I’m in this really weird place in my pregnancy where it still isn’t all that real yet. It wasn’t until Monday evening that the vast majority of my pants stopped fitting and I had to ease into my rather limited maternity wardrobe. I still don’t look pregnant most days, depending on what I’m wearing and what I’ve eaten. It wasn’t until Wednesday’s yoga class that I realized upward facing dog was a position I’d have to give up for a few months. Even still, all of these little changes don’t quite make it all click. As I’m laying on the exam table at the OB yesterday for my monthly check up, the nurse practitioner pulled out the little handheld doppler device and squirted the cold gel on my abdomen, moving the wand around in those familiar circles to find the heartbeat…and there it was, that whoosh, whoosh lub-dub sound indicative of a very tiny, very fast heartbeat pumping blood through a very quickly expanding body. And still…I feel like none of this is real. I’m not quite sure what it’s going to take to get to that point, whether it’s a rather large, round belly or the first stirrings of movement I expect to come any day now…It’s all a very surreal state. Perhaps I should chalk it up to 3+ months of sobriety, no red wine haze clouding my brain. I know I certainly never had any visions of what this portion of my life would be like…how I expected to feel, to react. I’m just kind of taking it all in stride, one day at a time…altering my life as little as possible in the process before the really large adjustment to my life arrives sometime in early November. I think in terms of weeks, not months. I realize at this time next year I’ll have a 6 month old baby. I think about how far away that seems and how close that seems all at the same time.

Life is a funny thing, really. It throws you in so many directions and expects you to respond. I guess I’m just waiting for my brain to respond that yes, Beth, all of this is really happening to you…so you’d better embrace and enjoy the journey because you only get one shot at it.