This year I resolve to:

1. Have a baby

2. Be a good mommy

3. Stop shrinking Chip’s golf shirts

33 weeks

This week has been so peaceful and relaxing. Chip and I did spend the day after Christmas in our pjs, just as planned, and it has now become one of my favorite memories. It was so nice to sit on the couch, laugh at the sitcoms, and just be together. I’m sure I’ll cherish that memory even more in a couple of months!

As I reflect on this past year, I am so amazed and grateful that my fondest wish and desire is finally coming true. In less than two months, if all goes as it‘s supposed to, Chip and I will get to meet this little one who is already such a big part of our lives.

I would say I can’t wait, but Bonnie’s husband, Tony, gave me a sobering thought during dinner with them this evening: “Just remember, Ellie, babies are a lot easier to take care of while they’re still on the inside than after they come out.”

Merry Christmas!

What a wonderful day with my family and Chip. We had a fabulous meal with my parents, aunt, uncle, and cousins at Granny G.’s house, where Chip and I opened several gifts for the baby. It was kind of funny, really, sort of a signaling of our exit from center stage to make way for a new and upcoming star. Not that either of us minded.

Then, wonder of wonders, shortly after Chip and I got back home, it began to snow. Really snow. Like it hasn’t in metro Atlanta on Christmas in over 100 years. It was so beautiful. I enjoyed looking out the window watching the big, fluffy flakes fall while the fire in the fireplace roared. Idyllic, I guess you could call it.

I am off all next week, as is Chip. We plan to sit around all day tomorrow in our jammies watching DVDs of our favorite shows and eating leftovers.

Life just doesn’t get much better than this.

Today I nearly had a panic attack. I've been so easy-going, able to walk the path of pregnancy with grace and aplomb, and then out of the blue it hit me with full force that I'M GOING TO HAVE A BABY. I'm going to be a mother, and there's no turning back! I am strapped in on the roller coaster ride, the cars are climbing the hill, and there is no stopping until the ride is over. And just like being on a real roller coaster, my stomach plummeted at the thought.

Now, don't get me wrong; I want this child, have wanted this child, for as long as I can remember. It's just the full import, the magnitude of what I'm doing, hit me all at once. And it's extremely overwhelming.

What if I'm a terrible mother? What if I ruin this little life that's inside me? What if she gets sick and I don't know how to take care of her? What if I can't provide for her needs financially or emotionally? What if she cries all the time, gets her schedule mixed up and sleeps through the day, or fails to bond with me and Chip? What if she goes berserk as a teenager?

What if, what if, WHAT IF????

It's terrifying to think that I might fail in this, the most monumental role of my life.

30 weeks

Something else is growing along with my waistline... my er, amorousness. At first Chip was excited about my voracious appetite, but now he is taking great care to avoid eye contact. “You’re killing me!” he groans whenever I’m ready for another round. In a classic case of role-reversal, now he’s the one claiming a headache.

My unwieldiness isn’t helping matters. It’s the beginning of winter, and I haven’t been in the sun for a while, so I look like a beluga whale. No man in his right mind finds a beluga whale attractive. So while my libido is at an all-time high, Chip’s has taken a hiatus.

This morning was a particularly rocky one for us in the bedroom. I finally coaxed (okay, begged) Chip into having a go at things, but the awkwardness of my extra bulk kept getting in the way.

Men have a hard time multitasking as it is, so asking one to keep his fervor and excitement level up while balancing a pregnant woman is nearly impossible. Plus, today I was in a fit of giggles and it just wasn't funny to Chip AT ALL. He couldn’t see the humor in it—again, it meant asking his brain to do more than one thing at once, to switch from “I’m a serious, passionate guy who will absolutely die if I don’t have you right now” to “ha, ha, isn’t this hilarious”—and we both ended up frustrated in every sense of the word.

What a horrible time to turn into Don Juanita.

It's awesome, amusing, and amazing to get to know this little person even before she is born. She's busy, she becomes even more active after I down my juice in the afternoons, and she appears to have a distinct distaste for classic rock.

I found that out this evening soon after I climbed in the car to drive home from work. I was in the mood for something nostalgic and began pressing the preset buttons on the radio when I ran across a few notes of Van Halen's “Somebody Get Me a Doctor.”

All of the sudden I felt an enormous drawing back in my abdomen away from the front speakers and a tremendous shift of weight toward my spine. I laughed out loud and changed the station, and that crazy, wonderful sensation of an internal physical cringe coming from someone other than myself subsided in an instant.

Parents and their youngsters have been battling over taste differences in music for decades. I just had no idea it would start so early!

So she's not a Diamond Dave fan. I can live with that.

29 weeks

One of the things that always catches me off guard is how big I look. For some reason I never notice it in the mirror when I’m brushing my teeth or putting on my makeup. Instead it always sneaks up on me out of the corner of my eye, like when I pass by the windows leading into the grocery store or catch my reflection as I step out of the shower or see pictures and video of myself. Afterward it’s difficult not to associate my self-image with the phrase “lumbering hippo.”

Normally there would be some solace in knowing I’m not the only pregnant woman who doesn’t realize how big she’s gotten, but not the way I found out.

Chip and I were standing around after birthing class with another couple, Sylvia and Carl, enjoying some light refreshments and talking about the night’s lesson. Kiki had talked about fundal height, the measurement the doctor takes each week to make sure the baby is growing, and said obstetricians often can estimate how much the baby will weigh by taking it into account.

Since Sylvia and I have due dates just days apart and are roughly the same size, I laughed and gestured to our bulging stomachs. “We’d better make sure we have some big baby clothes on hand!”

Sylvia frowned before displaying all the tact of a charging rhino. “But you’re bigger than me.”

I thought the drinks in the guys’ mouths were about to come out of their noses. And not just because of her social blunder. Sylvia is my size, if not bigger.

I had a retort ready, but I held it after seeing the look in Sylvia’s eyes. She looked like a cornered animal, desperate to believe she could not possibly be as great a cow as her friend Ellie.

Being a lover of truth, I typically don’t advocate letting someone live in denial, but I let this one misconception slide. I figured it wouldn’t do either one of us good to set her straight, even though her indiscretion hurt me terribly.

Oddly enough, not only do I now know another pregnant woman who doesn’t see herself as she actually is, but her verbal faux pas also confirms I’m not the only one in the birthing class suffering from preggy brains.

At least I can find comfort in that. And in the fact that I won’t have to see her again after tonight, since it was our final class.