Tunnel Vision

When I first got pregnant, I was consumed with thoughts of BAAAAAAAYYYYYBEEEEEE. I daydreamed about whether it was a boy or a girl, wrote long lists of names I liked, wondered what s/he would look like, pondered my preferred methods of parenting. I spent hours browsing websites to learn what I needed to know about caring for a newborn, baby-proofing the house, purchasing a layette, and a zillion other urgent subjects.

Ironic, then, that as the widgetbaby countdown ticks over into 30-days-or-less, I am having a lot of difficulty remembering why I'm doing all this.

"All this" being the best descriptor I have for the perpetually awkward and often distinctly uncomfortable actions of getting through the day in a ridiculously gigantic and unmanoeuverable body.

I'm now consumed with the efforts of making someone - usually Chris - understand how bizarre it is to be taken over in such a way. "It's like if you had two or three broken limbs all of a sudden, and maybe the pain from them healing in their casts is not so difficult to live with, but the effect it has on the mundanities of your day is enormous, because you can't open doors or get out of a chair or brush your teeth or drive your car and every second of every single day you are reminded of how awkward and not-yourself you feel, and because you just can't get out of your body for even one moment, it's always on your mind." That was my description of last night, and I'm standing (well, sprawling in my office chair) by it.

Yes, it's always on my mind. But what's sad and a little bit ironic is that it's the all-consuming not-quite-right-ness of pregnancy that's on my mind 24/7, not the tiny being who rightly deserves all my conscious thoughts.

Oh yeah. There is a reason I'm doing this. And she'll be here soon, and she'll be so completely worth it.