I Love This Pic

Originally uploaded by SarahLena.

When you’ve had a bad day, this smiling dog should make you smile.

Yesterday was the first time anyone has questioned my habits since I became pregnant. So having eight months to prepare.. I was still not ready.

A horrified female coworker saw me pop open a can of diet Dr. Pepper and asked, “OhmyGOD, you drink caffeine? While you’re pregnant?!”

I went pale with guilt, and started waving my hands wildly, as if I could persuade her that I was still a fit mother. “NO, not regularly. Of course not. Only in a pinch.”

Then I realized that she has never had children.

“I mean, I left my crack in the car this morning. I need SOMETHING to get me through the day.”

So if you’ve browsed through my Flickr set, you’ve already seen my first (and probably only) attempt to document the glamorous side of pregnancy. There are just so darn many of them, it’s hard to catch them all. And quite frankly, most of them are too inappropriate for Flickr to house. So you just have to use your imagination.

Or I could tell you about them. Yep, THAT’S the plan.

Bryan and I have been sleeping in separate beds for about a month now. This comes from my inability to get comfortable and.. well, he tends to get pretty noisy when he sleeps. Admittedly, this past week’s change in barometric pressure has had me making noise as well. Regardless, we still fall asleep together, and then one of us (me, mostly) will move to the nursery.

Every night that we lay together, it’s obvious that we don’t “fit” like we used to. Mostly because I have three (sometimes 3.5) pillows stacked under my head to keep my heartburn at bay (sure, THAT works), and he doesn’t even like sleeping with A pillow. So, every night, he will roll over and get a face full of my nipple.

Which really freaks me, the expectant mom, OUT. Seriously.

Last night, I finally just came out with the truth: he couldn’t avoid my nipples if he wanted to. They are now the size of silver dollar pancakes. (Mmmm… pancakes…) And they’re DARK. Sure, I read these things could/would happen, but they don’t stop me from staring at myself in the mirror and wondering, “Whose body IS this?”

I likened my nipples to one of our favorite MadTV sketches, where Michael McDonald and Keegan Michael Key are playing golf announcers and Michael McDonald announces that he has pancake nipples. By the end of the skit, we’ve seen them. They’re horrid. AND NOW THEY’RE ON MY CHEST.

I also admitted that other things are just as glamorous about pregnancy. How about the fact that I can’t reach around my belly? I feel like a tyrannosaurus rex sometimes. Like yesterday morning, when I tried to clean up the .. you know.. landing strip down there. Why? I don’t know. I worry that the doctor judges me. (Yes, I’m still that vain.) So I was trying to clean it up. But I can’t reach a lot of the “hard to reach” areas. Result? I now have crop circles around my vajayjay.

I know I never picked up a single “What to Expect” type book and read, “You will feel so beautiful through all nine months of your pregnancy,” so I feel like I’m bitching about something I was warned about. But I do feel duped. All of my friends were just so gorgeous during their pregnancies. All of them. They absolutely glowed. They never looked as big as I do. They moved far more gracefully than I do. So either I glamorized it (NOOOO..) or I really suck at housing another being in my uterus.

I love my son. But I am SO ready to have my body back.