Wrap-Up

You know? All things considered and ruthlessly mentally compartmentalized, we had a really lovely week around here. 

Jason made me an amazing dinner for Valentine's Day. I opted for Just Buy Something Shiny route and picked out a Le Crueset tagine for him, thus ensuring that he would ALSO make me dinner for the rest of the week in his excitement to try it out. Our house smells like a Moroccan restaurant all the time now, and Noah thinks couscous is the best thing ever. Noah is not wrong.

On Wednesday, I had my 24-week OB visit, where I finally got to celebrate the packing on of FOUR WHOLE POUNDS. I know I sound like such a dick every time I bring this topic up, but holy hell, this pregnancy is so weird. 

Me at 24 1/2 weeks (and looking so very terribly excited about it!). No, those are not maternity jeans. Yes, that is a belt. Because somebody ate my hips off. 

I at least look pregnant from the side, right? The kid is big and strong enough to visibly jiggle a bowl of pudding balanced on my belly with the force of his kicks (what? it was a test for SCIENCE), so he finds other ways to make his presence known. Besides, obviously, being a voracious calorie-parasite sucking up everything I eat. And then apparently working it all off with a nightly gymnastics routine right when I'm trying to sleep. 

I go back in two weeks for the glucose test and another ultrasound. (At the last one, the baby was breech, though I think he still is.) And then I keep going every two weeks after that, because we're officially At That Point Already Oh My God We Are Not Ready At All. We've nicknamed the baby IKEA, in part because we've put off several much-needed shopping trips to there for so long now that it's entirely likely that he'll just be born at the store, among the meatballs and closet organizers. 

Yesterday, we emerged from our weather-and-illness-fueled hermitude and played outside in the neighborhood for the first time in months. And so many of our neighbors were shocked to see me out of a bulky winter coat and timidly hinted around that oh, hey! It's been awhile, WHAT'S NEW WITH YOU GUYS? And then they eyed my stomach with a mix of panic and confusion, locked in an internal struggle over whether to say something and risk the chance that I just got kind of fat in that one localized area. And also got a boob job. Because yeah. I've totally gained four pounds. IN MY BRA. 

We rode bikes and scooters and other various things with wheels (of which I realized we own a frightening, military-sized fleet of, at this point), and Noah invented a game called Harry Potter Escapes From Voldemort, which mostly involved running along the path behind our house until you get to the woods, then turning around and running right back, screaming on the top of your lungs. 

Ezra liked it because even he could understand the rules. Also because it involved screaming.

Ezra insists on wearing the bike helmet whenever we go outside, by the way. Even if we're just sitting on the front steps blowing bubbles. Considering he actively works to thwart my every effort to keep him safe 99.9% of the goddamn time, I'm guessing it's more of a fashion statement than anything else. 

Safety is badass, man.

Noah, on the other hand, outgrew his bike helmet over the winter. 

Along with his fear of the big-kid bike. 

And any trace remainders of toddlerhood.

In exchange for full-on little boyhood. 

PS. Obligatory reminders/thanks-for-visiting links to Mamapop, Moxiebird and the Advice Smackdown. Triple-handedly keeping us in couscous and puddings.  

Countdown

The American Cancer Society asked me to write an additional post for the More Birthdays campaign. (I was supposed to write one more, next month, and that was it.) I suppose I can assume this means they've been happy with the response so far and you guys have been clicking over and retweeting and like-buttoning or whatever the hell it is you youngsters do these days with your Internets and smartyphones and...and...

What was I talking about? I got distracted by some deep thoughts about prunes.

Oh! Right. Another post for ACS. Another look at a topic that should inspire at least a dozen entries from me on any given day, eleven of which are all but guaranteed to make a significant portion of the Internet cry. Or at least, lie about crying in my comments section. Don't think I don't know you do that. (And don't think that I don't love you for it.)

But oh. I'm tired of it. It hurts like a bruise, and some days just thinking about it feels the same a swift kick from pointy shoes.

My dad...well. Things are about the same. He still believes he'll be able to continue chemo, somehow. And that the chemo will work. Meanwhile, I've learned more about what late-stage leukemia does to the human body than I ever, EVER wanted to know. 

When he first got the cancer diagnosis, back in September, the prognosis was three to six months. We're currently five months into that range, and I hate -- hatehatehate -- the fact that things seem to be moving along, like morbid clockwork, right on their horrible schedule.

So instead, I've started shopping.

I've bought onesies and rompers. Everything in bright, summery colors and patterns. Impossibly tiny cloth diapers and sun hats. Teething toys, pacifiers and an infant bathtub. Swaddling blankets and lightweight nursing covers. My Amazon cart is littered with stuff "saved for later" that I know we don't need, but I will probably buy anyway. Because it's small and cute and it makes me smile.

I've entered his name into sample birth announcement templates, just because seeing it all typed out and real makes me ridiculously happy. Those are saved for later, of course. We'll need his photo and birthdate/weight specifics. And we'll have those soon...in about three and a half months. 

I've stopped wondering if that's soon enough. I've stopped doing the gap math, the subtraction. I've stopped fretting over the potential lack of overlap, the idea that he won't be here when the baby is born, even though it was never promised to us, beyond just HOPE and MAYBE and YOU NEVER KNOW. 

There may be loss -- a specific, profound loss. But there will definitely be life, and another birthday.

I'm excited for sure. And also: Hopeful. Maybe. And you never know. 

"Birthdays Are For Kids" by Sarah Rowland, courtesy of MoreBirthdays.com

 

 

Hormones & My Hair: A Reproductive Retrospective

Okay. We need to talk about something important. For once! We need to talk about my hair.

This topic is so intensely important, I felt compelled to create some illustrations. You know I'm serious when I bust out the stick figures and paintbrush tool, yo.

First, this was me (and my hair) back before I ever decided to have babies:

I mean, not that thin or out of proportion, but you get the idea. Stick-straight, fine hair that did very little besides sit there. It was very good at sitting. Also: hanging, limping, and flopping. I found it incredibly boring, and spent every other year wondering if "bangs would help," and then every other year in between THAT attempting to grow out my stupid bangs.

Then, I went on Clomid, fertility pill of the devil himself:

That shit made my hair curly. Suddenly, I had tons of natural wave and body.

Of course, I also had NO BABY and a raging case of major depression, panic disorder and OCD. So I had to stop taking the Clomid.

I still kind of miss That Hair, though.

A few months later, though, huzzah! I was pregnant. And sometime around the second trimester, I realized I stopped shedding hair, and even though it was still fine and stick-straight, I had a freaking shitload of it:

Our tub drains rejoiced as well.

Until I was about five or six weeks postpartum, when suddenly every non-shed-over-the-previous-nine-months hair decided to fall off my head simultaneously in giant-ass chunks.

The exact same thing happened when I got pregnant the second time. Lots and lots of hair.  Lots and lots of hair that saw no reason to stay confined to my head: 

Postpartum hairballs and a five o'clock shadow on your LEGS. I'd like to see MTV bring those topics up on a very special episode of 16 and Pregnant. 

Baby is born, hair falls the fuck out, everything once again returns to normal, which is boring, so I decided to dye my hair red:

Despite looking absolutely terrible in web-only color format, I like it. The semi-permanent dye agrees with my hair much better than the permanent blond highlights I used to get, so I sometimes even see a return to the days of the awesome Clomid waves. So when I got pregnant AGAIN, I was genuinely looking forward to how COMPLETELY AWESOME MY HAIR WAS GOING TO LOOK THIS TIME YAY.

But...this time, it's different. I still shed hair at my usual pre-pregnancy drain-clogging rate. 

Instead, my head has simply decided to grow more hair from scratch. This sounds good, right? Except do you know how long it takes to grow more hair from scratch?

Have you ever seen a Chia Pet?

Yes. That. Right there, is EXACTLY how I look right now. Six months' worth of new hair growth means I have a thick coat of three-inch freakazoid hairs sticking straight up and out all over my head. They will not lie flat, they will be tamed, they will NOT just sit there and stand by while The Man attempts to suppress their attempts to unionize. 

(On the plus side, my leg hair has all but stopped growing. I can shave about once every three weeks or so.)

(Don't be jealous, though, my eyebrows have decided to pick up the slack. If I stop paying attention to them, they quickly start creeping upwards towards my forehead, Donald-Trump-combover style.)

(Whatever. You can totally be jealous. Me and my bushy old-man eyebrows are totally used to it by now.)

But what I'm REALLY starting to wonder, though, is what will happen this time at that six-week postpartum hair-fall-out-ing point. Will the Chia Pet hair fall out? Or will I lose nothing but chunks of my PRE-EXISTING HAIR, and thus look something like this in about four or five months:

 

Moral of the story: I think I'm going to buy a wig. 

Back From the Wilderness

Whoa. 

I've been away so long that Typepad logged me out of my blog publishing-y thing. And I couldn't remember my password. Or the real, actual word I'm thinking of when I call it my "blog publishing-y thing." 

So we went to New York! It was fantastic. I think I finally succeeded in gaining a million pounds, thanks to Travelocity and Restaurant Week and Mario Batali's Eataly where I ate pasta and then had a cheese plate and more pasta for dessert. Or maybe that was considered pre-dessert. We were there for like, four hours and didn't stop eating once.

That was also where I spent a good 45 minutes staring at some poor random guy a few seats down from us at the crudo counter that I SWEAR was on an episode of Law & Order or something, only to realize once he got up and I was actually sitting directly next to Andrew Zimmern.

You will all be terribly proud of me, I think, for managing to NOT start pointing and shouting "BIZARRE FOODS! Hey! You're BIZARRE FOODS! What up, BIZARRE FOODS. I TOTALLY CAN'T THINK OF YOUR REAL NAME RIGHT NOW, BIZARRE FOODS."

Jason, always the bad influence, was all, "Do it. Go say hi. Buy him a glass of wine. Totally dork the hell out. It'll be funny. You can write about it on your blog."

You know, counter seating is totally underrated. It's really easy to kick people in the shins at that angle. 

Anyway. Bizarre Foods Andrew Zimmern remains blissfully ignorant of my entire existence, as God probably intended. We were supposed to come home on Thursday, but then it snowed, and we had to decide whether we felt like spending a million hours watching the lousy-with-delays departures board at Penn Station, or like staying in New York another night and eating some more instead. 

In summary: I am fat now. It feels real good.

Also: BAM. 22 weeks pregnant. 

I swear, five days ago everybody I met was like, "You're pregnant? What? And you're HOW far along? You're barely even showing!"

Behold, the power of cheese, you guys. 

We finally got home on Saturday, only to find that our house had no electricity. It went out sometime very early on Thursday morning, in basically a total repeat of the LAST time we took a vacation in the dead of winter and then returned to a Snowpaccalaccalypse and an extended power outage. This time, luckily, we missed most of it, as our power was restored after we left to go kill a couple hours at the mall, where it was warm and well-lit and not awful and we could at least surf the online real estate listings to see if we could afford to move someplace else that wasn't so prone losing electricity for days whenever like, a goddamn bird decides to nest in a load-bearing tree next to our power lines. (SPOILER ALERT: No, dammit.)

Anyway, I know I'm forgetting about a million things I wanted to tell you about, but I really need to get back into the flow of things and posting over at the still shiny and brand spanking new Moxiebird and Mamapop and Alphamom and do SOMETHING about the four frillion unread emails I let pile up last week -- though at this point, that "SOMETHING" is probably going to involve the "delete all unread emails" function and praying that I didn't miss anything too important. But then! Back to life and business and blogging as usual, with exciting kid-related photo essays and whining and probably more talk about cheese. God, cheese. It's just so awesome, you know?

I Really Hate Coming Up With Titles Some Days. (There. Done!)

And two days later...it's still a boy!

What? Not quite as exciting anymore? Damn these follow-up posts. They're such a letdown.

I spent all day yesterday in rapid reverse-gear, solely fixated on my older existing-model child and visiting our kindergarten options for next year. A variety of special education flavors and regular strength. I started off the day with a pre-existing belief in one of them, only to end up with that belief shaken and stirred and coming home to wail that I DON'T LIKE ANY OF THEM, EVERYTHING IS WRONG. One option is too this and the other is too that. 

I still haven't come to any great revelations about the day and the experiences and what I saw, other than to randomly decide that I think I'm going to sign Noah up for a karate class. That will solve...none of the big issues at hand, but it's a DECISION. About SOMETHING. Everybody golf clap. DO IT. 

Oh, and I bought like, five boxes of chocolate truffles. They were on sale, because they're tied up with Christmas ribbons, and they're practically PRESCRIPTION truffles. Because once again, I showed up at my OB appointment having gained zero pounds. The baby is growing just fine -- super more than fine, if the ultrasound measurements are any indication. His (HIS!) size puts him (HIM!!) about a week and a half ahead of his gestational age. So that's good! He's big and breech. Fantastic. Meanwhile, I can't even keep pre-pregnancy jeans up over my newly bony ass because the baby is getting EVERYTHING while I'm just trying to stay upright in the face of the never-ending preschool germ onslaught. 

But this simply means 1) my pregnancy cravings have been booted to the very top of the priority list, so all I have to do is MENTION that hey, Indian food sounds kinda good to me right now, and BAM, I am stuffing my face with all the Indian food I want, and if I want Chipotle for dessert, my husband is like, legally required to not judge me, plus 2) truffles, and 3) milkshakes. 

In fact, right after the ultrasound, Jason and I went out for breakfast (sausage, egg and cheese sandwich with a full-fat grande Cafe Mocha) and then hit the grocery story to pick out a celebratory dinner (filet mignon, creamed spinach). He's getting kind of worried about how his cholesterol is going to survive this pregnancy, but I'm sorry, honey, it's OUR BABY. SACRIFICES ARE REQUIRED. 

Over breakfast, we agreed that despite having the baby's name about 99% decided for sure, we'll keep it a secret anyway. You know, in case we change our minds or a serial killer with that very name suddenly starts dominating the newspapers for the next four months or so, and besides, we're still currently going back and forth on a middle name.

AND there's the little detail that the name we love and really want is technically a nickname for another name that we're just so-so about. It's a nice name, but not one I really see us ever using. So do we give him the full name, just so he has the option of using something less casual-sounding someday (and weirdly, it's a MUCH easier name to pair middle names with), or just skip the whole "formal name we never actually intend to use that just complicates the birth announcements and school forms" thing and just...name him what we plan to actually call him. 

This is all bothering me much more than Jason. AS USUAL. This was evidenced by him just casually dropping the name out loud while talking to him mother no more than an hour after we agreed to keep it to ourselves. And of course his mom HAAAAAAAAAATES it and thought he was JOKING, like you can't honestly be SERIOUS, you're not really going to CALL HIM THAT. Which wigged me out even MORE, because I thought the conversation would mean Jason would say we had to start ALL OVER, but then he hung up the phone and was like, "Uh, you realize the simple fact that my mother hates it just makes me like the name even more. You should probably get used to this concept at some point, what with having three boys who are going to become teenagers and adults someday."

I told him he was a jerk who should respect his poor, long-suffering mother's opinion more. Except this time, because she's like, totally wrong and stuff. 

Anyway! One last order of business and I'll free you from this meandering mess of barely-connected ramblings: We launched a fun sister site to Mamapop this week, thus expanding that haphazard empire beyond TV/movies/gossip and into the "LIFESTYLE" realm of blogging, which I think mostly just means "interesting shopping/beauty/health/techie/nerd crap that is not about TV/movies/gossip but we still really want to talk about." I dunno. I didn't read that far down the memo. All I know is, IT'S FUN AND I LIKE IT. Also, it's called Moxiebird, and I hope you'll check it out. 

It's...

A blobby ghost baby! Congratulations, self. 

Oh. Right. One other little thing...

I Wrote This Because I Don't Know What Else To Do With Myself

First of all, thank you for everybody who commented yesterday with ideas and suggestions and just plain old-fashioned reassurances about Noah's non-hunger strike. At this point, it seems like the kid just isn't hungry yet, with no underlying secondary health issue lurking in the shadows, because he is otherwise completely symptomless.  He'll nibble on pizza crusts and Cheerios here and there, then STILL run around like he's been pumped full of pixie stix and caffeine. 

For the record, I dropped a full 10 pounds during my own flu tussle the weekend before last, just because I had no appetite and couldn't smell anything so food tasted like paste for multiple goddamn days. I eventually just forced myself to eat the paste-food, what with the GROWING AND SUSTAINING OF LIFE side gig I've got going on, but since Noah has no secondary higher purpose like that, I'm guessing he just needs a little more time for the congestion to fully clear and give him his taste buds back. 

What's been great this winter -- and here you will fully see the low, low depths a mother will sink to in search of something she can describe as "great" -- is that Noah is finally really and truly verbal enough to TELL US THAT HE IS NOT FEELING WELL. He can even tell us SPECIFICALLY what hurts, or feels funny, or when the medicine wore off or when he'd like another hot towel on his ear. I mean, don't get me wrong, we still get our fair share of unrelated whining about how Mom's choice of television programming is making everything SO MUCH WORSE, EH-HHH-EEHHHH, but damn, it's nice to have at least one child who can be trusted to accurately report on whether his throat is sore or not, unlike Ezra, the two-year-old walking medical mystery who simply asks for his nose wiped no matter what the real complaint is, be it snot or a cough or a fever or probably even appendicitis. "HALP ME NOSE" is toddler-code for "SHIT IS MESSED UP. FIGURE IT OUT, WOMAN." 

Of course, not that Noah still isn't capable of being a complete oddball or anything. Popsicles were a popular suggestion for at least keeping him hydrated, but...the child is scared of popsicles. Won't even touch them. One time we made some together, using some fruit-and-yogurt recipe from a Highlights magazine that he became inexplicably entranced with, only to have him run away LITERALLY SCREAMING when I popped the finished result out of the freezer and offered it to him. MELTY COLDNESS. ON A STICK. AAAHHHHH IT'S ALL SO TERRIBLE. 

Well. Fine. More popsicles for me, then. 

***

Anyway. Moving on! To the newest member of our family of TOTAL FUCKING WEIRDOS, the fetus currently known as the Parasite. Or sometimes Ikea. (Long story, though one that has nothing to do with the place of conception, I ASSURE YOU.)

Tomorrow morning is The Ultrasound. I am quite literally vibrating with excitement right now, and viewing every hour that stands between me and The Ultrasound as a giant cock-blocking pain in the ass. I need to knoooooow. I need to finalize the naaaaaame. I need to buyyyyyy stuff. 

Actually, I don't, really. We took a trip to the Big Box Baby Store yesterday just for the hell of it, and I was kind of stunned by just how PREPARED we already are. Imagine that! And it only took us three pregnancies! 

But really, we have just about everything we could possibly need or want, and I remained shockingly unmoved by all the NEW & IMPROVED TECHNO-GADGET-Y MARVELS that have hit the market since Ezra's babyhood. I want to get a couple new Miracle Blankets, some smaller sized cloth diapers, and...uh, a safety rail for our bed. I know, right? Hold your horses, Miss Consumption Junction. Let's not get greedy or anything. 

Okay, we do need clothes. Jason thinks we'll only need girl clothes, if that's what The Ultrasound reveals, because I haven't told him about the "I'M NOT HAVING ANY MORE BABIES EVER" breakdown I secretly had when Ezra was about 14 months old and fatally injuring himself on a daily basis, which prompted me to bag up and donate literally EVERY STITCH of 0-12 month clothing we owned, save for the boys' home-from-the-hospital outfits and maybe one or two onesies. This was...some really great planning on my part, I realize this now. 

I TOLD Jason that I gave some stuff away, I did. I just don't think he's clear on the EXTENT of the giving away, and the fact that it all went to a friend of a friend of the babysitter's, so it's not even someone I can call up and ask for stuff back. POOF. I did real good work there, yes. 

For the record, I did keep an entire drawer's worth of cheap burp rags. So. At least the kid can spend his/her days puking on those, instead of on actual clothing. By your third baby, this is simply known as Streamlining. 

So. Anyway. Today is the last day for daydreaming and gender predictions, I suppose, provided the baby cooperates tomorrow morning. I know no one else is as invested in this as me (AND WHY NOT, YOU INGRATES), but oh my God, I cannot wait to tell you the news, once we know.  

19 Weeks

Oh my hell, I am 19 weeks pregnant. 

And a half!

Pregnancy-wise, I am feeling...oddly great. A little tired, a little prone to lightheadedness or wooziness if I jump up off the couch too quickly (solution: don't ever bother getting off the couch), though probably a little MORE prone to snappishness and short-temperedness at my husband and children.

I have enough of that last thing sometimes that I have to occasionally ask myself "What the fuck is your problem, man?" And that's when I remember that oh my hell, I am 19 and a half weeks pregnant. That is my problem. LAY OFF ME, ASSHOLES, THIS IS ACTUALLY A LOT HARDER THAN I AM LETTING ON.

I was *thisclose* to five whole pounds gained after Christmas -- a job well done, and one that I was quite proud of, those pastry-wrapped sausages didn't just eat themselves, you know -- but then lost seven during the Extended Flu Remix of the past week, and am once again looking at the exact same number on the scale as the day I handed a positive pee stick in an envelope to my groggy, recently anesthetized husband and yelled SURPRISE! REAL GLAD TO HEAR YOU DON'T HAVE CANCER!

I have exactly one week before my next OB appointment to try to gain some weight back, and something tells me my current diet isn't going to cut it: Dry toast, orange juice and...honestly, everything still tastes like cardboard-y toast to me at this point anyway. 

It's alarming, looking in the mirror, and seeing 75% of your body looking borderline gross-level skinny, while your midsection is all distended, and not in a convincing knocked-up sort of way, thanks to how I'm carrying this pregnancy. (Much further back, it seems. I'm all satisfyingly round while sitting, but then everything sort of...settles somewhere deep in my torso once I stand up.)

Speaking of all this unbearable sexiness: My elbows -- I SHIT YOU NOT -- started developing the early beginnings of bed sores over the weekend, from all the hundreds of times I had to prop myself up in bed to cough while attempting to splint my poor belly and aching ab muscles. 

My boobs, at least, are totally fabulous. My best pregnancy showing yet, in that department. (Thus furthering the hypothesis that a lot of my supply problems with Noah were due to damaged tissue from cyst aspirations, and the theory that the tissue will repair and regenerate itself more and more with each pregnancy and lactation, and I just killed whatever nice visual y'all had going of me there, didn't I?)

My next OB appointment is -- IN CASE I HAVEN'T MENTIONED IT THREE DOZEN TIMES ALREADY -- the big 20-week ultrasound, and I've hit that fevered, frenzied point in the pregnancy where I MUST KNOW I MUST KNOW I MUST KNOOOOOOOW. Each day is becoming more and more of a blue-and-pink tinged form of torture, because if I just know we'd be able to tell if it's a boy or girl NOW, too, if I could just figure out a way to get my hands on an ultrasound machine already. 

Whenever I mention the boy/girl thing on Twitter (SPOILER: I MAY DO THIS A LOT), I invariably get a handful of confused replies, because didn't we already confirm that it's a boy? And you wrote that whole entire semi-pissy thing about it? 

And then I have to try to clarify that yeah, but...not really, because while it sure was convincingly-dangly looking at the 12-week ultrasound and the doctor even voted boy, there's absolutely no way we could take an early scan like that as for-sure confirmation, because you see, technically we could have very well have been looking at a clitoris at that stage and not a penis, but...you know, this isn't really good TWITTER TALK, if you know what I mean. I think my mentions column just exploded in a sea of spambots and pervs. 

Jason remains convinced that we are having a boy. I...am really not sure. I have vaguely girl-like hunches from time to time, but then I think it might just be my brain enjoying one last chance to indulge in the possibility of it being something "different" this time before the full reality of just how outnumbered I am going to be for the rest of my life is revealed. 

Noah changes his vote practically daily (boy! girl! dromaeosaurus!), the Old Wive's tales are divided straight down the middle (heart rate = girl, Chinese lunar calendar = boy, hair and skin changes = girl, food cravings = boy), and Ezra's only input to the discussion is to tap on my belly with his fist while saying KNOCK KNOCK BABY!

Not the world's foremost experts in the art of fetal gender prediction, then. Maybe there's hope for the next one. 

A Pregnant Woman's Ultimate Dream TV Wish List

Or, A List of TV Shows That Don't Actually Exist Yet, But Totally Should

Or Or, Why I Should Be In Charge of a Television Network Already

Or Or Or, Why I Should Probably Never Be In Charge of a Television Network

This post is brought to you by XFINITY from Comcast. Watch all your favorite shows from anywhere with XFINITY TV. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Comcast or its partners.

33

Today is my birthday. I'm 33, and I just had to do math to figure that out for sure.

My gift to myself is a shameless whore-out post with little or no point other than to rack up a lot of comments from people telling me happy birthday. 

It occurred to me last night that I've never actually been pregnant on my birthday. In fact, the occasion has usually marked the end of a long year of fruitless trying. I know I've made getting pregnant my official birthday wish at least three or four times, with two of those wishes coming true in just a matter of weeks. 

This time, I thought it would be nice to maybe start LOOKING pregnant by my birthday, if that wouldn't be too much trouble for the Fates or Birthday Candle Goblins or whoever is in charge of that sort of thing. Everything else is going so well, with the no-longer-feeling-like-a-walking-migraine-of-hork and feeling the honest-to-God kicking and OH, I DON'T KNOW, the whole fetus-remaining-alive thing and stuff. So I didn't want to press my luck. 

I swear I woke up this morning looking like I swallowed an entire tin of Christmas cookies. Which may or may not have actually happened:

It's not nearly so impressive when I stand up. Thus, I believe this is another reason to not deviate from the Birthday Plan of staying in bed and exposing the baby to some enriching literature.

 

AKA, What to Expect When You're Expecting During the Zombie Apocalypse 

(SPOILER ALERT: Lots of canned goods, questionable medical services, speech bubbles full of HUMNGG!, GUB! and GRARR!, plus overall atmosphere of bleakness, doom.)