This is a lot

It’s such a weird phenomenon you experience with people giving you unsolicited information and commenting on your body and asking how you feel every day. Example: My substitute before our field trip told me that students told her I was pregnant and that I don’t look six months pregnant. Ok. Then she proceeded to tell me about she was 7 months pregnant and had a UTI and needed to go into the doctors office and they asked her when her last period was and she got up and said, “7 months ago.” THANK YOU FOR THAT. I’m so glad you, stranger, shared this story with me. I guess everyone wants to connect, but I really do not. Or people telling me that they loved their c-section since they didn’t tear open. THANK YOU. Literally every single day I have someone telling me that I’m not pregnant or other adult women yelling that they can finally see my baby bump as I walk to the bathroom. All of you can really just learn some manners maybe. I actually hate the attention and I hate the comments on my body.

My students this semester are much better than the students last semester, as a whole. They’re pretty kind and sweet for 9th graders. We are reading articles on empathy right now and I’m trying to have more for them. However, while I’m learning to have empathy for their ridiculous behavior, I don’t have any empathy for old friends that I think are terrible people. As I get older I realize I really don’t have that many friends and that should bother me, but it doesn’t. I’m truly antisocial, but also I get lot of social interaction at my job five days a week, so maybe that takes care of it. I’m so pleased by myself or with Dustin or with my animals. I think as a mom, I don’t want to let my son know how much I really don’t need people…

Sometimes it doesn’t feel real that I’m going to be a mom. Like most day I believe something is going to go wrong and that I’m not actually going to be a mom and that this whole thing isn’t real. When I go to my appointments and everything is okay, I’m always so surprised and thankful. I have read many stories about stillbirth and losing babies at 7-8 months and it’s scary. I just can’t imagine being responsible for a son and he’s a part of our family and he’s going to go to school and he’s going to have a life and all of that. It’s overwhelming. Not in a bad way. Just in a way.

The last six months, I have hardly, if at all, been depressed or thought about sad things. I think I’ve grown up and become less narcissistic or hyper focused on myself. I’ve been pretty even in my emotions and fairly balanced. It’s not like I’m having fun being pregnant. I’m not. But it’s also been far easier than I had imagined. I mean I’m not into the last three months yet, which I know are pretty hard physically.

I know I’m 32, but this is probably the first year where I have had to actually feel 32 or feel like an adult. I have to be responsible for someone else. Everything is going to change. My lifestyle, my life choices, my Netflix binging will clearly have to change when he’s running around the house, but I’ll still have some time to do that. One thing I know is I will not be like my neighbors who treat their dog like a lawn gnome now that they have a daughter. My dogs are my family too. It’s all going to be different, but I’ll manage. People with less coping skills, financial stability, house stability, food stability have kids all the time and make it.

I’m in the double digits now – like 95 days left. Almost less than three months to go. What an odd experience all of this has been.