My Bolwing Ball

With less than 4 weeks to go, I'm feeling rather...what's the word...LARGE. The only way I can think to describe how it feels to be 8 months pregnant is: like having a bowling ball strapped to your belly with plastic wrap - expect that the plastic wrap is your muscles, with all the nerve endings and aches that would come from muscles being stretched out that far. (Oh yeah, and the bowling ball is constantly squirming and moving). Every step is a “jiggle, tear, jiggle” feeling. Similar to an attempt to run without a bra on (which I’m sure every woman can relate to). Thus why I wear: The Belly Band. I also call it, My Belly Bra. It pretty much does the same thing as a bra, but for one large…..belly.

When I’m not wearing my much-appreciated-belly-band, I walk around with my hands under my belly in a futile attempt to keep it up. The slower the steps, the better. No really, Kirk can run up the stairs and write a novel in the amount of time it takes me to walk from the kitchen to the couch.

Bending over is out of the question. The hold-your-breath-and-squat position works much better. Although it always reminds me of the “no, allow me” scene from Emperors New Groove.




If I drop something that I don’t really need right then, I usually wait until Kirk comes home and have him pick it up for me. If I do need to pick it up, I cleverly scoot together anything else on the ground with my foot into a pile so that I can pick up multiple things with one bend. I learned this last week while attempting to vacuum. I thought I’d get one last vacuuming in before the baby came – but it took 30 mins just to get things up off the floor in preparation to vacuum. By then I was too tired to vacuum and just wanted to lie down and rest. However, the bed was piled high with the stuff I’d just picked up, so all I could do was lay on the floor to recover for 20 mins. Sound pathetic? Well it is, but that’s how things get done now-a-days.

Yesterday was a rough day. I really needed to go to the store because we had no food. I thought I’d just quickly clean the bathroom beforehand. (It really needed it. I’d been staring at those mirror splatters for over a month now.) After completing that seemingly small task however, my energy was zapped – requiring a 30 min nap – after which I was hungry, but (as noted earlier) we had no food. It was like a vicious cycle. I needed food to give me energy, so that I could go to the store, to get the food, so that I could have the energy to go to the store to get the food we didn’t have!

Ah! I just want to hold my baby in my arms instead of in my belly!!!

I think pregnancy does something to emotions too – what do you think??

I never did make it to the store. Nor make food. Luckily, Kirk got home and saved me from my emotional and physical exhaustion. He soothed my sobbing cries and made some delicious pancakes for dinner. Oh, and they were gooood pancakes. Much needed.

Lessons learned: I should expect to only be able to accomplish one task per day, and do that thing first.