Umm hello there person in the mirror...have we met?

So who is this person I have become?

I was trying to explain to Jake the other night how confusing being pregnant is. He doesn’t get my irrational thought processes, the dreams I have where me and Jake are in high school and we need to go a “break” and I wake up crying, the frustration that can emerge just because I cant get the lid off of a jar,  or my new development of wanting him around all the time, everyday.

Its kind of hard to explain to someone that isn’t or hasn’t been through a pregnancy, and its almost impossible to explain to man.

Women have a hard enough time for the most part knowing who they are and accepting that about themselves. They see their bodies and consider it and what should be different, what they liked that someone else had, and how they can pose themselves in photos to avoid certain flaws. Its serious. Its a truth that you all know you do, and if you are a boy, you really weren’t supposed to know. So anyways, we want shorter hair so we cut it, and then we cry because we loved our long hair, we buy a new outfit thinking it will change our lives but find that nobody really noticed it....except for our girlfriends (thank god for girlfriends), we work to lose weight and then complain that we didn’t lose it from the RIGHT place,  we gain weight according to a scale and suddenly see it all over like thick blanket that we are sure everyone else is just staring at. We’re women. And we cant help ourselves. Women are wonderful. They are empathetic and wonderful listeners, multi taskers and efficiency experts, eager to improve ourselves at every turn, whether its in their careers, their hobbies, their friendships, or their love lives, although for the most part, in my opinion, you cant improve on the perfection that is a woman.

Back to the topic.

We then come to some sort of terms with our mirror images, we make peace, make friends and try to not be our own worst enemies.  So we have now come to accept how we appear. Then there comes the acceptance of who we really are.  We want to be the best at everything all the time. Why is that so hard to understand? We want to be the boss,  run the show perfectly, be the best friend possible, be a nice girlfriend/wife,  raise the kids, win the marathon, finish the grocery shopping, plan a trip to Italy, raise the most money for a charity, make the big paycheques, and obviously, look amazing the whole time. So we consistently are let down. But eventually, you start to learn how much you can take on while maintaining your sanity. You learn how to enjoy your own company,  how to spoil yourself and how to appreciate yourself.  Again, this is a LONG process that women work on for their entire lives. We reluctantly accept our flaws, and learn our weaknesses, and figure out what we can have on our plate before we get sick (both theoretically and literally),  and go to sleep at night with some state of peace with who we are and what we are and what we want. Because we want everything at once, and at the same time are never really ready to commit to the responsibility that may be slyly attached.  Yes, we know we are confusing creatures, we have a hard enough time figuring out our own hearts and heads so stop reminding us.

Anyways, so we finally get to a sort of inner calm, where we learn to balance and manage our lives without wanting too much at once, or ever settling for not enough.

Then pregnancy happens. And life as we, women, know it, is 100% different.

My brain has been hijacked by a very VERY whiney woman.  She is always telling me how sore she is, how stressed she is, how lonely she is and how huge she is. She sits there weighing me down,  and its hard some days to ignore her. But I do, for the most part, she sits there in my head crying whenever a pin drops for no reason, and stomping around in frustration when she spills sugar.....but there are times, I can admit willingly, that she wins, and she comes out of me in full force, like when im watching commercials about babies, that woman wins those times, and we both sob uncontrollably because we know nobody is watching. Typically im fairly put together around other people... its hard to not be embarrassed of your emotions when you literally have no say in where they are coming from.  Some days I wake up feeling great, and then realise that I have to shower that day, and my mood just drops to below zero degrees. Its honestly its own little soap opera going on in my head and its EXHAUSTING telling someone in your head to pipe down all the time. And reigning her back in is also super hard, once she is out, she’s like a hurricane of hormones that I cant seem to get a grasp on, and at the time, don’t even want to.

Then there's that body you  had, as a woman grown to appreciate and know toes to eyebrows. Weeeellll thats gone. Its not yours anymore, its something you literally cannot figure out. Its swollen, and awkward, it makes noises youve never heard,  grows in places you had become accustomed to at a certain manageable size and aches in every place imaginable.  Your tummy becomes its own planet,  your boobs become big enough to LITERALLY carry another baby in,  your nose bleeds, your stomach revolts with heartburn, your  feet swell,  your fingers tingle,  you bladder  becomes a useless organ, your heart races, your appetite changes, and you wake up in the middle of the night jus t to burp.

Its the STRANGEST thing to get out of the shower, look at your once familiar body, and see the body full on pregnant that has replaced it. Sometimes i just stand there waiting for that person thats looking back at me to say, "oh hi madi, Im pregnant madi, we havent met but ive slowly been transforming you into me, its nice to meet you" . Yeah, again,  Im a little bit crazy i think. This belly cant be mine? And these boobs are definately not the ones i remember, was that second chin always there? why are my cheeks so red? The realisation that you have no control over this strange physique that is ever changing  becomes its own emotional battle. Every stretch mark becomes a personal loss,  every burp becomes a necessity, and every pound on weighs on not just your joints, but also your heart.

YES, its a wonderful thing, growing babies is super amazing and incredible, I agree....or I agreed when it was happening to other women...to other women’s minds and bodies....now that its mine, its a daily overwhelming realisation that I have minimal control over my head, and almost no control over my own body. It just keeps on growing, ....and my belly just keeps on moving without cause or effort from me. Because there's a PERSON in there now....is anyone else super weirded out by that?!  Literally, my body will get the hiccups....and I wont.  If that’s not rattling, what is?!

Its become apparent that I don’t quite know this woman I am right now. Shes strange, and she does weird things, and wants odd things, gets in and out of cars in bizarre ways, breathes like a marathon runner just from getting out of bed, crys because she cant find something to watch on TV, and waddles when she does ANYTHING.  But I’m counting on the fact that even though I feel like everyday I re-meet her,  that she is going to know exactly what to do when it comes to pushing out a baby. I have a feeling, that her and this huge body she lives in has one purpose, and that is to make a baby that is healthy and comes out of me when its time.  So she can hang out for a few more weeks I guess.  Although once this is all over, and my squash baby is here,  Id appreciate her taking a leave of absence ASAP...and for her to take the extra 25 lbs she brought with her.