At 31 weeks, I’m sick of being poked and jabbed and fisted by this future rugby player inside me. I can’t stand the incessant hip pain whenever I attempt to recline to any comfortable position at all. It’s this horrid, stabbing, makes me sob late at night when I can’t move my leg far enough to pull myself onto the edge of the bed, wear me down, torture method no one would even approve for use in Iraq, kind of pain. And lately, with this little head cold I’ve managed to catch and hold on to, every time I even sneeze my hip starts convulsing. You really don’t know the power of a sneeze until you’ve had the hip pain to match it. Did you know your nose is connected surreptitiously to your pelvis? Definitively, I can say “YES”.

Oh and what else am I done with? Well, I’m tired of the itchy belly and stretching everything. I swore I wouldn’t be caught dead scratching my rounding belly in public like a drunken truck driver but dammit if I don’t catch myself in the shopping store mirrors “massaging” my belly button, trying to coax the skin to back into happiness with the grate of my fingernails.

I just want my body back and not in the desperate for celebrity fitness kind of way but in the please, god, I used to control even the minutest bodily functions kind of way. I think it wouldn’t be so bad if I could just somehow set this load down, just for a minute, okay, maybe an hour or two. Then, I would gladly heft it up again and resume my trek to the finish line. But, knowing that there is no relief until the end and then that is no relief itself is just depressing. Blah, blah to all you saying, “Oh, but think of the miracle of joy you’ll hold in your arms very soon” and the same to those of you cheering “It’s SO worth it when you first get to see her”. Since it’s the season…here’s my reply: BAH HUMBUG! And, where’s my rum-laden egg nog, already?