Seventeen Weeks

Seventeen weeks and so smirky.

A few people I barely know have sidled up to me in a way that says, So...? What's going on? And I'm very inclined to feign innocence or play dumb. "I don't know what you could possibly mean!" It seems weird to flat-out lie, though. Especially when I know I'll see these people again and it will be increasingly obvious that I'm not just getting fatter.

I'm completely surprised that anyone has noticed enough to up-sidle. I certainly wouldn't say anything, wouldn't even insinuate anything, even to a close friend, unless it looked like she was going to give birth tomorrow. And probably not even then! While I'm starting to look reasonably pregnant in leggings and a tank top, I'm certainly not that pregnant. When I'm dressed for a day of preschool and errands I'm just a heavier version of my normal self. Maybe I'm giving off a pregnancy vibe.

Most of the time I feel like my non-pregnant self, except for being very tired. The fatigue is unbelievable! One week on a soy-free diet and I'm still exhausted. I'm going to give the food experiment more time, but the next step is to up my physical activity, which sounds torturous. I can hear my body crying out for free weights, and I Just. Don't. Want to. But more muscle equals more energy, with the added advantages of making a person look better and sleep better. So. Free weights. And lunges.

I'm still able to sleep on my stomach, which is wonderful. Sleeping is not yet a problem, though I'm sometimes awoken by the terrible urge to empty my bladder and drink a 24-ounce cup of water at the same time! This is something I remember vividly from my pregnancy with Westley—drinking while peeing—and it's one of the only things the two seem to have in common.

Since finding out that this baby is a girl (I have lady parts up in my lady parts!) I have become obsessed with names. More so than usual. I name-shop even when I'm not gestating, so having an excellent reason to think about names and their sounds and meanings and how they flow together has made me into a complete manic. I've been a little snippy with Rob over what to call our daughter because for some reason known only to my hormone-ridden brain, I feel like we need to figure it out RIGHT NOW. And I justify my name-craziness by reflecting that this is very possibly the most important decision a parent ever makes for her child. We better not fuck this up!

The trick is to find a name we both love that is meaningful, not too common but not so bizarre that it doesn't seem like a person's name, something that sounds good with Rob's last name, something that will fit a tiny baby and a little girl and an older girl and a young adult and a middle-aged woman and an old woman...

Oh my God, some day my daughter will be an old woman!

(Have I told you about the time I burst into tears while holding two-day-old Westley, and when Rob asked me what the matter was, in my completely abject state I somehow managed to say, "Someday he will grow up and be an old man and die!"? Yeah, that happened.)

The truth is that we chose our daughter's name years go, when I turned to Rob in the back row of the movie theater with the vegan cookies at the concession stand and said, "You know what would be a great name for a girl?" Since then, I've heard the name a few times on local playgrounds, and I sometimes bemoan its increasing popularity. And then I remind myself that nothing is original. Certainly not a name that Rob and I might come up with and seriously consider for our child. And then I cry because that was my little girl's name, and how dare some other little girl have it, too?

Rob stands by it. I still love the name, but I'm suddenly uncertain because I can't believe that it could actually belong to someone in my life. That she's really real.

.....................................