Week twenty-three

This week has been blessedly free of medical freakouts and frantic internet searches leading to endless threads of panicked women posting their diagnoses and speculating about what they mean.

In other words, this week has been a breeze.

Okay, sort of. My body is starting to do some crazy shit that is taking its toll on me. It feels sometimes like my organs are in danger of falling out, either through my gut or through my ladyparts. There is so much pressure in the area sometimes that I feel like something is going to pop. When I walk, the tiny jolt of each step vibrates my bones and in the crevices of the joints in my torso and pelvis. My lower stomach/pelvic area has been so sore that I make old-lady noises and crinkly faces every time I roll over in bed, which is a lot since I’m switching between right side/left side and trying not to pause too long on my back. I am a lifelong back sleeper, so this sleeping-on-my-side thing is a real pain in the … everything. My extra-long pillow gets a workout every night and sometimes, when I fold it in half to put it between my knees, its corner accidentally pokes Ray in the ass, sending him out of a dead sleep and into a frenzy of manly self-preservation that is pretty dang funny. Dudes apparently really don’t like it when foreign objects press up against their butts in their sleep. This is useful scientific information that I am happy to contribute.

Baby boy is 11 inches long this week, and weighs as much as a large mango. He should have some sense of movement now, which I’m sure makes my daily commute more fun for him, as it involves traveling over some poorly maintained Memphis streets that have every ounce of me jiggling. And he can hear! So no doubt he is already starting to judge my awful taste in music.

He has been kicking a lot lately. The other night I sat and felt what had to be barrel rolls in there, like a crocodile. Sometimes I’ll be trying to have a conversation and he’ll do a little dance move on my cervix and it takes my breath away. Such a weird sensation. I’m still not quite able to feel him move from the outside, thanks to my generous amounts of padding. Speaking of the padding, it’s actually kind of great not being a waif, because so far even though it’s poking out quite a bit, the skin of my stomach hasn’t really even started stretching yet. That has saved me some discomfort, I’m sure.

I love feeling him move around in there. It really is this intense moment of magic to me every time. I can be so caught up in a moment at work or doing something at home, and then the flutter will happen, and then again, and I have to just smile. I always ask him, “What are you doing in there, mister man?” and he just squirms. I don’t want the novelty to wear off.

I am getting too spherical to fit into my old skirts, which I was relying on heavily since my old pants are waaaay out of the question now, even with the BellaBand. Tuesday I could barely get my long white skirt up over my hips, probably because THEY ARE SLOWLY SPREADING OPEN AS WE SPEAK. So, boo to needing new stuff.

Recently I got my hands on some of Ray’s childhood pictures, courtesy of his dad, who scanned in some film and mailed me prints. I had never seen any pictures of Ray as a kid, so it was so awesome to see his sweet face and his big ol’ blue eyes shining. Look at this beautiful boy:

If I wasn’t already pregnant, that photo right there would have gotten me knocked up, I’m pretty sure.