Pregnancy is Stranger Than Fiction

Just to be clear - my baby is completely human. I don't actually think I've got an alien inside me. I'm not like Simon Parkes or anything. That said, truth is stranger than fiction.

I am undeniably pregnant. People do things for me now - strangers - because of the belly. My daily life and actions are completely different than before. There is no question that I'm absolutely in my third trimester. Thing is, sometimes, I still don't feel pregnant.

I think I'm a little weird.

I've gone through this half-state of being before - in pretty much every period of my life when I've had major changes. Unless there is a complete overhaul, I can't believe the thing is happening. When I say complete overhaul, I mean COMPLETE, as in living in a different country where people speak an unrelated language and the food is different and the smells are different. Another example was college. It was so drastically different (Oh cafeteria food! Yum!) there was no way my mind could play tricks on me.

Marriage, however, was a different animal. Sometimes I still (after 5 years mind!) wake up and think, "Huh. I'm married! Weird!"

Christian doesn't have this problem. He's more normal than I am.

The marriage thing felt like a more subtle change. This was probably because I was used to moving to different places and Christian being around me (we've known each other since 2002). It didn't seem so different. It was like college, or traveling, or pretending to be an adult. Getting a cat and a house started to make it more real, but sometimes it still hasn't set in (That feeling of strangeness has become more rare than before - now I think it's only bimonthly.).

So the pregnancy bit being weird makes sense. Even though my body is changing daily, and I can obviously experience the different symptoms and aspects of what it means to be pregnant, my life isn't THAT different. I still live in the same place I did a year ago with my husband and my cat. I still write all the time. I still take walks around my neighborhood and eat a lot of the same foods (okay, maybe 50% of the same foods). I still exercise (actually, I might be more consistent now). I just can't sit up using my abdominal muscles and sometimes the kiddo kicks my stomach or bladder so hard I think something will come out one way or another.

Even though pregnancy is something nearly half the world experiences, it is strange. It's not just strange because my mind can't wrap itself around the abstract unknown of a new life coming out of my body. Pregnancy is strange BECAUSE a new life is coming out of my body. My body was effectively hijacked. Every system has been diverted or shoved aside (literally!) to make this new person. I don't mind. I'm biologically programmed NOT to mind. I'll be a crazy doting mom just like the next prego lady. In the mean time though, I feel the weirdness of the whole process. It's a short period of my life, but it has drastic consequences. Most of my life I will NOT be pregnant (Thank GOD I'm not that Duggar lady!). 30 years have been spent developing myself, and now I will be responsible for helping to develop someone else - from the very beginning.

Man, that's weird.