When Does the Penny Drop?

This whole pregnancy thing – I don’t know.  It is just not sinking in.  I mean on one level, yes, I know this is happening.  Clearly.  I am not stupid.  And I planned this.  And I’m an excellent planner.  But my brain – it’s just not processing the information in the fully aware way I would have expected it to.

I feel a little like a hypochondriac or someone who has made this whole thing up.  There has been a good bit of evidence to prove otherwise, but somehow a big part of me still isn’t convinced.

Here are the milestones that I thought would make it seem like a thing that was really happening:

• When I got to tell people.  The secrecy around early pregnancy is weird.  It’s this big big life news, but you are supposed to wait months before you tell people.  And when a secret is well-kept, it doesn’t even seem true.
• When I heard a heartbeat.  That seemed like it would be definitive.  It absolutely convinced my doctor.
• When we bought a stroller.  Because you don’t spend money on things that aren’t real.  That would be stupid.
• Seeing the baby-to-be at the ultrasound.  (It’s the boy kind, by the way.)  Except you know what?  Those aren’t as obvious as they seem to be in the movies.  I recognized the spine because it looked like a spine.  Otherwise?  If the tech wasn’t there pointing and saying what everything was, you could easily have convinced me I was looking at my liver.  (My weird, weird liver that has a spine and moves around and somehow got itself into my uterus.)
• When I could feel him moving.  These aren’t little moves.  They’re big, hard-to-ignore moves.  (I’m a little nervous that this kid is going to take after the jock side of the family.  Not that there’s anything wrong with jocks or anything, but I had always assumed I’d have a little nerdy kid like me.)

These all seem like pretty major indicators.  But my brain’s all like, “Pssh.  That’s not your body.  That’s someone else’s body.  That’s not your future child.  Don’t be silly.  That’s not the kind of thing you do.  I mean, you’ve certainly never done it before.  You’re not going to be someone’s Mom.  You’re just going to be someone’s Auntie.  That’s all.  That’s not a baby – it’s a fish.  You swallowed a fish and it somehow survived and just keeps swimming around in there.  Yeah.  That’s all it is.  Go eat some brie.” **

And so on.  I’m not sure I can remember another time that my brain was such a big fat liar.

**In case you’re judging me now, because apparently people live to judge pregnant lady choices (another post for another day), I didn’t eat any brie.