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Pregnancy is a milestone in itself. But how well you survive the final stretch makes a mother of a woman.
Halfway through the journey, you treat yourself with things you wouldn’t have thought of earlier – those kingsize trousers for instance! All the while you thought they were for a big woman, that you were too petite for them (inwardly mocking at the large sizes). Plus it’s not just wearing big pants, you have the extra stretchy waistband to fasten it on – doesn’t make it sexy, but girl, that is just what you have to put up with when you don’t that want the growing watermelon to peek out through those pants.
Thanks to the bump, you wouldn’t be able to bend to check your weight, or pick up stuff from the floor or wear your shoes properly. Of course, those shoes of yours get slack as you don’t wear them, you stomp over them most of the time. Sure, you also begin to invest in maternity shoes which go almost a waste of money and effort because the moment the swollen feet are back to normal, your shoe size goes down. But with your wardrobe, don’t expect the size coming down until after a few months after your baby’s arrival.
The halfway mark of pregnancy is fun in not one but several ways. You have got over your gag episodes – just gaining a little more confidence that you can go just about anywhere without your puke bags. The big Mac burger posters no longer make you feel like throwing up – they quite serve the purpose now of enticing you to dig in to them again. All this, provided you don’t care of what the person next to you advises on healthy eating as a preggo gal. Your tiredness and heaviness go down, and the food cravings go up. Husbands shouldn’t be surprised if they find themselves in for a pizza delivery role on an unearthly hour, which would mean that if a take-out were closed, they would have to prepare one for the wives. We guess, there is so much pampering in store for the preggos, let alone their excuses as they get away with just about anything from skipping work to a late arrival on an appointment – all thanks to their baby bump. Strangers become more compassionate and friendly – you can enjoy the attention as long as they don’t cross the line on the number of questions they can throw at you with your seemingly less programming mind these days.
And guess what, the biggest of the quizzes is called for naturally. “Boy or girl?” is the question that will keep ticking you. People would come up with a ‘prophecy’ by looking at the shape of your bump, or how high or low the bump is (low is a boy, high is a girl), the way you waddle, the way you carry your posterior or the hips (on the hips is a girl, otherwise a boy), your heart rate (150 bpm indicates a girl and under is a boy), and the likes. Some would apply grandma’s methods – such as dangling a ring over the belly whereby a circular motion means a girl and oscillation like a pendulum indicates a boy. But should you figure out what you are having (provided it is within the jurisdiction), you can have fun with your gender prediction party. Just get the pink or the blue ribbons on the booties there, for instance!
You would just so wish all this fun lasts until you go into labor. It is perhaps the biggest milestone to achieve. You suddenly realize that all the complaints of being gassy, the bizarre way your sense of olfaction was turning out to be, Braxton-Hicks to constipation, feeling dizzy or nauseated, body and tailbone pains – it was all negligible compared to what you must go through now. But hey, wasn’t your body already preparing you for it? More so, your Lamaze lessons can be put to some good use now. And very soon, all the nights you spent deciding upon your baby’s nomenclature is going to come to fruition. Your little angel is going to have a name just as unique as she is. Very soon you would share the pictures on the social media.
Getting over the final stretch will tell the ignoramus woman what motherhood is all about. It’s all about giving yourself to this beautiful being that you are bringing into the world – all the way through its midnight feeds, to colicy cries, to several other ‘fourth trimester’ milestones that are soon to happen. So as you introspect with overwhelming love, you are all due for a treat, mama!
