• … you can no longer remove your rings without contemplating amputation
  • … you can easily go back for seconds on the chocolate shavings / shortbread crumbs you’ve collected in that groove between your breastplate and your bulge
  • … no matter how high you’ve filled your bathtub, you want to sing “Islands in the Stream” when you’re soaking in it.

I am at the cusp of the third and final trimester, and while I’ve been valiantly staving off frumpy footwear and Fat Mama fashion thus far, I am starting to get the aches and pains that come with a burgeoning belly. One evening this week, I suddenly felt as if my rib cage were pulled apart by two metal wires retracting in opposing directions and if I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that Blobette was gripping a right rib with her toes while all that was happening.

Meanwhile, finding the optimal sleeping position is as elusive as the quest for WMD, and I usually wake up with some kind of shoulder ache. My new favourite toy: this wooden three-prong nobby thing that works like a three-fingered ninja massage of death. Apparently, I’m suppposed to rub it along my back in wide, gentle figure-eights. Yeah whatever. Most evenings now, I just prop it up against the back cushion and cheerfully stab myself with it.

For the curious:

Body Shop COTE Tri-Massager
Presenting The Body Shop's COTE Tri-Massager. Also known around these parts as the Tripod of Back Relief.

As for Blobette, she’s starting to pack more of a punch when she decides to do the amniotic riverdance. Which is delightful because I know she’s alive and well. But it’s also distracting, especially when I’m chairing a meeting and suddenly find myself pulling odd faces.

But don’t get me wrong, people. Don’t even think for a second that I’m having a dawg-awful time. Because I’m loving this.