Bump watch.

I was getting a manicure with my mom this weekend when I experienced my first case of a stranger commenting on the size of my belly. I'm not showing. I'm just not. I've gained maybe five pounds so far, and if my belly is protruding out any more than normal it's because I just ate leftover chicken and rice for breakfast followed by two empty strawberry shortcake shells (they just looked so lonely sitting there in the fridge).

I told my mom not to mention the pregnancy to the nail people at all, out of fear that they would then refuse to rub my feet during the first pedicure I'd gotten in almost a year because of stupid old wives' tales, but the manicurist overheard us talking about it anyway. Very few conversations between my mom and I, or even my friends and I, can go on for five minutes without veering into babydom.

While filing away at my claws, she barked at me, "When are you due???"

I told her, and then she regaled me with stories about how when she was pregnant with her first son, she didn't start showing until a WEEK before her due date.

"You are having a boy," she says matter-of-factly.

"Ok, how do you know?"

"Because you are carrying him up high," at this she reaches out and puts her hand on my "bump," letting the nail file fall to the table. "If I am wrong, you come back and I'll give you free manicure."

As happy as the prospect of a free manicure makes me, I can't just let something like that go.

I wish I was showing. I really, really do. I wish this incessant chubby and bloating feeling I carry around all day would morph into a concrete something, a pregnant belly that brings along tangible kicks and feelings of movement. It would make this all seem so much more impermeable and real.

But I'm just not. I know this because any bump in my middle region GOES AWAY when I push down on it, which, you know, doesn't so much happen when the cause is a protruding uterus rather than fat or bloat. I know this because I started out this pregnancy at about 100 pounds, and I am not even four months in, so to be showing enough during my first pregnancy as to discern where the baby is sitting would be some sort of medical marvel.

I probably shouldn't take what this stranger, this flightly, giggly manicurist says, so seriously.

Still, her story about delivering her first son in TWO PUSHES sure did make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.