Underneath it All

Baby Quinn, unlike Olive (who had no intention to exit my womb), seems eager to come out and play.

According to the ultrasound, her head is down (Olive was breech), and she jabs me with her limbs daily.

YAY.

I'm roughly a month away from delivering Baby Quinn and am looking foul. My National Geographic-worthy boobies are massive, pale and veiny. And topping off the suckers are large, darkened areolas circling pencil-eraser-esque nipples.

My pajama pants are no longer fitting and I and have begun sporting my husband's gym shorts. Four inches of hard belly meat jut out over them when I walk around the house. Imagine an obese man with a single ab.

My legs are swollen and I am no longer comfortably fitting into maternity "skinny jeans." I wonder if I can find "maternity skinny jeans for husky calves." My stems are also dry and scaly - for I have become too darn fat to to bend over to lotion them.

And then there's my face. Laura Mercier bronzer is no longer doing me any good. Try contouring a marshmallow. It's a feat next to impossible.

I crop dust as I walk. Deepest apologies to those who crowd me at Trader Joes and the Farmer's Market. My body's full of gas over which I have no control of. I excrete unidentifiable liquids when friends make me laugh too hard. I'm like a senior citizen. And yes, I choo-choo like a freight train when asleep. My nasal passage is filled with fat - my own diagnosis, not the the doctor's. 

This second pregnancy has left me feeling physically ruined, but that's okay. I'm eight-months pregnant, and in the home-stretch. I'm incubating a little human, and this is what I'm supposed to look like. I look to Olive and know that this journey is a worthwhile one.

Olive with her beloved aunt Cindy, whom she thinks is named "Honey."

The name has stuck, and we don't have the heart to correct her...

Olive baking blueberry muffins with Mama.

Master Chef Jr. in the making...