The emotional process, weeks 13-21

This pregnancy has been mild in most every respect, and I must say I'm aware that this mildness includes my emotions -- I have been pretty much mostly myself.
Mostly.
Only, I cried when I got a B+ in my research class last quarter.
And I cried when Steve stayed out a little later than I expected.
And if I bump into inanimate objects I have a tendency to punch them.
And I am filled with love for Steve like those very first months, only with the familiarity of the last six years making it that much sweeter.
Much like Acorn's thunka-thunking, these peaks of emotion are still very much intermittent, but from the bigger picture they are more frequent and their onset more sudden.
So there you have it -- no pregnancy is a cake walk, but I'm pretty sure I'm walking on cupcakes, which I'm feeling very lucky about.
Feeling lucky is probably my number one emotion since we got that big fat positive 5 months ago.

The belly stare and the mortification impulse

I walked into my internship yesterday morning and my supervisor exclaimed "you've popped!" Indeed, even though I posted about it a few weeks ago, it still felt like the genuine emergence of my "bump" happened overnight. A few weeks ago I could feel it and sorta see it but if I sucked my stomach in its presence was negotiable; now I can't not feel it and if I suck my stomach in, well, very little happens. (I will take and email photos soon; let me know if you'd like to be on that list.) It's not that it's huge; it's just that it's there.

While it's obvious to me what's going on, I'm starting to get the first onslaught of the "is she or isn't she?" stares. Well, that's not entirely accurate because the first onslaught has been by people who know I'm pregnant, so they're really "is it or isn't it showing?" stares. Women are used to being stared at for a variety of reasons, and I'm no exception, but I have to say the new locale for the stares is taking some adjustment. Women are also trained to be very, very sensitive to perceptions of our weight and if I were not pregnant and caught three or four people trying to discretely stare at my belly despite wide eyes and furrowed brows, I'd be mortified. That mortification impulse is still present with the pregnancy belly, like it or not, and has to be grappled with despite the fact that there's no reason to be even slightly embarrassed about one's belly size. (A note here that really -- really -- no one should be made to be embarrassed about their belly size, no matter its cause, by society or anyone, but let's face it, it happens pervasively.) Having a belly has called into high relief how much I do have that mortification impulse despite my beliefs that no one should have it; just another facet of day to day living of which pregnancy has made me hyper-aware.

What are the other things? How accustomed I'd grown to ignoring hunger and bathroom urges for the sake of convenience, for one. Training myself to eat when I'm hungry -- the moment I'm hungry -- and to use the facilities when I first have even the faintest awareness that I have to go -- has been just that, training. Then there's the infrequency with which I was paying attention to vegetables and protein amounts in my diet until now. There's the absolutely cerebral way I operated before pregnancy, rarely paying attention to the nuances of my physical existence like I do now. I have never before inhabited my body the way I so completely do now.

And lastly, there's the omnipresence of Easter candy in the world -- is Easter over yet? Please?

The emotional process, weeks 3-12

In a nutshell (oh what a delightfully awful pun! Acorn, you're in trouble if you're not a word nerd!), my emotions over this first trimester have been intentionally controlled. As I mentioned in an earlier post, many dear friends have had miscarriages, and the first trimester is the highest risk for that to happen. So when we found out, the emotional clamp came out. I refused to be super excited, or super stressed, or super planny, or super you-name-it-I-was-not. I was not going to get attached to this pregnancy until the pregnancy attached to me.
That doesn't mean that the emotions don't sneak out from time to time; the hormones take away a lot of my say in that. While driving with a car full of family over Christmas, I played a song for them off of my ipod that I liked, and stunned myself by very nearly crying over it (Fireflies, by Owl City, in case you're curious). A few weeks ago, after a very early, very long day at my internship, S. teased me when he got home about lying like a lump on the couch, and I told him in very short and direct terms with absolutely no mischief in my voice just exactly where he could stick it. (Oops. I apologized later, after he acknowledged the insensitivity of the joke and I acknowledged the abrupt swell of my irritation.) Mostly though, it's Cool Hand Luke all day every day.
We have our 12 week appointment on Wednesday, and if they say it's okay to breathe, then I am intentionally unclamping. I'm ready to be excited, a little stressed, a lot more planny. I'm ready for the bump, the first kick, even the heartburn and the back aches, the list of names, deciding whether or not to learn the gender, picking the birthing method, and so on. I'm ready to swallow this experience whole (along with whatever food may be in the vicinity) and to have full emotions to go along with the ever fuller figure. I'm ready!