Wherein One Realizes She's Pregnant

One morning you finally wake up and think, "Holy crap. I'm pregnant."

It just hits you one day--and it's not the day you pee on the stick or even the day you first go to the doctor's office to see static and fuzz and are told there's actually a baby inside you.

I am surprised it isn't a more prevailing thought throughout the entire pregnancy. Up until your 'come to Jesus' moment, thinking about being pregnant is a lot like thinking about breathing. You just aren't aware of it until you think about it. And once you think about it, you have a hard time not thinking about it until something else distracts you; like cheeseburgers, a good crime show, or a paperclip.

My big moment of realization didn't come until I was standing in the dressing room of the maternity store pulling on a pair of jeans topped with a giant elastic band.

Once you are hiking an enormous rubber band over your midsection so your pants stay on, you quickly come to the conclusion that either there has been a serious overdose on beer and queso dip or you are indeed pregnant.

So I stood in the dressing room staring at the unmistakable protrusion and just thought, "I guess I'm really going through with this." Which, upon reflection, is sort of an odd thought when one is having an epiphany which involves bringing another person to life.

I may be an adult, but just going food shopping, stopping at the bank and walking the dogs makes me feel like I've performed some sort of miracle. Raising a child to become a productive member of society is a pretty big step up from managing to get a load of laundry done.

The physical act of being pregnant eventually becomes part of your daily life and you simply make some minor adjustments to account for it. Not unlike knowing the knob to the pantry is loose so you pry the door open another way rather than just take 2 minutes to fasten it.

You wake up in the middle of the night confused why you are awake and then realize it's because every limb in your body has fallen asleep and you want more than anything to flip over to your other side, but you are paralyzed with being pregnant. You go through a quick series of movements to get the blood circulating again, flip over to the other side and are back asleep.

Tying your shoes now involves lifting your leg onto a chair, making sure your balance is centered and bending over carefully to reach the laces. But mostly you just say "Screw it all, I'm just going to wear flip flops today."

And you learn to make the last meal of the day a small one and you eat it when grandmothers around the world are enjoying their Blue Plate Special or else you'll be up all night with heartburn.

But you still wake up some nights because there's a cantaloupe rolling around inside you and you can't help but think, "If I can't bring myself to mop the floors, how the hell am I going to help someone survive high school?"