“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

So a good place to begin explaining what is going on is to explain my first pregnancy.

In the fall of 2008, as I was late in the first trimester and going into the second during the pregnancy with my son, some routine blood work was concerning.  The alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) levels were double what they should have been prompting my doctor, Dr. AG, to be worried about neural tube defects.  NTD (Everything is abbreviated in medicine I think), is basically when the brain and/or the spinal cord are not developing correctly and because the levels were high, the idea was that baby may have a hole somewhere in this area causing the AFP to “leak” and be more concentrated in my blood.  I visited a specialist and had a 3D ultrasound of baby’s inners and outers.  The result of the day was that everything seemed to be developing appropriately, I was having a boy who had my nose (which is inherited from my Great Grandma Sybil), and that my baby could wrap his leg all the way around his head—which inspired some excellent Mommy and Me yoga classes after he was born!

Pregnancy was not good to me.  It’s interesting how I look back and glorify my pregnancy now, but the reality was that I knew several women that had due dates within weeks of mine who bounced around glowing, growing their bellies straight out like there was a beach ball they were trying to hide.  Meanwhile, I grew out to the sides, like I was trying to hide the wall behind me—if I ever got the energy to stand in front of it.  It wasn’t all misery.  Right after the extreme body aches ended and I was able to stomach something other than taco salad, I took off my acupressure anti-nausea wristbands and I felt terrific for about 10 days during the second trimester!  Then it was right back to dry heaving over the thought of drinking a glass of water from the refrigerator since the change filter light had been on for 2 days.  I began to swell up; first resembling a Cabbage Patch Doll—which we all have to admit is adorable for an obese child with darling eyes and a playful wardrobe.  But towards the end of my pregnancy, which was really the early to mid-third trimester, I ballooned to what my mother loves to describe as looking like a sumo-wrestler.

This is a fair assessment, though I hate to admit it.  At this point in my pregnancy, I was so big and miserable that I didn’t want to move, let alone put on makeup or do anything with my hair but pull it tightly out of my face.  And those playful maternity outfits stopped covering my belly button around the same time that my super comfy, way over-worn and probably extremely stinky UGG slippers had to be retired because my swollen feet couldn't fit into anything except flip flops—luckily the snow was (almost) gone that Indiana February.