My Growing Belly

Here I am, a little over four months pregnant. After three months of queasiness and uncertainty, and one month of the unexpected relief of having that queasiness lift, I am now solidly, squarely, heavily waddling into what feels like Pregnancy, with a capital P. No longer can I hide my growing belly under loose clothes. No more can I quickly bend over to pick up a dropped pen from under my desk at work. I'm almost having trouble getting up off the couch. And I'm not even that big yet.

I'm a little nervous about the physical discomforts awaiting me. I've always been a bendable, flexible, small person. Always the one who had to sit on the hump on car rides. The one who would sit on someone else's lap in a crowded space. The one my (younger) brother used to bench press, as a joke. I've been carrying a little extra weight for the last few years, but to have what I can only describe as a whole new organ suddenly sprung up around my middle is a foreign feeling altogether. There's this thing there. A compressible ball of some sort, that lets itself be known whenever I try to move too quickly, or bend over too deeply, or even when I sit on the toilet, for crissakes. I'm trying to get used to it, but so far it just keeps surprising me, like walking into your kitchen to find a stranger standing there, after forgetting that you invited him over in the first place.

I guess it's good training for the little bundle that will make its presence known, in oh so many ways, a mere five months from now.