33 weeks, 2 days.

I'm having one of those days when everything feels way too hard. At the moment I'm bored. All of Adelyn's clothes have been washed and put away. Dinner's already been cooked. The millionth novel has been read and the dogs have been walked.

This is what I've been afraid of. I'm letting myself think too much, and I'm getting swept up in a flurry of hormones and fears and worries and I just have to be honest, world. I have no clue what I'm going to do. I'm going to be a mother, that's decided. I have a month or less until that happens. I'm going to spend another few months figuring out how to do that, while Jason goes off to work and supports us. And I could never fully express how much I appreciate him, and how lucky I am to have a partner that allows me to focus on just figuring out motherhood for a bit.

But then what? It seems that everyone has an opinion on what I should be doing.What's fair to Jason, to Adelyn, to me. I've had millions of opinions thrown at me. And I can no longer hear my own.

I'm either letting the hormones get the best of me or I really am in the midst of my lowest point yet in this pregnancy. I've been so busy with preparing for Adelyn, and now that the last teeny sock has been washed and put away, I'm looking around and not recognizing anything.

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Boredom setting in.

It's the first day I've felt like someone without a job. Or even a goal or an itinerary or a schedule. I woke up early and have spent my time since then reading and watching TV. The climax of the day's excitement came at lunch, when a friend was supposed to stop by to see the new apartment and to eat. So I hurriedly tidied up and traded my pajama pants for arguably real pants only to find out that she couldn't come after all because work had gotten too busy. Back into the pajama pants I went.

I don't function well without things to do. I'm on week three of no-job, and it's taken until today to have that creepy-crawly lazy feeling catch up with me.

I've never been able to take naps, no matter how tired I may be, thanks to that nagging voice telling me I should be doing. I can't sleep in because the second my eyes open, even just between dreams, that voice is back, demanding that I do, do, do. When my health demands otherwise--in the past when I've hardly been able to get out of bed for a day or more at a time--the voice doesn't rest. It only goes to war with my body, calling it worthless and ridiculing its lack of tenacity.

Back in August when I made the final decision that I'd have to leave work earlier than the average pregnant person, I knew this day would come. When I got done packing, and moving, and setting up the new place. When I got to my sixth novel of the month and the novelty of reading voraciously wore off. When enduring 12 more weeks of a task-less existence would suddenly outshine how impossibly fast the last 28 weeks have flown by.

I spent 23 years falling in love with language and words and writing and four years focusing that love on telling true stories and journalism. Then I spent 11 months after I graduated with a bona fide job. And not just any job, but a job with an impressive title in my chosen field, one that is--according to the innumerable experts and professors who drilled it into my heads during college--supposed to be dying, dying, dead. But within a month of getting my diploma I was an associate producer. I was writing the words people call "news." But I still wasn't satisfied.

In 12 weeks or less, I'll have a child. That thought has taken over all others. I've forsaken contemplating my future, my already-stalled career and exactly how I will occupy my time after baby-mania has worn off. And when the to-do list dwindles, I can't help but stop and think about it.

I've always been lucky that I've known what I want to do. Earlier this year, I found a survey in my parents' garage that I'd filled out in first grade. My favorite color is no longer pink. I no longer spell my name with a backwards "r." But one thing hadn't changed--next to future career, I already knew. "Writer." Backwards "r" included.

I only hope my daughter has the same focus, that she can love something so much to look back nearly two decades later and watch the progression.

I guess that when the time comes for me to start teaching Adelyn about hopes and dreams and goals and careers--and who knows what I'll be doing then--I can tell her that when she was born, I was at the precipice of figuring it all out. Teetering over the edge.

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Life post-job.

I am now officially off the schedule at my job. I'm still technically an employee, only I'm now an "on-call" producer. My boss really, really didn't want me to quit, and this way, after I give birth and feel ready/decide to return I can do so easily and without having to sign any papers.

So that means for the past five days I have gone to bed at night, with my fiance by my side, without sunlight boisterously pushing its way through the cracks in my blinds. I wake up in the morning, with my fiance still by my side and the welcome sight of sunlight coming through the blinds. It's been heaven.

It's been so nice, in fact, that it's overshadowed the fact that I suddenly feel so tangibly, irreparably, undeniably PREGNANT. I have to stop to take a breath on my way up the stairs. I moan when I bend down and even louder when I stand back up. Hardly a minute goes by of any day that I'm not stricken with some new ache or pain coming from my baby-making area. I walk around with my hand on my back. The clerk at the gas station, the waiter at the restaurant, the old lady staring me down in line at the grocery store all ask me when I'm due. There's no turning back now.

Jason and I are moving next weekend, so I have very, very, very slowly started the packing process. I figure if I pack two boxes a day until then I can spend D-day drinking hot cocoa and watching the movers do every single ounce of dirty work without feeling the smallest bit of guilt.

The components of Adelyn's nursery are starting to come together. The type A part of me is way too excited about setting everything up. I'm almost salivating at the thought of putting the room together (or maybe it's the promise of the cheeseburger Jason's bringing me on his way home from work in a few minutes).

One more week.

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I touched her foot.

She kicked me so hard at work a few minutes ago I let out an audible gasp and my boss asked "What's wrong?" thinking some breaking news had come across the wires.

She kicked me so hard about two inches to the left of my belly button that I saw my stomach shapeshift through my black dress and sweater. And then I put my hand over the part that was bulging and did my best to send telepathic messages to my daughter to calm down, to stop whatever it was she was trying to do because the movement felt somehow riddled with fear and anxiety.

"Shhhh," I said, quietly this time to keep the coworkers' nosiness at bay.

And she pushed back against my hand, and I felt the indention of a foot--not a vague, fluttering in my lower abdomen but a human FOOT, my daughter's toes, her heel--resting against my palm. And she released, and relaxed, and fell back asleep.

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Changes.

I'm about to take pictures of our apartment to post on Craigslist. The hope is that we can have it leased out by next week, our new place picked by then, and everything moved by next weekend. Ambitious, and a little ridiculous, but that's how Jason and I are. We decide to do something and then do it way too fast and with hardly enough planning and we get incredibly stressed and on edge and then, suddenly, everything's done and all's right with the world.

I hate moving. With every fiber of my being. Except this time I have a good, solid excuse to not do all that much. You know, the whole pregnancy thing. So I'm in charge of taking pictures of our apartment now and packing up all the non-heavy stuff and unpacking that same stuff and organizing everything.

Now we just have to find a place.

And this is my last week of working at Channel 4, at least for now. I become an "on-call" producer starting Monday the 2nd, meaning I'll be taken off the schedule until I'm ready to come back. They wouldn't let me quit. This way I don't have to be "rehired" when (if) I decide to come back (I probably won't).

And, by the way, I don't get my insurance through my employer, just incase anyone thought I was manipulating them into keeping my coverage while I sat on my lazy pregnant behind.

This means that, starting Sunday morning when I get off work after working overnight, I will no longer be a pregnant vampire. I can sleep at night--at the same time as my fiance--and wake up when the sun is shining. What a novel thought.

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Happy 3AM.

My new work game plan was to try to sleep from about nine in the morning until five or six, because that's eight hours and then I'd at least have the night to spend with Jason before I have to go to work at midnight.

I fell asleep at nine easily. But now it's about two in the afternoon. I woke up at one, and there was no convincing my body to go back to sleep. My body still frustratingly hasn't gotten the hint that sunny outside does not necessarily equal wakey wakey time. Unless of course it's my day off, and then I always have to force the message across.

So now I'm sitting in the living room, eating a microwaveable burrito with a cracker and peanut butter appetizer, watching strangers birth babies on A Baby Story. It's all a very surreal way to spend your three o'clock in the morning.

We're not going to Austin. But it turned out for the best. Jason still gets to do the job, just from Tennessee. He'll be flying down a lot to oversee it. I, however, don't have to worry about moving in between moving while pregnant, so that makes me happy and takes my stress level down a notch. Now we just have to find a new place to live here.

I've realized that I have, finally, gotten over my obsession with needing a cigarette. Just in case I wasn't entirely clear before, I did quit a long time ago. All the writing I've done since then about quitting has been about the still-daily struggle with the urge, and if you've ever been a smoker you know that just because you're not giving into the addiction it doesn't mean the battle is won. I realized at work this morning, after an even more stressful shift than usual, that I hadn't thought about cigarettes or how much easier the morning would be if I could just have one, and for that I was--and am--proud.

I will surely have a lot more to say this weekend. On Sunday, I'm going to Memphis with Jason. We're inevitably going to hang out with his always-drunk and rowdy friends while we're there, so I'm sure that will inspire lots of fun preggo-stories.

And on Saturday, the big event. After three months of ignoring wedding plans, my mom and I are going wedding dress shopping. We went in April, back when my stomach didn't pooch out in a burgeoning baby bump, and I of course fell in love with one way over our budget. Now, things have changed.

I just really need to pick out a dress before I get much bigger, right? It scares me to think I have no way to predict exactly what size I will be five months post-baby for our wedding. So I guess I'll have to settle for something relatively shapeless. Perhaps a white, crystal-studded burlap sack?

I can't wait to be the pregnant girl shopping for her wedding dress. Get ready.

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The things that change when your life takes an unexpected turn.

Morgan, Jasmine, Me, Elise, and Erin (not pictured members of the pack--Meagan and Crystal, who couldn't make it to New York City this past summer while I interned at The Village Voice). Morgan lives in Brooklyn now. Jasmine's still in Murfreesboro. I took the leap to New York, then back to Murfreesboro, then to Nashville and now probably back to the godforsaken Boro. Elise lives in upstate New York with her aunt. Erin's still trapped in the throngs of the Boro, but keeps trying to find a way out. Meagan, my oldest friend, lives in LA.

I've spent the last five years trying to defy the odds with those girls.

We've all been friends since high school. Morgan, on the far left, has always been the one I've butted heads with the most, but also, not coincidentally, the one I see eye-to-eye most often and who shares 99% of my passions. We moved to New York together after high school to enroll at the Fashion Institute of Technology. I left. She stayed, and is now a technical designer for a bigwig fashion conglomerate. Jasmine is the youngest, eternally optimistic, carefree, an unfailing romantic. Elise will spend the rest of her life trying to figure out exactly what she wants, and she'll never give up until she finds it, and she'll never stop making you laugh. She always keeps you guessing. Erin, on the far right, is my fiance's sister. I can credit her with not only being one of my oldest friends but the person who introduced me to the love of my life. Crystal, not pictured, is hands down the funniest person I will ever meet. We went two years only talking here and there, and all of the sudden we've picked up where we left off, and are now meeting every Monday for lunch.

Meagan, seen here during her last visit to Middle Tennessee from Los Angeles about five months ago, has been my best friend since 2nd grade. That's about 14 years of friendship.

I am completely and totally aware of how corny it is, but we decided to call each other "husband friend" when we were 17, because there was just no other way to describe how intrinsically connected we were (and still are). And, yes, she's listed in my phone contacts as "Hubs." And, yes, she will remain "Hubs" after I get married. Jason will have to settle for "Jason," or "babe," or "old man," because she had the title first.

I could write a novel about each of those women. They are all unique, and wonderful, and insane, and a mess, and beautiful. And I love them. And each day that passes, I can feel them all drifting away from me a little more.

I don't know a single adult--one who's been through marriage, children, career changes, moves-- that has a tight-knit group of childhood friends that has survived. Sure, those groups exist in fiction, but rarely in reality.

When I called each of them to announce my pregnancy, not one reacted with any sort of tact or grace or composure. Each screamed. Half of them shouted "WE'RE HAVING A BABY!!??" Two of them cried. Meagan has still not told her parents, because we've been friends for so long, telling them, she says, feels like admitting she got knocked up, too.

I've known for a while now that it was all changing. I only see Meagan and Morgan once a year. Even before I got pregnant, I only saw Erin (who lives 30 minutes away and is going to be kind of related by blood to this kid) once every other week. Jasmine, once a month. Crystal, not once in two years, and now once a week, if our work schedules permit.

Elise came to visit last weekend. It was going to be the first time I'd seen her since I left New York last August.

I used to live with this girl. I saw her every morning when I woke up, every night before I went to sleep. I picked up her trash and asked her to do my makeup and let her borrow all my clothes. I listened to whichever boyfriend she had at the time's basso profondo resonate through our adjoining walls. I took her to the emergency room in the middle of the night when her stomach hurt. All I wanted was to see her for a night.

But with the way life is now, that's almost too much to ask.

On Saturday, we all planned to meet for dinner in Nashville around 8. I didn't have to be at work until 3am that day, so I could get a few hours of shut-eye in as long as I got home by 11. I knew I couldn't go with them to all the clubs afterward, because I didn't really want to have to stare my favorite alcoholic drinks in the face and say no, and also because, yeah, I'm pregnant and have to sleep.

The reservation inevitably gets changed to 9:30, because no one is ready yet and Erin has Jasmine's curling iron and has to go bring it to her so she can do her hair and Elise needs a nap, and so on. Fine. It means I won't be able to stay as long, but I'll still get to see my friend.

9:15 rolls around. Jason and I are about to walk out the door of our apartment.

I'm wearing makeup, and I spent more than 5 minutes putting it on. I've curled my hair. I'm wearing an outfit I actually planned and that doesn't include stretchy pants and flip flops. I AM WEARING HEELS. Big ones. I'm excited to have an excuse to feel like my old fashion-obsessed self, my old social self, my old surrounded-by-friends self. I don't even care that, at this point, I have to be at work in six hours and that I have not yet slept. I have a chance to be me again. Not the pregnant version of me, not the sleep-deprived, ponytail-loving zombie I've been playing for the past two months. Sarah Caitlin, she of enviable wardrobe and perky demeanor and wit.

And then my phone rings, and they tell me they haven't yet left Murfreesboro. Twenty minutes pass. They still haven't.

Before it was time for us to leave, Jason and I had been cuddled up on the couch, watching Legally Blonde 2. It is the worst movie I have ever seen.

So, now, my heels immediately stripped from my pounding feet, I sit back down on the couch. This is what my life has become, I think. Watching a movie I just admitted is the worst movie I've ever seen.

They eventually make their way to Nashville. It's 10:30 at that point. The restaurant has stopped serving dinner, and when Jason and I sit down at the table, they all have drinks in their hands and empty glasses in front of them. The smell of alcohol wafts from the table.

I hug Elise. We spend twenty minutes talking and laughing and hugging some more. And then I have to leave. It's midnight. I have to go to bed and wake up in two hours for work. They have to hit the clubs.

Were I not pregnant, I would have been out with them. I would have been a part of the countless drunken inside jokes made that night. I would have been in all the bathroom photo shoots. I would have stumbled into work without any sleep, and I probably would have been just fine.

When we get home, I wash my face, put my hair into a ponytail, and climb back into Jason's T-shirt, the same one I'd been wearing all day. Legally Blonde 2 is playing again. Jason and I get in bed, our dogs snuggle up between our legs, our 2 and a half inch baby dances inside of me and drains every last ounce of energy from my body.

This is now my life. I won't see Elise again until my wedding. I won't see Erin again until we can find a spare hour in our schedules to make the 30 minute drive to each other. I won't see Jasmine again until god knows when, because she's in the throes of a new relationship and I barely hear from her as it is. I won't see Crystal again until I can get my lazy ass off the couch and actually make one of our lunch dates. I won't see Morgan again until she visits in October, for the birth of her sister's third kid. I won't see Meagan again until she's (I hope, I pray) by my side in the hospital while I give birth to this child.

Things have, without a doubt, completely and irrevocably changed.

But lying in bed, Jason is holding my hand. His other hand is on my belly, hoping to feel the slightest indication of life. Louie is licking my toe.

I really can't ask for much more.

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What happens when you're working at 2:40AM and Pregnant and Hungry.

I was so determined to eat some Peppercorn Ranch Sun Chips just now, that I squandered away three dollars of my hard-earned money.

I put 75 cents in and pushed the button. It started to make its way out, but stopped just short of falling to my emaciated fingers.

I walked all the way back to my desk, found 75 more cents, walked all the way back to the break room, and put the coins in. Pushed the button.

This one comes all the way out, but gets caught (literally DANGLING!) on the next row. I watch in horror as the first bag of chips--it's somehow now wedged between the Twinkies to its left--doesn't budge.

This is the point any sane person would give up, or at least start investing in a different MSG-tinged snack.

But not me. Not a hormonal, pissed off, HUNGRY pregnant woman. I deserved those damn Sun Chips.

I followed this pattern TWO more times (walking back to my desk to get more change between each) until all four of the bags came tumbling down.

I grabbed two--because two I can explain to my coworkers, but four is downright crazy--and left the others for some lucky asshole to find in the morning.

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Telling your boss you're pregnant

After a lot of anxiety and worry and unnecessary freak-outs and soul searching, I finally told my boss(es) that I'm pregnant.

I told the first one toward the end of my overnight shift. She's the executive producer of the morning news, so my boss during those hours although not the boss (or the decision-maker) of the entire organization. She's engaged, as well, and every now and then, between the never-ending list of things you have to do in 30 seconds or less to produce a three-hour newscast, we talk about our impending nuptials.

"So how goes the wedding planning?" I ask her, both of us still typing away, our backs to each other.

"It's good," she says. "I realized yesterday I hadn't actually picked flowers or a cake or a DJ yet, and there's only four months to go, so I scheduled all of them at once."

(Oh, the days when my wedding was my main source of worry and planning and not how I'm somehow going to manage to care for an infant that was in no way expected or scheduled.)

"Well, it must be nice to be all done," I respond.

And then, in the clumsy way I've become accustomed to telling people, I blurt it out.

"My wedding's been postponed a month, because I'm pregnant and due in February."

The typing stops, and for a moment the only sound filling the newsroom is the dozen or so police scanners all screaming about a suspect on the loose or a suspicious man in a white T-shirt and jeans roaming the streets.

She turns toward me and puts her hands on my knees.

"Congratulations, Sarah!" she says wholeheartedly. "I can't believe you've been working this shift the whole time; I can't even imagine!"

Her answer's not completely shocking or anything, but this is a woman who is always in work-mode (you really can't be any other way in this business). She's seems nice, but never exceedingly warm or compassionate.

I tell her about my fears of staying at this job, of pushing myself too hard. She tells me what I needed to hear, that my life and health are more important, that it's my right to take time off for a child.

Later, I get up the nerve to tell my other boss, the executive producer over the whole shebang. We go into her office, where I presume she thinks we're going to talk about me taking on some shows by myself as a producer.

The second the door closes, I blurt it out again, this time with arguably even less tact.

"I'm pregnant," I say.

This woman is a mother of three. When she hired me, she told me she'd worked there for eight years and had taken off two when her third was born. I worried the most about telling her, since she was the one who hired me, interviewed me, promoted me, had the authority to fire me or grant me the leave I want or deny it. But I hoped she would be understanding. She'd taken off two years, after all.

But the look on her face is nothing but pure compassion. She knows about my Crohn's and that I've been working frequent 12 hour overnight shifts.

And she tells me the same thing.

"Sarah, when it comes to this job," she says, "your personal life is always more important. When it comes to your life, screw this place."

She says I can leave whenever I want (granted I give plenty of notice). I tell her I plan to leave in November or December, and to (hopefully) come back two months or so after giving birth.

"Whatever you need," she says.

And I'm not even kidding.

From the second I saw the result on my home pregnancy test, I've been convinced the world wouldn't approve. In this age of Bristol Palin and 16 and Pregnant and Britney Spears' public parenting tactics and Judd Apatow's take on procreating and drive-through Plan B pills, being pregnant hardly feels like a good thing.

With my parents, my sister, my friends, the world, even myself, I was terrified each time I admitted it. I sweat and nearly hyperventilate each time I plan to say the words.

"I'm pregnant."

To be pregnant at my age, before I've gotten married, before I obviously planned it, feels like admitting failure. I didn't use condoms and birth control, and I easily could have, so, therefore, I failed.

But each time I've let the secret slip, I've been presently surprised. Everyone's been exceedingly supportive.

I left work that day, for the first time in ages, feeling genuinely okay about my job and what this baby might mean for my career.

I haven't told the number one guy in the office--guy being the operative word. But I don't really care. He's a man, and although he has children of his own, he's never had to push one of them out. I have female support behind me, and that's plenty. Even if he vetoes the whole thing and kicks me to the curb altogether, at least then I'll know it's just because he doesn't--and can't--understand, not because I did something wrong.

It's all gonna be just fine, I think.

Maybe even better than it would've been otherwise, if everything had gone to plan.

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