There's room for a little more...

Well with my due date only two days away, I think I ought to wrap this trimester series up. Just like Frodo Baggins couldn't recall the taste of food or touch of grass at the end of his quest to destroy the one ring of power, I am finding it difficult to recall what it feels like to not be pregnant. Not a day has gone by these past nine months that I haven't been mindful of the life that has been growing inside of me, and it really seems surreal knowing that this part of the journey is coming to a close. Unlike Frodo though, I don't plan on casting my precious (i.e., my baby) into the fires of Mount Doom at the end of all of this....maybe that goes without saying.

And so the last trimester with a guaranteed epic finale to come...

At the beginning of this trimester, our baby boy's hearing system is already fully developed and he can listen to what is going on outside the womb. I've heard of mothers who would play the same music every day during their pregnancy and later, after their baby was born, this same music would be a great soothing tool for them. If this holds true for our little one, he should have no problem falling asleep to the theme song for Parks and Recreation...

26 weeks
I start a six week prenatal Pilates course. There are probably nine other women in the class, and with the exception of one, I am the furthest along in my pregnancy. I have to admit that I loved the point when I started meeting other women whose due dates were later than mine. I'm classy about it though, and won't rub it in....at least not out loud. The Pilates course was great overall except by the end of it, I still wasn't sure if I was engaging my pelvic floor. Whenever we went through this exercise the instructor would remind us not to clinch our butt cheeks....I would unclinch. Also "don't tighten your abs." I'd loosen my abs. Most of the time I just sat there imagining my pelvic floor was engaged and hoping that that would do the trick.

31 weeks
I love getting to know this boy and feel like his personality is already becoming evident. We have a game we play. He'll stick a little foot or knee out and create a little bump in my belly. I'll grab a hold of it between my fingers and give it a little pinch. Usually he'll retreat back into the confines of my uterus when I do this, but maybe ten seconds later he'll try a different spot and the game continues. I affectionately call it the velociraptor game. He's testing the fences, but he never attacks the same place twice. He "reMEMbers"....(she says in her best South African big-game hunter accent)

Note: This game maybe won't make sense if you haven't seen Jurassic Park...which, if that's the case, frankly is un-American.

34 weeks
I stop jogging at this point in my pregnancy. I'm sure it was very entertaining for the other people at the gym, though, to watch a 34 weeks pregnant woman huffing and puffing at a 12 minute mile pace while blaring Jay-Z's Brush Your Shoulders Off from her headphones...especially when she would occasionally make the motion of brushing her shoulders off. What can I say, pregnant ladies is pimps, too.

35 weeks
I start to slack on some of my personal hygiene habits. Before church one Sunday I think, "I should probably shave my legs today." I get in the shower, look down, and cry, "Where the hell are my legs?!" A bit of a dark moment for me.

36 weeks
We are in disbelief that the last month has arrived! Christmastime is here, but instead of visions of sugarplums dancing, Dallin and I have words like "mucus plug", "Braxton Hicks", and "cervical dilation" floating around in our heads. Lovely, right? Your vocabulary really does change and expand during pregnancy.

39 weeks and 5 days
So here we are, almost 40 weeks later and our lives about to change in a big way. An adventure in the truest sense of the word. Dallin and I are so excited and ready to meet this newest member of our family. We are amazed at how much we already love this baby boy. It's hard to articulate, so maybe I'll stop trying...

My sister called me the other day saying she had a dream that I showed up at her door in labor and proceeded to give birth there in her apartment. She said it all happened very quickly and easily. When I heard this I started to hope that maybe my sister possessed some sort of clairvoyant ability. This hope was dashed when she told me the second part of her dream where we wrapped the baby up, left the apartment and immediately found ourselves in the midst of the zombie apocalypse having to fight off the undead.

Welcome to the 2nd Trimester..

I like to refer to the 2nd trimester as the Gilded Age of my pregnancy...not because it was characterized by a rapidly expanding economy or political corruption, but rather a rapidly expanding waistline and the corruption of my figure. Yes, a few weeks into the 2nd trimester, my nausea began to subside and my appetite returned with a vengeance. What followed was a veritable smorgasbord--pizza in Del Mar, CA, fish tacos in San Diego, raspberry milkshakes at Bear Lake, Shake Shack in NYC...my justification for this last one was "Hey, I only get Shake Shack when I'm in New York, so it's okay," but then they opened a location here in DC, and I knew I was in trouble. And then there were the bananas. I went bananas for bananas around 15 weeks and haven't really stopped eating them since. I asked Dallin, "If our baby comes out as a monkey, will you still love it as your own?"

Other note-worthies of the 2nd trimester:

13 Weeks: 

I have the song "Baby Mine" (from the movie Dumbo) stuck in my head all day. Dallin is on the computer that evening, and I ask him to pull up the song on YouTube. I hadn't seen Dumbo since I was a kid and had forgotten that this particular song is part of a scene where Dumbo gets to briefly visit his locked up mom. About 10 seconds into the scene, I start crying...really crying. Dallin looks bewildered. I manage to get out, "I'm sorry, Dallin, *sniffle* but he just...*hiccup*..wants to be..*sob*...with his mother!" and then dissolve back into uncontrollable tears as I retreat into our bedroom because I'm so embarrassed by my meltdown. Somewhere floating above this whole episode is the very small, non-hormonal part of me shaking her head, chastising, "Geez, Erin, keep it together, it's only a cartoon elephant."

17 Weeks:

Dallin and I are stuck in beltway traffic. As we were sitting there cursing all the other drivers around us, I noticed what felt like popcorn popping in my lower abdomen. "Dallin! I think I can feel the baby!"..."Really?!"..."Yes, really!" We both smile. This is for real. Not a bad way to be stuck on 495 for 45 minutes. 

18 Weeks: 

Spent in San Diego, CA for my brother's wedding. There are a lot of beautiful people in California, and I decide that maybe it isn't the best place to go when you perpetually feel like you've eaten a large lunch. 

19 Weeks:

It's a BOY! When we get this news at my sonogram appointment, one of the first things that enters my mind is a story my mother-in-law once told me about Dallin. 

When he was 2 years old, he escaped from his crib during nap time in order to "make brownies." He sneaked into the kitchen, turned the oven on High, filled a baking pan with DUPLO Legos, and then greased the entire kitchen floor with a stick of butter. My MIL had dozed off after putting Dallin down for his nap and awoke to the smell of the smoke billowing out of the oven. She ran into the kitchen only to go sliding on her back across the butter-slick floor. Looking up from the floor, she sees Dallin perched high up on one of the counter-tops. 

As I lie there watching this little boy wiggling around on the monitor, I start to wonder if there are stories like this in my future...

24 Weeks:

By the end of this trimester some of our baby boy's stronger kicks became visible from the outside. I'd be laying on the couch and notice a concentrated area of my stomach bulge out for a second. Friends would ask me, "Is it crazy to see your belly moving like that?" My answer would somehow inevitably include a comparison to the scene in Alien when the alien bursts out of the guy's chest. This analogy was usually met with something between disturbed and disgusted looks, and I privately told Dallin that maybe I should stop likening our child to a parasitic extraterrestrial life-form.

It was also during the 2nd trimester that Dallin and I bought new couches. In the 4+ years of our marriage we had been making do with a hand-me-down futon that would probably look more at home in the apartment of a college undergrad. Whenever we invited guests to sit on it, I felt like I should also offer them a remote control to play Mario Kart or perhaps a cup of Ramen noodles. Needless to say, Dallin and I were feeling very "adult" when we walked into the furniture store to look for a more grown-up replacement. Maybe we felt a little insecure, too--like we didn't really belong there. We kept looking for a placard that said "You must have been born before [this date] in order to buy furniture." I'm sure as the salesman swiped our credit card the looks on our faces were something akin to underage kids trying to buy alcohol with a fake ID--sort of wide-eyed, holding our breath.  "Really? Is he going to let us get away with buying these brand new couches?! Okay, just play it cool. You're almost in the clear..."

I can only imagine what kind of existential crises we'll go through when they let us leave the hospital by ourselves with a newborn baby...