Gravity and Other Things Pregnant Women Hate

The bible has it wrong.

When God punished Eve for eating the forbidden fruit, the sentence handed down was not an eternity of painful labor. It was gravity.

At nearly eight and three quarters months pregnant, I hate gravity. Gravity pulls stuff to the ground. To places I can not reach. Once something falls to ground, I can only look longingly at it, mentally will it to magically come back to me, or try to forget it.

Unless that thing is chocolate. Then I can reach it. But that’s the exception that proves the rule, or whatever that phrase is.

I have decided that back when Eve was frolicking in the garden, things floated freely. It’s why she didn’t need a bra. But once she ate the forbidden fruit, God was all, “Hey Woman. Now you shall suffer. Your ankles will swell to the size of baseballs. Your belly will look like a road map. And you will have to bend over to pick stuff up despite the hard, round growth that does not budge in the center of your body. Sucks to be you.”

Whenever I have something in my hands and then it has to be somewhere other than my hands, a mild panic rises in my chest. What if I fumble it when I am trying to put my cell phone on the kitchen table and it falls to the GROUND? How will I get it back? What if no one is around to hand it to me? If a spoon falls in the dining room and no one is there to get it back, does it really make a sound? Answer yes: it makes the sound of an eight and three quarter month pregnant women grunting and panting on her slow descent to her hands and knees and even more awkward and slower rise back up again.

But gravity is not the only thing pregnant women hate. Oh no. We hate outgrowing our maternity clothes and realizing that we have a few more weeks to go in them still, so we refuse to buy more because we only have a few more weeks to go in them, damn it, and so help me GOD I will not buy another pair of maternity pants. We hate how far everything is from the car. Why did people put mailboxes, houses, and stores so far from my car?

We hate skinny jeans. Enough said. We hate how we pant like Labrodor Retrievers whenever we have to go up a flight of stairs or read a story to our older kids. We hate how time slows down when you hit the final couple of weeks of pregnancy and suddenly two weeks looms ahead of you like two months. We hate July, and we hate August even more. We hate how our butts sweat (that could just be me).

But there are some things that I love. I love how when I go to the gym, strangers smile and give me encouraging nods. I love how our baby kicks when I eat fruit salad. I love how a big belly makes everything else look so much slimmer in contrast. I love thinking about this new, tiny human who will come home with us soon, hopefully, someday really soon.

Like tonight. How about tonight?