Thoughts as we round the final stretch.

1. Stretch marks are of the devil. All the books are right; it doesn't matter what product you use. If you're going to get them, you're going to get them.

2. It really sucks to get winded from walking up a hill or a flight of stairs.

3. Swelling feet and hands are also of the devil. I've been reduced to wearing running shoes every day.

4. You get to a certain point where it doesn't matter what you wear or how much effort you put into your look for that day, you feel like a beached whale/water buffalo/brick house.

5. Pregnancy hormones - also of the devil. I went to see Juno this afternoon and it made me sob like, well, like a pregnant woman.

6. Heartburn is also OF THE DEVIL.

7. I never liked plain M&Ms until about 1 month ago. Now I can't stop eating them.

8. I really, really, really miss drinking red wine.

9. My Labor & Delivery classes have done nothing but make me terrified of what's coming in April.

10. I'm REALLY ready to not be pregnant anymore. I'm not ready to actually have a baby, but I'm totally ready to not be pregnant.

11. I sincerely hope that Angelina Jolie gets stretch marks. And I truly do mean that because pregnancy hormones have made me evil.

Completely overwhelmed, thanks for asking.

If ONE MORE PERSON asks me if Husband & I have figured out what we're doing about daycare, I won't be responsible for my actions.

I think what's the most overwhelming part for me is that being Type A, you can't plan anything about this. You can become informed, but you can't plan exactly what's going to happen. About the only thing I know is that I don't feel at all ready and that I'm totally going for the drugs. I think those women who go all natural are great, but I'm not one of those. I have no interest in being a superwoman - I don't have anything to prove, I just want to survive the experience. And from one of my coworkers who had a baby last year, she said she saw rainbows and wanted to dance around the room once she got her drugs. And yes, I realize this might not fit with the fact that I'm mostly vegan, but one things that's become starkly evident through this process is that at least for me, all expectation bets are off.

The other thing I know is that since I can't plan, I fixate and stress about the little things. Like daycare...and costs of everything (have you ever been in a Baby's R Us? CRAZY.)...and how am I not going to lose my sanity?...and how will Husband and I not go crazy together?...and how will I lose the baby weight? I don't know how much I've gained (my doctor says I'm normal) - I've specifically asked them to NOT tell me anything about my weight. I don't want to know. I don't need the emotional trauma of seeing the scale go up that high. Everything is hard enough seeing as how your entire body changes, watching a scale go up higher than I've ever seen is definitely not something I need.

I honestly don't know how people who have multiples do it. I feel completely overwhemled just thinking about one, I cannot imagine more than one. And then there's all these economists throwing around that awful "recession" word... Sigh.

And can we talk about those wretched TLC and Discovery Health baby shows that I can't NOT watch? They're like a preview of a car crash I'm going to have to go through, just not exactly. If I could find Jerry Springer I'd be better off watching that.

I'm trying really hard to relax and focus on stuff that makes me happy...like oreo cookies and the fact that my birthday is next week and I've got 2 boxes waiting to open. And how I think (hope!) Husband got me new dishes from Williams Sonoma. And my one cat, Jiminy, is being quite the little comfort-cat. He's always been pretty astute with sensing when I need a little extra comfort, and for about the last month he's been pretty affixed to my side whenever I'm home and sitting down. He's plastered up against me right now, which is very sweet. And there's the oreo cookies... I think I need one now...

And what if I'm not one of those women who immediately feels that bond after birth?

Lost my muse!

Have you seen her? She done gone.

I keep trying to write about being pregnant but I can't.

I'm blocked.

I've thought about starting a list of thoughts, that might be easier. So let's start now.

1. It's funny - I know, logically, how you get pregnant, but when I found out I was, I immediately went "wait, how did this happen?" I can't imagine how I would have felt if I wasn't licensed, didn't have a good job, didn't have some financial security. It's totally scary having those things, let alone not!

2. Not everyone is that oh-so-delighted to be pregnant. Before my current position at work, I sat next to a girl who, upon telling me she was pregnant, said it very matter-of-fact and not at all the typical giddy way you usually think. At the time, I thought to myself it was weird that she wasn't excited, didn't seem that happy. Then I got pregnant, and I totally "got" how she felt. It's been great to have someone like her to bond with over this - and to have someone who's not all mother-earth and is real to talk about it with.

3. The way I found out I was pregnant was, well, I'd gone home early from work on a Friday, thinking I had some sort of stomach flu. I spent the whole weekend on the couch, not getting better or worse, and when I went to work on Monday, I started having a niggling thought in the back of my mind that I should take a test. When I took the test Tuesday morning, it immediately went positive. And I thought I was going to die.

4. It's important not to judge yourself on how you feel/react to a situation, but just to let yourself feel it. Very hard, when the whole world seems to think you should be ecstatic but you're just not quite there yet.

5. Right away, my boobs exploded and were incredibly painful. I immediately couldn't sleep on my stomach anymore and had to buy bigger bras. I'm already on my second set of bras because my boos just won't stop. They've finally slowed down, but now I can't sleep on my stomach because it's too big.

6. I spent about 4 1/2-5 months being sick. Calling it "morning sickness" is a complete joke; for me it was all day sick, and it got worse in the evenings. When I say "sick", I don't just mean nauseated; I mean sick to the point where I was fully expecting people at work to pull me aside and ask if I had an eating disorder. After I announced it to everyone at work, one girl said she wondered.

7. Everything you think you can expect, don't - well, maybe to say expect the unexpected. I already have a fairly limited diet, seeing as how I'm mostly vegan and have food allergies and a "delicate" palate. Well, it turns out I couldn't really eat anything, but had to eat something. I'd get sick if I ate, sick if I didn't eat. I've never eaten so much ginger or peppermint; in fact, I think I've used up my lifetime allotment of those two items. No, unfortunately, peppermint mochas just don't do it anymore.

8. Because I was so sick, I didn't exercise at all. I probably should have, no, definitely should have, but it was just difficult to get through every day. I've started exercising now, and it's HARD WORK - I never realized that just walking up a hill or a flight of stairs would leave me winded. And they tell me it only gets better.

9. I still can't eat salads or red sauces (*sniff*), and soups and hot drinks are mostly no-go. Once I stopped being sick, I started getting heartburn. And you can't have rolaids when you're pregnant, just tums. However, the last time I went to eat two tums I ended up bent over the toilet, so those are out. I can take Pepcid, which I do, but try not to so much.

10. Chocoate, pastries, and sweets in general were totally out while I was getting sick. I can eat them now, but if I eat too much I get heartburn.

11. Getting sick while pregnant TOTALLY BLOWS, and you get sick way too often. Apparently, when you are pregnant, your immune system is wacky and decides to catch any germ that comes along. It's pretty awesome.

12. There are lots of things you can and can't do when you're pregnant, which I of course can't remember because my memory is shot (more on that in a minute). One thing is that you're supposed to floss every day, because when pregnant you're much more likely to get gingivitis.

13. Okay, the memory thing. It's totally true. I can't remember anything to save my damn life. It totally sucks. The only thing that saves me, work-wise, is having a crackberry to keep my schedule, otherwise I'd be totally fucked.

14. Everything is harder when you're pregnant. People tell me I have "the glow", but I pretty much just feel like a water buffalo. You know how when you feel bloated and/or fat how you feel like your stomach just sticks out so far? Well, times that by like a million and you get the idea of what being pregnant is like. I never realized how eminently frustrating it would be to try to find clothes. Up until about 5 1/2 months, I wasn't really showing. Except I was bloated so I couldn't wear my regular clothes, yet maternity clothes looked ridiculous on me. And nobody sells clothes for that in-between stage. It totally sucks.

15. Although I haven't had any medical complications, I've had lots of physical issues and non-serious but TOTALLY irritating and miserable physical symptoms. Sleeping is a bitch and a half. I have 2 body pillows (which I call my bodyguards) and 2 head pillows and I'm still massively uncomfortable in any position. Oh, you can't lay flat on your back after about week 20, which really sucks. I've had ridiculously bad musculo-skeletal pain, which is worse when I lay on my right side. And my hips makes sleeping on either side for too long at once really painful. I had to go buy an egg-crate mattress for my side of the bed which has helped a LOT, but it's still not ideal.

16. For me, all the movement has felt like really exaggerated gas. People describe it as feeling like flutters or popcorn, but for me it's mostly just felt like gas. While I'm still not all mother-earth and talking to my belly or anything like that, it's totally weird and fascinating to see and feel the movement. In fact, I've gotten to the point where I can poke my belly and I get a response back. It's totally weird.

17. I'm currently sick with a really awful head cold and the only things I could possibly take are: tylenol, sudafed, or suck on zinc lozenges (but not cold-ease, or however it's spelled). And of course we don't have any tylenol in the house, and for me, once I've started suffering, why break the martyr streak, you know?

18. I'm finding it hard to get myself motivated to deal with stuff like...oh, childcare, a birthing plan (other than knowing I want drugs - hello, epidural!), selecting a pediatrician, that sort of thing.

There's lots more to say, but OH I can't remember. Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, I'm due on tax day, of all days.