It’s official.
The towels at the gym no longer fit around me.
Welcome to week 30 of pregnancy.
Here I am from the front. At first glance, I have you fooled. I’m not pregnant. Except for the fact that my legs have grown 10x their original size.
Then I turn to the side.
There’s no mistaking. I am very very pregnant.
On Monday night I was walking into the pool with Chris after having a particularly pregnant day. In pregnancy there are days you forget you are pregnant (rare), days you feel mostly pregnant (frequent) and days you feel superbly pregnant (increasing in number now that I have reached the third trimester). I couldn’t breathe (oh who needs to breathe anyways), I haven’t crapped in three days (nothing spells FUN like constipation!) and earlier that day it occurred to me that soon I might need to call in back up for some help with wiping.
I realize that’s a little over the top of me to say that but I am sure most have-been or currently-are pregnant women can agree. I could use some GoGo Gadget arms right now.
The cure for all of that? Giving birth. Unfortunately, I have 10 weeks left. The next best cure – swimming.
In the locker room, I get into my swimsuit. I am at the point where the suit easily goes up to my belly. But getting it up and over the belly requires a deep breath and a lot of pulling. I’ve even considered asking someone else for help. Everything takes so much longer when pregnant. Putting things away, putting things on. Plus you never feel fully put together. I always feel like something is missing or sticking out. Whether it is a chunk of ass, a rogue boob or….I walk past the mirror.
Oh no….I didn’t even think to look down there.
This is where it gets graphic. Boys, children under 13, mom, please tune out.
Listen, there is a lot of land mass below the belly that requires maintenance. Know what I mean? You got legs, thighs, things need maintaining. For awhile I could actually see the southern hemisphere. Sure, it involved mirrors and a midget (KIDDING!), but I could at least get the job done. Now there are parts of me that are totally eclipsed and might not be seen again for the next few months. But it’s not like I can just let things go feral. I won’t be THAT woman at the pool.
Let me tell you about shaving when pregnant. It’s sort of like driving a plow into a cornfield with a paper bag over your head. You’re not sure where or how much but you know that by the time you’re done, SOMETHING is going to be missing.
Any time I go to the gym and don’t want to swim, every lane is empty. Any time I go to the gym and want to swim – every lane is double stacked. Chris plants himself at the end of a lane to pull a move we call “the hover”. You hover at the end of a lane making the person swimming so uncomfortable that they can’t help but rush their workout. Even better, the “double hover” involves two people sitting at the end of the lane waiting. The hover works about 50 percent of the time. The other 50 percent, you are up against your toughest enemy yet – a woman doing breaststroke with a foam noodle for an hour straight.
She has better endurance than you, Ironman. Trust me.
I’m in no mood to pull the double hover tonight so instead I carefully land myself to wait by the edge of the hot tub. Some days this type of landing requires the kind of acrobatics you see in Cirque de Soleil – it’s quite a sight and one that has all eyes in the hot tub watching the very pregnant girl try to sit down. Finally landed, I dangle my feet in the hot water.
No sooner did the mousy looking man on the opposite side of the hot tub come water walking up to me.
Are you about to have a baby?
Of all the things I could say. Of all the things I want to say but I’m just too damn big and tired to pull something witty out of my growing ass so all I can think of is…
Yes.
When is the baby due?
Late July.
Oh late July, it’s going to be summer then and really, really hot. I bet you’ll be really uncomfortable.
I bet in two seconds I’m going to grab a foam noodle from the corner, beat you silly with it and you’ll be uncomfortable. Unfortunately that would require me to stand up and since it took about 2 minutes to get down on the floor like this I’m not about to get up just yet.
I’ve heard it’s uncomfortable.
You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl?
It’s a boy.
Maybe the next one will be a girl.
Maybe you should just….the next one? WHO said anything about the next one!?!
(I just laugh here)
Finally, I decide to throw it back to him. Not because I wanted to talk to him but because I wanted him to stop asking me questions.
Do you have any kids?
No.
So, you, a man with I’m assuming no ovaries, is giving me, a woman with highly functional ovaries, advice on how to give birth from no experience whatsoever, not even osmosis by once pregnancy wife. Brilliant.
But I have nieces and nephews.
Which is clearly the same as giving birth to a child.
I’m not married.
I didn’t ask. But for the record – it doesn’t surprise me.
But one day I will get married and I’ll have a family.
That’s what they all say.
There’s someone for everyone.
I won’t go after a married woman, though.
PRESS THE PANIC BUTTON. I’m now convinced, you’re f*ckin’ crazy! I’m all alone here, unless you count the old woman in the purple suit who might be having intercourse with one of the jets in the hot tub but I stopped looking after the last contortion of her body.
HELP!
No, I think it’s inappropriate to go after a married woman. That’s not a good thing.
I am realizing now, there is something wrong with this man. VERY wrong. And may I say that is it just my gym or do the very wrong people seem to flock to the hot tub like it’s their mothership?
Perhaps my husband heard my psychopathic distress call because he walks over to me. I give him that look like help a pregnant woman up and out of here NOW. He does – and we head out to swim.
I tell Chris to share the lane with the guy doing fly and I’ll share with paddles and pull buoy in the other lane. Chris actually knows them both. By name. He introduces me as his wife and tells them that I’m having a baby. In case they couldn’t see the oh so obvious. They were both so gushing about it. You’ll love it, that is so great, I bet you’re having the time of your life.
The time of my life? No. Actually, I’m having the indigestion of my life. The time of my life involves a bottle of red wine, perhaps a few cowboys, maybe even some midgets – this, however, is not that time.
I share a lane with one of the guys. He is so accommodating. Will I be in your way? I think the real question is will I be in your way. Look at me. My circumference might cross over the lane line at some point. I then proceed to have what had to be the world’s worst swim. Swims are usually slow but this one went to a whole new level of slowness and discomfort. I had to single-side breathe because I couldn’t breathe. Plus I was swallowing so much water from the other side of the lane that I stopped at the wall hacking so bad a man in the deep well asked if I was ok.
Get the shepherd’s hook, and an assist. It’s going to take two of you to pull me out of here.
3200 yards of stubborn I will finish this later, I take a shower and realize that the gym towels no longer fit around me. Well that’s just great. I’m now that woman revealing what might be badly plowed corn rows to the entire women’s locker room.
How is it that pregnancy can be this sexy?
Back at home I look in the mirror. I am pregnant. Very. And I need a haircut. Badly. I want to cut my hair. It’s grown too long. I read somewhere that you should never get a haircut in pregnancy because you don’t want a new look, you just want to not look pregnant. I’m there. I decide that maybe I should consider myself too pregnant to make decisions so I ask Chris if I should get a haircut.
I like your hair.
WRONG ANSWER! (are you seeing a pattern of asking things of your husband when pregnant – any answer is the wrong answer)
At some point, every pregnant woman gets to this point – you just want to look and feel attractive. Everyone tells you “you look great” but what they mean is that all things considered (ie., 25 pounds of weight gain, swollen ankles, giant belly) – you look great with all of that. Which really means that you look good for looking bad.
Add insult to injury: to confirm how “great” and attractive I look right now, Chris just invited Boss over for a conjugal visit tonight.
(true conversation)
So, Boss, you got a bath today and you’re all clean?
(this is where Boss bats his eye lashes and says yes)
Maybe you can sleep in bed with me tonight. How would you like that?
(this is where Boss heads upstairs and puts on his best lingerie)
Chris and Boss then have one of their bizarre make out sessions on the couch where Boss starts licking Chris and Chris sticks out his tongue over and over again at Boss.
Are you letting Boss lick your mouth? That’s disgusting.
His tongue is cleaner than mine. I saw it on Mythbusters. They proved it.
Well call up Mythbusters and ask them to prove how long it takes until a pregnant woman declares herself too big, too unattractive, too pregnant to deal with the rest of the world. My guess is that it’s somewhere between 32 and 36 weeks (I’m guessing that after week 36 you get almost like the last 6 miles at Ironman – you know you’re going through them but don’t exactly remember them, you just run like hell to the finish line).
As you can tell, I’m adapting well to the third trimester. There’s only 10 weeks left which both relieves me and scares the shit out of me.
(which given my latest bout with constipation is not necessarily a bad thing)
