Baby Bump Blues

Let me preface this post by saying, "I am so thrilled to be pregnant!" Yes, I felt the need for quotation marks, just to emphasize my delight. I am in my 17th week, and I know it's only going to get more exciting. Aside from the morning (all day) sickness, I have experienced my first area of pregnancy that I've had to... adjust to.

Let me go back to the beginning.

When I was a baby, my mom's mom, Nanny, would constantly remark and nag my mother about how 'scrawny' and 'sickly' I was looking. She always worried that I wasn't getting enough to eat, but my mom was doing everything normally, I was just a scrawny baby.

A couple of years into toddlerhood, and it's the same thing. I'm still scrawny; even though most children have that 'baby fat' phase they go through. My body must have missed that life development stage, because I never received my 'baby fat'.

Never.

Not in elementary school...people still called me 'scrawny', which might I add, is not a very flattering or nice term for my body type.

Not in middle school...I had these skinny little arms and legs and no body fat. You can imagine how people feared me in basketball...not...I had to make up for my lack of meat in aggressiveness.

Not in high school...I reached my full height in 9th grade, 5'9", which is pretty tall for a girl. I was this tall, skinny, red-headed, freckleface girl. (People had kindly resorted to calling me skinny instead of scrawny.)

I grew up hearing remarks constantly about how I needed to eat more, how I was too thin, how I was just skinny. I never thought much about the remarks; I was pretty accustomed to them. I mean, of course I had all sorts of other things that I was insecure about. (I'll tell ya about those later.) Having a 'belly' was never a thing I had to deal with. I was always active in sports all throughout school, so I guess that helped. I mostly contribute it to my genes. Thank you fast metabolism.

Even in college, I really didn't put on the pounds. I did gain a little, but not enough to take me off the thin category.

That brings us to now...pregnant.

I have to admit that I've had a difficult time adjusting to people drawing attention to my waste and saying comments like "Oh, you're getting bigger." "I can see your belly." "Yep, it's poking out there." "Oh, look, your pants are getting tight."
Now, of course, there is nothing wrong with those comments. Those are normal comments.

As soon as someone makes a comment about my belly, I find myself straightening up, sucking my belly in what I can, and tightening my "booty". The first time I did that I quickly realized how vain that is, but I'm still having a hard time not doing it. I mean, I'm pregnant, for crying out loud. I'm supposed to have a belly. So, if you've made comments about my belly, please continue to do so. And if you see me straighten up and try and suck in, you'll know why.

Maybe it's just because I'm not big enough to be obvious yet. I don't know. I'm pretty sure once it's poking out there huge, I'll be okay with it. But right now, it feels so weird to have a little 'belly pooch'. But I am embracing every last moment of this baby being inside of me.

So, if you're a girl, touch my growing belly all ya want (my youth group girls have already gotten me used to that). Just don't call me fat. :-)