26 Weeks

I know I'm supposed to talk about how today's picture came to be... but you can buy 50 Shades of Grey just about anywhere, and if you still need someone to explain it to you, then clearly your parents need to adjust your internet filter. So instead, I'm going to write...and rant...just a little though.

Write and rant? Wrant? 

Yeah. I'm going to wrant.

I'm not a fan of pregnancy. 

Babies? Oh hell yeah. They're cute, smushy and they're the only creatures whose bodily fluids can be considered "adorable." Pregnancy? That thing where you essentially grow a living parasite that literally feeds off your body while simultaneously wrecking it? One word: Ugh. 

When we're little girls, we learn to take care of babies via our dolls: how to feed them, love them, put them to sleep... hell, there are a few dolls that actually poop. No, really. Look it up. It's happened. Someone actually made that. Even at a young age, we're taught to be nurturers and you know, what? That's cool. We're taught to love another being, inanimate or otherwise and I think that's a lesson a few people/sociopaths could try to learn at a young age. 

...But you ever notice how no one tells little girls how those babies are made? I feel like every family sitcom I've watched has had one, clueless, adorable kid ask where babies come from and their family members inevitably stutters and comically attempts to explain the birds and the bees using GI Joe or Barbie. 

Babies are beautiful little gifts from above, and like, all presents, we all know better than to discuss the price you paid to get them. Pregnancy isn't pretty, but it's not a total loss. You do get a few things back. 

You get pounds, you get stretch marks, you get mildly insane from the hormones from hell, and you also get up close and personal with the porcelain god more often than you'd ever wanted to in your adult life. You also get more advice than you'd probably want or need in your life to the point that it all starts to feel like more condescending than helpful.

No matter how many times someone spews the phrase "the miracle of birth," my mind flashes to that middle school video in my darkened classroom to that bloody-but-supposedly-education-film and I think, "HOW CAN THIS BE A MIRACLE?!"

...and then I think of this big belly, this peanut-sized thing that's growing day after day after day and of cousins rubbing said-big belly with slightly-inebriated squeals of joy in a parking lot. And I think of a few other peanuts at work; the ones who made it out to the world but never made it home. And I think of a few peanuts that blew up to chubby toddlers waddling around on a tile floor on New Years Eve, slapping boobs while giggling and calling for attention when they feel their mommies aren't showering them with enough affection.

And then I look at this belly and I can't help but smile because I'm not seeing a "miracle" or stretch marks or a living barnacle through a few layers of skin.  

I see someone beautiful that I can't wait to meet.