32 weeks or Being pregnant is...

To celebrate the end of week 32 (is this the beginning of the 8th month then?) here are 32 things that pregnancy is (to me)....

1. knowing what it feels like to have someone have the hiccups inside you
2. sympathizing with anyone who is overweight (especially when climbing stairs, getting up from a floor mat or doing up shoe laces!)
3. thinking anyone with a beer belly should consider wearing pregnancy pants - why suffer tightness around the waste when you can have an adjustable elastic system that is no uglier than "belly over button" and a red face!
4. having incredible heartburn!
5. sharing your body - like when you want to lie on your side and the little one inside you thinks differently!
6. thinking weird thoughts like "once upon a time, every single one of us actually lived in and came screaming out of someone's uterus!"
7. being in touch with your senses and intuition like you wouldn't believe!
8. being drugged on hormones and feeling the emotion you're overwhelmed by is totally disproportional to whatever the de facto situation may be, but you can't help - kind of schizophrenic really!
9. if you're like me, then pregnancy is a blocked nose more often than not, and you'll take up snoring at Olympic levels...
10. experiencing incredibly strong feelings for someone you've never even met!
11. spending hours trying to find a name!!!
12. and more hours trying to figure out how long 40 weeks really is and when the due date will be!
13. people you don't know well or to whom you're not physically close to, suddenly feeling they are fully entitled to touch your belly
14. your "bump" becomes the centre of attention, and boy to people stare!
15. people generally avoiding doing anything potentially upsetting and "bureaucratic" processes amazingly becoming more flexible as soon as your "bump" is noticed
16. complete strangers helping you to carry your groceries, which can be nice...
17. people you hardly know offering to look through their attics and lend/give you their maternity/baby clothes
18. getting acquainted to the smelly public toilets because your bladder (and someone dancing the polka on it) leaves you no choice...
19. as the baby grows bigger, eating small meals often because your stomach has no space left
20. ditto for your lungs, so breathing becomes more like panting
21. pregnancy is also giving up trying to figure out if, bump aside, you still look like you did before the bump - pregnancy is definitely not only in your belly!
22. your legs becoming stronger
23. becoming manic of creaming yourself to avoid stretch marks and itching (if you weren't into full body moisturizing before getting pregnant...)
24. appreciating spontaneously "popping out" as you know you won't be able to do it for much longer
25. ditto for long showers or lengthy gossips over lunch with friends
26. thinking you won't, but you do eventually, actually, unbelievably, start waddling instead of walking like a "normal" person
27. sometimes feeling like there's an alien inside you, especially when your tummy starts making waves or has protruding shapes and shakes on its own
28. being unable to remember what it's like not to be pregnant
29. seeing others jump, run, or even swiftly get out of their car seems quite amazing and definitely enviable....
30. noticing (and checking out) all the buggy brands in the street and becoming acquainted with obscure terms like "onesies", "grobags", "baby grows", "muslins" and "togs"
31. thinking that your "before" clothes seem like a joke, and hoping you'll some day look at your current preggie clothes and think that it's actually funny that a Sumo could fit into them
32. pregnancy is being allowed into the mummy club - an informal club exclusive to mothers who think and act like any non-parent just doesn't get it - and I'm not saying they are wrong...

Being pregnant is...