Bless your heart...

Well, its official. I'm huge. Or at least I must be because I'm officially getting comments from the peanut gallery on my due date or what must clearly be twins. I get paid once a month so my husband and I do one huge grocery trip per month. It usually takes us at least two carts to get our purchase to the car (though we make it to check-out with only one...not sure how that happens) so its a big, time-consuming grocery trip. This past weekend when we went to Wal-mart for our monthly grocery trip, I was dealing Braxton-Hicks contractions the whole time and they were very painful by the end. So when we finally made it to check out I was holding my belly and breathing through contractions and probably looked super miserable. The well-intentioned clerk smiled at me and said "Not much longer huh?" I glared at her and told her I wasn't due for eight more weeks. Her response? "Oh, honey, bless your heart!"

Thus it begins.

I've been getting some of the comments when people ask how far along I am and then comment that there is no way I will make it. But this was the first "Bless your heart" for this pregnancy. The all-time most wonderful thing to hear when you're pregnant is how ginormous you are. NOT! In what universe do these people live where they think that what they're saying could possibly make me feel better?

When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I spent the last couple of months being harassed by random do-gooder strangers about how much longer I had, how much weight I had gained, and how many babies I was carrying. This time I've decided I absolutely will not take it. With my last pregnancy I politely accepted people's criticisms, quietly listened to people's "medical" opinions, and just basically never stood up for myself at all. I wasn't raised to be a doormat but I was raised to be polite and I just didn't have it in me to tell people where they could shove their opinions. Sixteen months later I'm a much different person than I was when pregnant with Evie. More than a year of motherhood, full of blow-out diapers, toddler blow-ups, sleepless nights, spit-up covered clothes and more, has caused me to reevaluate a lot of my life as well as given me a whole different perspective on how much some people's opinions are worth.

This isn't to say I'm going to go ballistic on the next little old granny that comes up and pats my tummy, peers up at me through her bifocals and manages to gum out "Any day now huh dearie?" through her false teeth. No, I will probably just smile back at the old lady and lie straight to her face, that yeah, it's any day. Because I'm really hoping to have this baby at 37 weeks, and that's barely 5 weeks away. So its more a slight fudge than a straight up lie.

But for the rest of the know-it-all's -- beware! I go to the doctor every week or two. My doctor has a medical degree which he obtained after several years of studying medicine and then several more years of specializing in obstetrics. If there is anything wrong with me, from the size of my belly to the amount of weight I have gained, he not only has the training to identify it, he'll probably point it out. Seeing that he's the first person to tell me that I had started getting stretch marks in my previous pregnancy (yeah, really, that's what I wanted to hear today Doc) I'm pretty sure he'll tell me if I'm eating my way towards the Biggest Loser. For the record, subsequent babies are typically bigger than their elder counterparts. And having two pregnancies in two years means my abdominal muscles and uterus and very little time to be skinny and therefore popped right back out there.

Now that I've experienced the beautiful (though stress-inducing) bundle of joy (and dirty diapers, vomit-covered clothes, and various other disgusting by-products) that is the light at the end of this miserably swollen, fat and waddling ten month journey I'm able to be much more positive about the experience as a whole. ( And I don't care what the doctors say, pregnancy is ten months. Ask any middle schooler how many months 40 weeks equals and they will say TEN. This nine month thing was developed by MEN who will never experience anything like pregnancy and just wish to further our suffering!)

The down-side for everyone else is that I'm really not going to take their crap. I know I'm huge. I don't really care. I lost all of my pregnancy weight 6 months after having Evie. I can and will do it again. Hopefully having a toddler to chase around will help motivate me to stay active this time and I can lose it faster. Yeah...right. The end result is totally worth it so pointing out that I'm huge and "Oh my gosh, you have 'X' weeks left? Bless your heart!" is no longer going to reduce me to tears. I'm sure my husband is hoping he's not with me when it happens, but I am definitely going to start telling people off. This is probably my last pregnancy so by golly, I want to enjoy however many weeks I have left. I have the rest of my life to be skinny. I only have 8 more weeks to eat a milkshake without feeling incredibly guilty or starving myself the rest of the day. So shut up and let me eat my large fry and molten chocolate lava cake in peace...