Today at work:

Cleaning lady: “Boy you look like you’re about to pop anytime!  When’s the baby due?”

(I get tired of saying the date all the time, so I pull out my back-pocket response)

Me: “I have about six weeks left.”

(Cleaning lady arranges her face into the best combo of pity, disgust, and confusion I’ve ever seen).

Cleaning lady: “Is it twins?”

Me: “Ha ha, nope.  Sure looks like it though, huh?”

Cleaning lady: “You’re not gonna make it six weeks.”

I thank her as she passes me back my empty recycle bin.

I can’t blame the cleaning lady really.  She’s right.  It’s amazing how fast this bulbous protrusion has grown.  Literally, I can tell sometimes it’s gotten bigger overnight.  I can always tell when it’s growing, because I have a really uncomfortable day at work – like today.

I sit at my desk, fidgeting, and leaning this way and that, just trying to find a position that doesn’t make my stomach skin feel like it’s going to split like a giant grape.  I have the sensation that my pants are too tight (and they are) but it’s just my skin being pulled and stretched to the limits.  I diligently keep a daily vigil for stretch marks, looking at my belly in various synthetic and natural lighting, and sigh in relief when I don’t see any.  But over the last few days I’ve realized…they are coming.  They are coming with a vengeance.

I no longer wear my wedding rings.  My snausages won’t bear it any longer.  Yes, I call my fingers snausages.  Big deal.

My feet resemble those of my Cabbage Patch doll, Suzanna.  We both have blond hair and blue eyes too.  Our only dissimilarity (aside from Xavier Roberts having signed her ass and not mine) is that her belly button pokes out, and mine doesn’t.  Yet.

Dr. Fouts says the baby is probably around 4 1/2 lbs.  If babies gain 1/2 lb. to 1 lb. per week in the last weeks, and I have six weeks left…hang on while I get my calculator.  The math doesn’t add up like I want it to, so I decide to just spell “boob” instead by keying 8,008 into the keypad to have a chuckle.

My point is…I know I’ll make it.  Logically, my stomach will not split open on it’s own.  My cankles can’t explode.  I would just feel a whole lot better about things if I could have said to the cleaning lady:

“Two weeks left!”  Perhaps then she would have smiled knowingly and given an encouraging wink.