Pregnancy, so far.

Hi all, a quick update: Things are going well on the DeLong front. We are just working away (and in Spenser's case, schooling away) and prepping for a fun summer! Today marks 26 weeks of pregnancy. That's just over halfway, for those unfamiliar with gestational timing lingo, but I sort of feel like I have been pregnant forever already. (Pregnant women everywhere who know what is ahead of me in the third trimester are laughing. I surely deserve it.)

The first six months, in a nutshell:

Month 1: Experience strange physical changes. Get suspicious when the monthly visitor fails to arrive, and pee on a stick. Try to convince your husband this is really happening. Throw an epic tantrum in the Bi-Mart space heater aisle when he says he'll believe it after you visit the doctor...in two months.

Month 2: Become a hormonal, raging vomit machine so horrific that even the creators of The Exorcist couldn't dream you up. Become convinced that the baby now has every imaginable birth defect because you can't get a prenatal vitamin down. Settle into comfortable denial by reassuring yourself that a large McDonald's fry has 200% of the daily recommended value of folic acid.

Month 3: Read lots of weekly pregnancy summaries on Babycenter, where the size of the fetus is repeatedly compared to various exotic fruits you've never seen before. Adjust to the idea of impending motherhood. Begin to notice dark bags under the eyes of child-toting women in public.

Month 4: Poke your still squishy abdomen daily and wonder when you'll transition from looking fifteen-or-so pounds heavier to decidedly pregnant. Watch The Business of Being Born and simultaneously feel both intensely empowered by your gestational superpowers and hugely guilty for planning on an epidural.

Month 5: The fun stuff: Learn the sex of the baby, see her recognizably human outline moving around on the ultrasound, feel her first movements and rolls inside of you, settle on a name. Buy your first baby outfit, display it somewhere visible in the apartment.

Month 6: Explode in size. Seriously, become humongous and unmistakeably pregnant practically overnight. Attempt (and fail) to understand how your uterus can now be the size of a soccer ball, but the baby still only weighs about a pound, and wonder - in fear - where the other 7 pounds will go.

Six months down, three to go! :)