Week 26 - Belly Thoughts

Now that my pregnancy is so obvious to the world (and to me), I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my belly. Here are a few randomly assorted belly thoughts:

- Why is it suddenly OK for random strangers to touch my belly? I've been keeping track of belly touches when we go to social events, keeping a tally of how many touches there are and how many of those ask for permission first. If I was not pregnant, it would NOT be OK to rub my belly if you don't know me, but somehow it is now?

- All of a sudden my belly is something to be stared at. I think now maybe I have some insight into what it must be like to have big boobs or to be overweight, and to have a group of people across the room stare at you and discuss your body as if you are totally unaware of the fact that they are doing so. Or to have someone walk into an elevator and look first at my body and THEN say hello.

- Almost as unusual as people touching my belly is people wanting to talk about it. Several times now people I've never met have struck up a conversation that began with "Wow you look fantastic". I don't mind this comment of course, but it's definitely not an every day conversation starter.

- I am obsessed with watching my belly squirm. Now that the baby is big enough that his movements can be seen from the outside, I sit and stare at my belly all day waiting for the next one. What I would give for a peek inside to see just what he is up to! The movements feel so spastic, I can't imagine what he can be doing in there. Maybe he's inherited daddy's restless legs!

- Despite my rants above about people touching my belly, I secretly WANT them to share in how cool it is. I think that the thing that irks me the most is that it is ONLY the strangers who want to touch my belly. I actually spent an entire week last week with family and not one of them asked to feel the belly, which seemed a little weird to me considering the number of people I don't know who can't seem to resist.

- Dempsey, my 14 pound orange tabby cat, is having a really difficult time figuring out how to snuggle now. He used to stand on my stomach and nuzzle his nose up under my chin, but now my stomach and boobs are all so tender that I cry out when he steps in the wrong spot and now he's scared to step on me at all.

- Still no stretch marks!!

- Last week my midwife measured my bump and I found out it is exactly the size it should be. I learned that before ultrasounds, the only way they had of measuring the baby's growth was to measure your stomach. The idea is that once you are past 20 weeks the measurement from your pelvic bones to the top of your uterus should equal the number of weeks you are at. For example, I was 25 weeks at my appointment and it was exactly 25 centimeters from the top to bottom of my belly. How crazy is that? Even crazier is that this means I can expect to grow another 15!!