Pregnancy Confessions: Volume Seven

As most of you already know, I don't love being pregnant. The first trimester (literally, from the day I hit 5 weeks) I was vomiting and nauseous and felt like I had a 3 month hangover. The second trimester, admittedly, was "not that bad", once we got to the part of finding out what we were having, picking a name, decorating a nursery and feeling baby kicks. The third trimester is pretty much shit. Not as much shit as the first, but it's not a vast improvement either. I'm uncomfortable pretty much all of the time, I can't sleep through the night, 7.5 weeks seems like an eternity and not enough time all at once.

But I'll confess, there are some things I'm going to miss about being pregnant. A few things I would even say I really love (gasp!) about it. Here are some of my favorite pregnancy perks

• Feeling her kick. So long as it's not pressing her tiny feet against my ribs, or the hiccups for the fourth time that day, I love feeling her move. They're not even really kicks, because most of the time they're pretty gentle movements - she's a delicate little thing. I try to remember to do kick counts since she's not the most active baby, and I think it's awesome to sit in a meeting with my hands resting on my belly while my baby communicates with me in morse code. I think it's adorable to feel her stretch.
• Eating whatever I want, whenever I want. With the way I eat, I'm shocked that my weight gain has been quelled at 15 lbs so far. I had a mini cadbury cream egg at 9am on my way to work. I started to take a log of everything I ate in one day, and I was literally too embarrassed to ever post the blog. Ben has even had a few moments of really indulging me, whether driving to Bull McCabe's to get me fried fish or driving all the way to North Raleigh to try to find a Long John Silver.
• Classic Coca-Cola. I switched to diet soda years ago but aspartame can be absorbed through the placenta so I've avoided artificial sweeteners throughout the pregnancy. Oh my gosh y'all, when was the last time you had a real coke? I don't think I can go back to diet. Real coke is like heaven. Don't worry, I never have more than one a day (recommended daily max for pregnancy is 200mg of caffeine; a can of coke has 45mg) and I don't have it every day, but man-oh-man. They are awesome.
• Not sucking in my stomach, ever. For the first few weeks I did, especially when I felt like I was starting to show (I wasn't) and wasn't ready to tell people. However, from the time we announced the pregnancy, I have not once tried to hold in my belly. Even when I put on a bikini on our mountain vacay a few months ago. Doesn't matter how much I eat, I just let it hang and everyone thinks it's cute (or at least says they do). This probably means my abs have disappeared, but let's be honest, they weren't that great to start with.
• An excuse to do only what I feel like doing. Don't get me wrong, I don't abuse my pregnancy perks. I save these times for when I really need them. But when I'm just too exhausted to get off the couch and fold the laundry, or when I wake up at 10 and decide that Benji & I need more sleep so we skip church, I don't feel guilty about it. And when I want to leave a party (whether it's 11pm or 2am), I decide that it's time to go and we go home. And y'all? I haven't vacuumed since before Christmas! God bless my sweet husband and our God-send of a cleaning lady.

I'm sure there are more benefits that I'm going to miss, but sometimes, when you're flushed and slightly feverish from a TDaP vaccine and the baby is pressing her tiny bony feet into your ribs in an attempt to collapse your lungs, you just can't think of any more pregnancy perks.