People are always giving me knowing looks these days and warning me that having a baby changes
everything, and, while it seems a little late to be sharing cautionary tales with me at eight big months of pregnancy, I believe them.
I know that there will be little sleep, lots of crying (on all parts), more poop than I've ever been confronted with, less money, less time for me, even less time for our marriage and relationship. Also, apparently, less personal hygiene. *Sigh*.
I know all of this, and am trying to at least mentally get ready for what that's going to be like. I'm trying to get laundry done, stocking up on quick and easy meals, and making sure Nick and I spend lots of one-on-one time together now, trying to be prepared.
However.
What I wasn't prepared for at all is my new relationship with my body. Yup: 20+ lbs, of weight gain, stretch marks, heart burn, permanently hairy legs because I can't reach to shave them. The inability to put my own shoes on, sounding like the little-engine-that-couldn't-but-really-wanted-to every time I move... It's all there.
And I'm really kind of in love with it.
Every day I'm amazed that my body can do this thing. Every time I've thought that surely my skin can't stretch much further, it does. My skin stretches, my organs squish and my body does exactly what it's supposed to. A-mazing!
This might not sound like a huge revelation to anyone else. But to a girl who (sadly, like many others) has spent much of her life not being too impressed by the body she was given, it's kind of a revelation: Oh, so this is what I was built for!
My wide hips, so often lamented for not fitting into cute dresses, that my ever-loving mother dubbed "child-bearing" when I was about 13, are proving very handy for accommodating what looks like a very big baby.
No gestational diabetes, no high blood pressure, no complications along the way. Who knew my body was capable of getting it so right?
Sure, I don't love how the stretch marks look any more than the next person. But I do love what they mean: my body is growing a baby.
And that baby is our baby. And our baby will be here next month!