7QT: The Third Trimester Edition

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Believe it or not, even before Simcha stole my thunder, I had been planning on doing a Quick Takes-Pregnancy edition this week. I can prove it. I’ve been writing notes in my calendar all week for it. But if we’re comparing Simcha to me, I need to be honest: mine is not funny. Hers is. If funny’s what you’re after, you need to go read this. (But please come back!)

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I am 27 weeks, and I do have to go look it up on a pregnancy calculator to remember. It’s enough to know I’m in the third trimester. And I’m still running. Sort of. I run to the top of the hill (that’s one block) and then the round ligament pains hit, so I breathe deeply and force myself to walk. In my fourth pregnancy I’ve finally learned that round ligament pains, as much as they hurt, hurt less and go away sooner when you stay vertical.

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Speaking of running, here’s the weird thing. I only have hip pain after I run. Actually the whole pelvic bone hurts all day, and all the muscles attached to it. It makes me want to quit. But I can’t quit exercising, that would just be stupid.

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Anyway…I’ve just done two “takes” without getting to the point. The point is that I’m in THE THIRD TRIMESTER. And I look like this:

Yet people are still afraid to assume I’m pregnant. At a school event late last week, one of the teachers took my arm and chuckled. “People keep asking me if you’re pregnant again!” But that’s only the half of it. My new primary care doctor, a lovely woman whose eyes kept flickering to my midsection, steadfastly refused to ask point blank. Instead, she kept asking oblique questions like “Are you on birth control?” and “Are you having regular periods?” Finally I took mercy on her. Her face cleared immediately. “I never ask!” she said. Come on! I thought. If DOCTORS are hamstrung by fear of offense, what hope is there???? 🙂

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Interestingly enough, I’ve gotten hardly any of the annoying questions this time around. Maybe everyone’s finally given up on converting us to find-out-and-tell-everyone-the-name-ers. In fact, people aren’t even offering predictions on gender. So I was startled last week at choir when our drummer told me definitively that I was having a girl. Since I had finally just about made up my mind I was having a boy, I threw my hands up in the air and gave myself over to having no idea. After all, really, nobody else knows either. In this picture, if your eyes are eagle-sharp, you’ll see that with Julianna, I had people tell me “You’re having a ____, and I’ve never been wrong.” Obviously one of them now has been. 🙂

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This munchkin is a CRAZY baby! If the little things give us indications of later personality, I must admit I am beginning to quake in my shoes about the destructive potential about to be unleashed on our already chaotic household!

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I’m really not sure I’m ready for the whole newborn experience again. Even though my heart squeezes at the thought of silky cheeks, it also quakes at the nursing-all-the-time thing. How will I ever keep up with my house full of children who are getting into such trouble??? However, the goals I set for our family are progressing nicely. Nicholas is almost toilet trained—wearing underwear 75% of the time—and talking. Nonstop. Julianna’s toilet trained and making really good attempts at talking—some of them even recognizable. Hurrah! Obedience…that one’s still pretty high maintenance. But hey. I still have twelve weeks. 🙂