Just For The Record: Being 9 Months Pregnant

Just for the record, I thought I'd record the physical experience of being 9 months pregnant. I sincerely hope this is the last time I'll live through this experience, so I might as well write it down while I can. Maybe my future self really will look back on this and laugh...or at least shake my head in admiration and send my past self a big ol' "you go girl" high five (or maybe another one of those shiny gold medals from the Suck-It-Up Olympics).

Overall, being 9 months pregnant isn't so bad, as long as I'm sitting down or reclining somewhere comfortable (defined as somewhere with lots of squishy support objects like pillows and couch arms). But standing for any period of time, let alone bending over or walking, has become wildly unpleasant (and frankly, exhausting). The good news is that I still have great, thick hair and (mostly) glowing skin (I do have numerous weird red splotches, plus random moles and skin tabs that have appeared, but I'm trying to ignore those), and from the side I definitely look like a prehistoric Goddess fertility figure, which is kind of cool. The bad news is that the pains and indignities of advanced goddess-hood are much more numerous: I literally waddle when I walk and my balance is totally skewed; my lower back starts to hurt whenever I've been on my feet for more than a few minutes at a time; I have a feeling of constant downward pressure as well as sharp aches and occasional stabs of pain in my lower groin (especially when I first get up from sitting or lying down); I feel puffy and bloated, especially in my legs and ankles; I have increasingly intense daily periods of "active baby" time where I literally feel sharply poked and prodded from the inside as if someone is playing me like a drum (which is a very weird feeling); my belly feels super stretched and itchy and now I've got "flame tips" (my old stretch marks are expanding even further); I'm regularly short of breath, especially when one of those "practice" Braxton-Hicks contractions hits and everything from crotch to sternum constricts like a blood pressure cuff. I've already whined plenty about the insomnia that's been afflicting me, but there's also the general forgetfulness/distractedness/slowness and moments of "empty brain", the constantly sore shoulders and neck from both dragging around the even-yet-more-alarmingly-voluminous-than-before boobage and being forced to sleep only on my side, and now there's my favorite new indignity: hemmorhoids (I will spare you the details, but suffice to say: OUCH). All this and it's just a "preview"--the even yet more intimidating pain (and indignities) of labor and recovery are still to come. (Ok, at this point it is difficult for me not to dip into a huge vat of sarcasm here and start ladling it out--so I think I'll stop.)

I'm really trying to keep a good attitude overall here, but oh God, let this be over soon so I can get back to reclaiming my own insides (I'm not even going to whine about the subsequent year's worth of lactating, yet, but I'm sure I'll get there over the next a few weeks). D-day: 7 days and counting. Yoiks.