Is this for real?

I just do not feel pregnant. This is too weird. All I want to do is eat food with a lot of flavor. That's it. My breasts are a little tender, a little fuller, with slightly darker nipples. My temp is up every morning. My organs have all moved up and my belly looks big at only 7 weeks. Occasionally when I stand up I can feel some pulling, some tightness. And I felt it a little while shoveling snow.

But seriously, that's it. No nausea. No smell sensitivity. No real fatigue to speak of that can't be explained by other factors. So weird.

On Thursday we will visit with family for the holidays. I expect to tell them then. Not because I have weird eating behaviors like I did the first time at this exact gestational age -- like when I ate an entire steak dinner and then had to order room service after leaving a wedding early. That time we told my father-in-law and brother-in-law that night before I left for the room, and everyone else the next morning.

This time I think it will be too visible. Even though it's winter, I think it won't take long for someone to notice. And, more than anything, we're in person, something that rarely happens. It would seem silly not to tell them now. It might seem silly that we'll arrive without having told them already.

I'm still not sure what we'll say or how we'll say it. I feel so damn casual about the whole thing. How will that sound?

Testing, 1,2,3 (or 4)

I took another test. The fourth one. I don't feel sick. My boobs maybe hurt, but not really. I'm getting fat but if it's not for a baby, I have got to cut down.

The pregnant line showed up before the control line.

I'm pregnant.

I'm getting more used to the idea being for real. My husband and I had some kind of conversation in which we both agreed we were getting girl vibes. I can't even remember what he said. Something like, "you're thinking sister?" with a mild question mark, almost a period. As though of course we'd come to the same conclusion. We did last time. We were right. Go figure.

My friend is having a girl, and she just turned 40 with a great party last night. At least twice our mutual friends referenced, "when you have another" as though there was no doubt it would happen. And as though it weren't already.

I sucked in my gut on the size 00P jeans I could hardly button and tried to deflect attention from the comments.

Even if I had wanted to tell, someone else's party is not the place, and even the same week of her party wasn't the right time.

They might come here to the house for writing group on Wednesday. I moved just a few months ago and they haven't seen the new digs. I think I can only share so much of myself at once.

Silence of omission

My friend came over today with her daughter and new baby. I knew about her pregnancies soon after they happened, and her miscarriages. We talked about her plans for trying to conceive and for waiting while she got acupuncture. Anything less -- if it wasn't just for not having the chance to chat -- wouldn't have felt right.

I didn't tell her.

Maybe it's because we didn't talk much about ourselves. We talked about mothering in general and some of our mutual friends. She shared some about herself via those conversations, and I did a little too, though much less than usual for someone who usually lays it all out there.

You might even say I lied. By saying nothing. "We're going to have to get things together for L's motherblessing this spring," she said. "And before she has her baby, someone else is going to have to get pregnant. So that's you or A."

If I weren't already pregnant -- if I were trying or still in flux about trying -- I don't think I could have taken that comment with the lighthearted tone in which it was intended. I mean, I've been talking for at least a year and a half about my doubts about being able to conceive after so long with no periods, and of course watching so many friends miscarry, it's for sure on my mind that nothing can be taken for granted. It's not as though I live in the land of believing you just oops have sex and wind up pregnant, heehee.

Except that I did. So maybe the reluctance is about making such a big deal over nothing. Isn't that always the case with me? Aren't I always being told by this same friend -- and others -- that I'm too hard on myself? Yes. And does that ever make me feel anything other than bad for being so hard? No.

So maybe I just want to keep the drama close to my chest. I really don't think I could take a round of "See, that wasn't so hard" from my friends. Certainly not during this early period when so much could still change.

And, as I was just writing in a piece I submitted the other day to Hip Mama, I'm not exactly used to feeling like it's safe to tell the truth. I always felt like I had to shield my mom from my sadness, lest I add to hers. My siblings were all so much older, I felt like nothing I experienced really counted. Theirs was the true reality. I was just acting things out, perpetually the preschooler playing grown up. Everything plastic, nothing bearing its real-world weight.

But I did grow up, and this is real. It is a life. And I have more friends - genuine and wonderful women - than I've ever had before, and sisters who are my friends now that nine and twelve years don't mean so much. But I still don't want to let them in. I'm afraid of accepting support, and I can't imagine happily going through a motherblessing like the ones I've helped organize. I don't think I believe I'm worth it.

A lot of people don't tell until later in pregnancy, and I respect that. Some people tell right away, and that makes a lot of sense to me.

I'm noticing that, although I think my physical reality may announce my condition within the next three weeks, I am not looking forward to telling. Anyone. Ever.

The Question of Clothes

My friend is having a 40th birthday party on Saturday. I don't have a whole lot of fancy duds to wear for a fall/winter gathering.

I also don't have a whole lot of nice fall/winter stuff that would mask a pooching belly.

So in the past few days I've purchased over $1000 of clothes. I don't expect to keep a whole lot of them. Most was online shopping. When I see anything in stock in XSP or 00P, and it's a reasonable color, I order it. I can hardly shop in stores anymore since their smallest sizes have gone online-only (or have just increased in size to make larger folks feel better). I did manage to score a few things at Ann Taylor Loft and Loehmanns, which I'll have to model for the one who pays most of the bills these days.

But how the hell do I know what to invest in? This extra flab could be gone tomorrow. Or it could keep getting bigger. I remember the first time around, I bought some nice, breezy tank blouses I hoped would cover my belly so I would not have to announce to a brand-new crop of students that September that I was pregnant until I'd at least heard a heartbeat. School started when I was 11 weeks, and it was already a challenge to keep things under wraps, I showed so early.

But one of those tanks I've never worn. Another has been on about twice. The following year, they were too tight and too nice to wear as a nursing mom. That was probably the same the following year, since I was still a frumpy mom who was nursing a one-year-old all the time. Ditto 2008 with a two-year-old.

I might have worn them this past summer, but they just were so obviously not in style. It's one thing to wear t-shirts that are half decade old, but nice shirts that screamed 2005 were just not something I reached for in 2009.

So really, buying a pair of size 0P jeans because they are on sale and give a little room that 00Ps don't? Is that really wise?

Maybe not, but only if I'm going to keep getting bigger. If I don't, well, I could really use new jeans.

Last time I was almost my full size by Christmas, at the end of my second trimester. This time (insert requisite "if" here), I'll be just ... pause for counting ... eight and a half weeks. I should still be able to make it down the chimney, laughing like a bowl full of jelly at the pants I filled out four years earlier. I'll need something in between and up-to-date!

If I was an easy size or if I had any serious sense of fashion, this clothes issue might be a different question, but it just ain't my thing. And yet, I'm not so clueless that I don't know how bad I look when I've got the 90s goin' on.

(Well, most of the time. Sometimes my husband has to point it out).

I will have to make some purchase decisions and actually remove a few tags for Saturday's party. And if it gets super cold, I'll probably say I'm worth a new discounted-to-$25 sweater.

For the rest, I should probably wait and see if I'm going to be dropping a chunk of change back at Gap Maternity.

Show thyself

The thing about being 5’0” and small-boned (normally hovering around 100-106 lbs) is that I start showing almost immediately. At least I did last time, and I swear it can’t be only the pumpkin pie this time around that's making me look so plump and juicy.

I don’t even know if I’m really still pregnant, but it’s like my organs have gotten orders to march north. And since there’s not a whole lot of room to travel, they start sticking out.

Granted, I was not in my most svelt shape before I got knocked up, but I was not one of those people with a gut that you look at and wonder if they’re pregnant… all the time. But now, if I let my back do its natural over-sway, I could easily pass for being halfway along.

I can also stand up straight and suck it in and look okay. But let’s remember; I’m not even five weeks yet.

I think that if this sticks, it’s going to announce itself before I will.