjoying that even though it was the same time as during the week, I was not going anywhere. Suddenly, the babby, who had previously been offering me these delightful and occasional just-for-me stretches (picture a kitten yawning and this is how I imagine the babby stretching in utero)(probably because of the hormones) started to change position within my gut and apparently it was as significant an effort as when I try to turn over in bed these days because there was some serious manouvreing going on and I saw my flesh move in directions it shouldn’t move.
Aha. (touch of horror here) I must be quite pregnant.
Attached to these realizations is the enjoyment of playing games with the babby; tapping on my belly and having it KICK back.
(I put KICK in all caps because with Trombone, my placenta was on the front of my uterus, so it muffled a lot of his kicking, but I am assuming by the force I feel that this babby’s food source is well at the back or somewhere else because this is KICKING like in the books and movies. The “here, feel the baby kick” kind of kicking.)
Knowing it is listening to everything we say, that it is more aware of its older brother than he is of it; all of that is fun. And there is also the slow descent into a world where I actually cannot do X, no matter how hard I want to or how hard I try, where X is “the thing I would have no problem doing except now I can’t bend at the waist or make any sudden movements” so I am not going to try. I could be a hero and injure myself by seating Trombone in the middle of the car or I could give up and move the car seat to the passenger side. For example.
Pretty soon people will offer me seats on transit and I will have to take them, pride be damned.
As my last hoorah, yesterday, I went and harvested a Christmas tree from our local Rona parking lot. We weren’t going to get one and then we were going to get a small one and then I couldn’t find one I liked that was small and not potted and we bought a potted one last year with the intention of raising it to adulthood but instead we killed it so why not just get a cut tree and be done with good intentions, and then there was this one that was 5 feet tall and smelled fantastic so I brought it home, feeling ridiculously competent and superior watching while teams of people strapped trees just a bit bigger than mine onto the roofs of their SUVs using entire balls of twine and I, an Obviously Pregnant woman on her own, just shoved that puppy through the passenger side of my car and into the back seat and closed the door and drove home. Yes, I got a bit dirty. But I smelled like fir. I dare you to find a better dirt smell.
Then I vacuumed the car, ridding it of its stash of crusts of bread and cookie crumbs as well as its newly acquired tree needles. And then, I sat down, ate a bowl of cereal and panted for 30 minutes because Aha. I am quite pregnant.