Week 19: Big Ole’ Belly

18 weeks, 6 days.

Ok, so I promise that at 20 weeks, I’ll post a picture, even if my big ole’ belly is covered in lots of clothing. For now, though, can I just say how weird it is to have just your belly get larger, and only from the middle?

Now, I’m a big girl with weight problems. I’ve been a big girl with weight problems since college (I wasn’t skinny in high school, but things got serious once I went off to college for a variety of reasons), and I’ve gained and lost rather large amounts of weight over time. When you’re fat and getting fatter, you just get bigger all over. For obvious reasons, though, what’s increasing in size is just my belly, and since I can’t feel the little guy really yet, it’s sort of like having a heavy tumor on the front of my midsection

<Arnold>It is not a tuhmah!</Arnold> Or, as my husband would say, “That’s not a tumor. That’s (insert Small Monster’s name)! “, which you would think would be as funny as Arnold saying it, since my husband is a native German-speaker, but it’s not, because my husband has a rather unplaceable accent.

(No really, it’s confusing. I wondered if my husband was English for the first minute or so after I met him, since when I first met him he spoke decidedly British English, and after that, I just couldn’t figure it out. He sounds much more American than British now (such a shame!), but the first time my OB met us, he asked, “Are you both Irish??” – I’ve been told I look Irish (I don’t buy it, mind you), but of all the things my husband sounds like he is, I never put Irish on the list… The only person I remember figuring out right away that he was German while I was around was this guy on a ski lift at Breckenridge, who only knew because his parents spoke Plattdeutsch at home…)

Argh. Clearly I got sidetracked again. So bite me.

Anyway, so I have this big ole’ baby-filled belly right now, and depending on the kind of shirt I wear, I either look even fatter than I am, or I look pleasingly pregnant (the wrong kind of shirt is that which, in addition to providing room for my growing bump, serves as an ass magnifying glass – trust me, many do, and my ass, even when I was thin, has never needed magnifying. In fact, I’m pretty sure Sir Mix-A-Lot wrote a song about me in the early 90′s). I prefer pleasingly pregnant, thankyouverymuch. But at least now, without a shadow of a doubt, I can tell the increase of the size of my belly is from baby, not from chocolate ice cream.

Now, little guy, how about you kick a little harder?