You know your belly is growing exponentially when:
1. You go to make a copy at the copy machine and before you have laid down the document into the feeder, your belly accidentally taps the copy button and makes an image of your arms laying the paper down.
2. You are massaging a friends shoulder’s at work who is completely stressed out. You are standing behind her chair and for some reason you can’t get close enough and your body mechanics seem off. You look down and realize, “Oh, there is a belly in the way.”
3. You go to lay flat on your belly in your big king size bed to read a book and flirt with your husband and there is something in the way and it feels like a volleyball that all of a sudden snuck up and placed itself between you and the bed. Curious.
4. Your shirts aren’t quite covering your mid section the way they used to.
5. Your toes are beginning to disappear when you look down.
6. You are placed flat in the dentist chair, and maybe just a bit in trendelenburg, and you all of a sudden feel a bit short of breath as the weight and mass of the baby in the womb slides north into your diaphragm.
7. You put your hand on your belly that once used to feel soft and smooshy with lots of woman curves and chub and now it is starting to feel hard and bubble like.
8. You first start feeling the little baby move around way down in your pelvis, kind of like a little butterfly fluttering its wings or a bubble popping. And all of a sudden, you are quite sure there is a little head pushing up above your belly button, jumping, as it seems on a pogo stick, on your bladder. Lovely.
9. You bend forward all prepared to tie your shoe and realize that this isn’t working so well. You can’t breathe and it is a bit painful. You are forced to put your foot up over your leg to reach the laces.
10. It has happened…your belly has almost instantaneously become a nice shelf to prop a book on when reading in your recliner. Fantastic!
[Enjoying my growing belly these days and finding it quite beautiful, actually.]