I haven’t been any good about posting (obviously) lately and you might be wondering why. It’s not because I’ve been busy or lazy (though those are both true at least in part). It’s because…

I’m pregnant!

And it turns out making a human from scratch is kinda hard. Now that I seem to be over the hump of mind-numbing exhaustion, overwhelming nausea, and body-wracking vomiting, I can focus on the fact that I have let my life fall to pieces. Yay!

It’s better now. I’m 18 weeks along and actually feel like a normal person again. I have energy. I’m not constantly sick. I have learned not take naps after 5pm (or it’s the worst thing ever). I’m waiting for some kind of ravenous appetite to kick in, but at least I’m showing!

My husband and I are definitely very excited. Based on various reports of what senses are already developed, we talk to the baby regularly and are on a kick lately to offer a wide variety of tastes through my diet.

As much as I’m looking forward to raising a child, with all its ups and downs, I still haven’t managed to wrap my head around the pregnancy itself. I’m in the fifth month, wearing maternity clothes, and making all sorts of other adjustments, but it still feels surreal. Why should having sex, something people do all the time have resulted in a child this time? Maybe it’s because I’m normally a bit of a control freak. I just have a hard time believing that a person is growing inside of me, despite copious supporting evidence. How can it be happening when I’m not doing anything to make it happen?

And it’s not at all up to me how or when it happens. I’m wracking my brain to think of another example where someone/something else determined the timeline for something and there was nothing I could do about it. I guess school? But even then, I could have dropped out and gotten a GED. It’s all so fuzzy. My baby is going about its business, growing bones, becoming himself/herself. What do I do in the meantime? Nine months is a really long time (and not enough time at all). So I’ve been unable to shake the feeling that this is it. I have until the baby pops out to get all my stuff done. It’s not even that I have a whole lot of things I feel the need to cram in before November. The only really actionable thing is that I have made very little progress on my pile of unread books. A pile that I keep adding to.

It’s beginning to feel like pregnancy is meant to make a person go mad. First, it comes at you with feeling sick, or just terrible enough that you don’t feel justified in claiming the word “sick” but can’t do anything, anyway. Then it’s all magically better and you spend your time wondering when you’ll show, when you’ll feel a kick. After that, it’s lugging yourself around, impatient for the day when you actually squeeze the kid out. For something so life changing and precarious, it’s a bizarrely passive experience. So I do what I can: read way too much about pregnancy and child rearing, eat well, exercise regularly. It’s getting to the point that this very weird thing that’s happening is starting to feel just the slightest bit normal.

But I miss things…

I’ll keep you posted on how things are going. I’m not entirely sure what that means. We’ll discover together! Just a few more months until my world changes completely (or so everyone keeps saying). The only thing I know for sure is that I’m really looking forward to having a proper coffee.