this post, from the Choice Mom blog archives was submitted by Cathi, one of my favorite Choice Mom bloggers, who is now a full-blown Choice Mama

I’ve gained 147 pounds. I don’t sleep EVER so I always have bags under my eyes and a slightly hysterical conversational tone. The baby is a crazy person who seethes with resentment already and takes it out on me through well-placed and ill-timed kicks. And I wobble like a Weeble. Oh, and my hair is dull and lank, to add insult to injury.

I’m used to the Big Three questions by now: ‘Are you having a baby?’ (I like to reply, ‘No, I’ve just really let myself go’ and watch people squirm); ‘When are you due?’ (often followed by the implied man-are-you-ever-fat, ‘Are you sure you’re only having one?’); and the one-two punch, ‘Do you know what you’re having/What’s her name?’

It’s not as fun as when I was in the second trimester and less likely to have my own gravitational pull. Now people say things like, ‘Oooooh, I don’t think you’re going to make it to your due date!’, and look me up and down as if hoping to catch me disgracing myself by having my water break right then and there, proving them right.

Strangers still get extremely hostile when I refuse to tell them the baby’s potential name. I know I'm right in not telling, since people just can’t help from reacting in a terrible way no matter what the name is. There is always a Madeline who picked her nose or a Laura who stole your Twinkie. My best friend almost stormed out of the house after working me over for hours, but I held fast.

What really grinds my gears is that people keep telling me to get rest while I can, because I won’t sleep again until the baby has bought her first home. Fat chance. Literally. I’ve always been a tosser-and-turner, and now I can’t get comfortable without an elaborate truss of ropes and pulleys and counter-levers. Plus I have the pregnancy sinus thing, so wish I could sleep in a different room than myself. And I’m a natural born worrier, so I lie awake thinking about work and money and childcare and how to make the ammonia under the sink less delicious-looking. Without another warm body to share responsibility or dump my stress on, I internalize it all. This exacerbates the constant heartburn, so I get up to pop a Tums. Then, since I’m up, I might as well pee. And by then I’m wide awake, so maybe I better make some enchiladas to put in the freezer for after the baby arrives. And that’s how I find myself, standing in the kitchen in my underwear at 2 am, hanging decorative copper bowls.

My social activities outside of the constant nesting are decreasing. My friends won’t go to restaurants or movies or strip clubs with me anymore because I usually at some point loudly say, ‘Ow, my vagina!’, which is considered surprisingly inappropriate no matter where you are.

I’m used to the beatings the baby gives me up around the rib area, but the pelvic region pain is still relatively new, and my brain has wisely blocked out the idea that the baby is eventually going to make an uncomfortable journey through that previously closed-to-tourists region. Unfortunately, my brain has also blocked out almost everything I need to remember for work, basic household routine and maintenance, and heavy machinery operation.

I’m constantly distracted by the rippling of my stomach and the inevitable progression of the protrusion of my navel. Pregnancy brain blows. I have to write down every little thought I have, and then later stare at my lists in frustration because ‘get shorter thack yon nutes’ seems like a weird to-do item, and I don’t even know where I can find nutes.</span>

Six weeks is going to be here before I know it, way before I’m ready for it, and yet every single minute of every day (and night) is an eternity until I can see her and hold her and smell her. And love her even more than I do now, if that’s possible, in spite of the burden that she already is.

You can read up-to-date blogs from Cathi here.