Magnitude and Girth: A Very Pregnant Woman's Story

Have you ever seen that show…”I didn’t know I was
pregnant”? It’s about women who don’t know they’re
pregnant until they give birth. That is one show I will
never have the honor of being on.

Magnitude of Montana

At present (33 weeks) I am carrying an extra 44 pounds.
There are days the size of my feet reach the magnitude of
Montana. And other days, after doing too much physical
activity, I feel as if there is a pole made of concrete
that somehow has found it’s way up both of the orifices
in my body which apparently will be very busy during the
birthing process (I am hoping it is just the one orifice,
thank you very much). My lower back sometimes hurts so
much I feel like some serious drilling is going on in
there. And since I am carrying the baby in front, people
seem to be very nice to me. Well most people are very
nice to me.

“You Ready to Go?”

The other day I was walking my dog along one of the side
streets in West Hollywood. I have an 85 pound lab/charpe
mix and he needs big walks. So there we were walking,
minding our own business, him peeing on most things along
our path and me waddling beside him, holding in my pee,
most of it anyway, when this strange man screeched his
brakes and halted his car right next to me. He rolled
down his window and shouted:
“You ready to go?”
“What?”
“You ready to pop? You’re about to pop any second aren’t
you? What are you like a month overdue?”
“Um, no. No, actually, I have almost two months left.”
“Shut the f*** up! Shut the F*** UP!!! You’re F***ING
HUGE, HUUUUUUUGE! What the F***?!”

Tears and Blood

Now mind you in another lifetime I might have gone over
and punched the guy in the nose, or kicked his car (that
would get him) or called him a real mean, mean name. But
in this pregnant phase of life all I could do was walk
away, holding back tears. And of course the more I held
them back, the more they flowed and as they started to
flow, so did my nose. But of course my nose flowing was
my nose bleeding and my pregnant nose bleeds are like
water gushing. By the time I got home, I looked like I
had been through battle. My feet were each the girth of
now Texas (I’ve learned that walking up the hills aids
with swelling), my stomach apparently made me look almost
11 months pregnant and my hands, shirt and most of my
chin were covered in what seemed like a pint of blood. I
won’t even go into the pain in my lower back.

Milk and Cookies

I was a sad sight. I walked in my front door, grabbed a
large chocolate chip cookie, a glass of milk and jumped
into the bathtub. It couldn’t have been more perfect. I
got clean, my back got relief and I felt so much better.
But the one thing I realized for certain while lying in
that tub was that there is no way on God’s green earth
that I could ever be on that show “I didn’t know I was
pregnant”. No way.