Proof

Watching my belly has become one of my favorite ways to pass the time. Transformers has nothing on the shape-shifting that's been going on recently.

While I took these pictures, she moved from exceptionally high to low, from the right and then to the left, pushing the edges of my belly along with her. And then I felt my pants get a little bit tighter, all in the span of five minutes.

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22 Weeks, 2 Days.

Note the scar from my bowel resection surgery eight years ago. If I have to get a C-Section I'm gonna have all sorts of crazy going on down there.

When I rolled out of bed this morning, I immediately felt different. My body felt somehow heavier. My breath felt more stilted. My underwear felt tighter. And then I looked in the mirror and suddenly looked undeniably pregnant. The quasi-chub, quasi-pregnant phase is over. Gone. Bloat has given way to bulge, and overnight I'm getting those sympathetic looks from strangers in the gas station.

I've been putting off taking pictures of my belly. But I already forgot what I looked like last week, and I figured if I didn't buckle down and face the music now, I'd be in active labor in a hospital bed without a single picture to document the crazy trial that has been the past nine months.

So here goes. The belly.

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Insatiable hunger and buttoning my pants.

I have been insatiably hungry recently, and I'm not saying that lightly. I literally CANNOT stop eating. On Wednesday, my day off, I did nothing except sit around and read and relax. And eat. And eat. And eat. The only thing that could stop me was sleep, so when I finally drifted off to slumber I instead dreamt about what I would eat next. And then I woke up at 11 p.m. for work and made a sandwich. I haven't been this hungry since the first time I was put on Prednisone--I was 14, weighed under 80 pounds, and found myself in throes of steroid-induced hunger eating 9--no exaggeration--grilled cheese sandwiches in a row.

None of my clothes fit. None of them. And I know I'm not supposed to care, because it's the miracle of life and some women can't even have babies and kids are dying in Africa but, I'm sorry, I sort of do. Society can't just expect us to turn off our I'm-getting-fat switch because we're pregnant. The human (and hormonal) mind doesn't work like that.

No matter how excited I am about this child, it doesn't erase the frustration of trying to find something to wear when none of your pants will button and even your stretchiest leggings feel like a cruel torture device.

My stomach is still somewhere in the etherworld between chub and with-child. I don't feel confident enough in my bump to let it all hang out, because, to me, it just looks like I'm bloated beyond belief.

I broke down a few weeks ago and ordered two pairs of maternity jeans but they still haven't arrived, and after searching through my inbox I couldn't find a confirmation e-mail and am now wondering if I ever even ordered them at all. I know I was at work when I did it, and it was maybe 4 in the morning. I swear it wasn't a mirage. But my closet still lacks anything that truly fits.

Being pregnant so far feels a lot like that hour after Thanksgiving dinner. You've stuffed your face beyond belief, and suddenly you're aware of every single seam in every single article of clothing on your body. Your breath feels stiffled by the fullness. Even unbuttoning your pants doesn't fully remedy the discomfort. The only true remedy is another piece of pie.

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The bump arrives.

Complaining about body image while pregnant automatically groups you with the women who keep smoking, who complain about their babies' sex, who just aren't appreciating the whole thing enough because a lot of women can't even get pregnant so how dare you do anything but smile?

But I wasn't expecting to be pregnant right now, so when a stranger stopped me yesterday and asked if I'm pregnant, my first impulse was to be upset. It took a few minutes of rationalization, going back and forth between "I am pregnant, but she didn't know that for sure, but I actually am so she wasn't saying something negative about my body, but what if I wasn't pregnant and she'd asked that and been wrong, but I AM so that's not an issue," before I really came to grips with the fact that I am now--officially--showing.

One of the anchors at my station is also pregnant and only a few weeks ahead of me.

I also come up to this woman's belly button.

No matter how good you might feel about yourself, any smidgen of confidence easily floats out the window when you're side-by-side with a local celebrity giant who gets voted on Nashville's Most Beautiful People List every year. She's still not showing at all. At all. I asked her yesterday, the same day a stranger had noticed my bump, how it was that she wasn't showing even the slightest bit on her second child? Her answer was that she's just so tall, there's too much room in there for it to grow.

Women can't help compare themselves to each other. It's in our DNA, or at least an undefined portion of our DNA created by an image-obsessed society. One girl I know said she didn't start showing an inch with her first pregnancy until she was 7 months. Another swore to me she was in bikinis for all three trimesters, and no one ever noticed she was pregnant (I'm not saying I'm jealous of that girl, 'cuz to be honest that freaks me out just a little).

But here I am, 4 and a half months, five feet tall, with strangers already reaching their grubby paws at my convex stomach.

And I know it makes me sound like a selfish bitch to confess feeling uncomfortable with gaining constant weight and watching my shape shift without my control, but there it is. At least I quit smoking.

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Belly.

Update: My go-to I don't want to put on pants pants, the one time crown and glory of my comfy wardrobe, the pants that feel and stretch like pajamas but are just wide-legged and tailored enough to wear in public, officially no longer I fit. I wore them to work last night and realized the second I walked out the door (and I was already late, so no turning back) that I could barely breathe. I spent the rest of work pulling them down and then up, trying to find a point on my middle they could hit without feeling like death.

I still don't think I look pregnant, just like I've eaten one too many Twinkies. Or, since I hate Twinkies, Ramen noodles, because I went on a Ramen noodle rampage yesterday. I won't tell you how many packages I consumed in that 24 hours, but trust me, you should be impressed. My boss did catch me getting out of my chair last night, and for some reason I stood up like all the pregnant women do in the movies, stomach-first, with my hand grasping my back (that damn perineal pain during pregnancy thing is not a joke), and for the first time I saw that awww how adorable, you're pregnant! look aimed toward me.

I need new pants.

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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.

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