“I wasn’t always this way,” I tell The New Girl at my job, the girl who, though it hasn’t been directly stated, will be taking over my job when I leave for maternity leave in two weeks. “I used to be cool.”

We share a laugh. After all, I pulled it off like I was joking, and I like The New Girl, but I look at the entire situation with the sad realization that she has only known me as Pregnant Me - the orca whale waddling through the work day, grunting to bend over, sighing in exhaustion after a few hours, and hungrily hoarding granola bars like contraband to keep my blood pressure up. The Pregnant Me jokes about Britney Spears-style parenting with my friends/fellow coworkers, responds to being called “Prego” or “Pregs,” and runs to the bathroom every ten minutes.

Yes. I used to be cool.

There were the days (and nights) that I would go out for drinks with coworkers and drink everyone under the table with my innumerable vanilla vodka and cranberry concoctions. There were the very late nights I would be the craziest fool in the bar, dancing on tables, swinging from poles. I was loud, I was foul-mouthed, I was obscene - and damn it, I was fun.

Now I sit down for the third time in the last two hours and realize I can put my hand on my table of a stomach and it’s tightly wedged between my huge belly and my engorged breasts. I remember when I could see my crotch - or my feet. I had feet once. I had a six-pack once. I worked like a madwoman to get it, and it was fabulous. I was hot once. I used to walk into a bar and just know I was the hottest woman there. I could feel heads turn. God, I was hot.

You would’ve loved me. I was hilarious.

Amazing how a stick, covered in one’s urine, changes the course of life. You can smile sweetly when people talk about the blessing of pregnancy and children, but who am I kidding? This was a surprise at best, a mistake at worst. I love my boyfriend more than anything in the world, so it wasn’t an absolute apocalypse to find out I was pregnant, but was it planned, expected, anticipated? Not exactly.

I was such a good shopping buddy. You would be floored if you saw the six 30-gallon Rubbermaid containers of shoes I have. Dolce and Gabbana, Steve Madden, Jimmy Choo. My shoe collection is amazing. It’s worth almost as much as my purse collection, with my penchant for Coach and Gucci. God, I had great taste. My closet? Packed with the season’s hottest trends, with a separate closet for spring/summer and fall/winter. I have probably worn half the things in my closet. The other half will be tossed along with the rest next season to make room for the newest trends. I will hang on to the leggings. I have a feeling those will come back next season.

Things changed. The drinking stopped. The invites out to girls’ cocktail nights tapered off. The tables at the bar now only have old, nearly-buffed-out scuff marks from my stilettos. My six-pack is gone, and despite what people tell me, I know it’ll never be back, nor will it be the same. I know more about Graco and Evenflo and Gerber than I ever cared to know — or thought I’d ever care to know — than I do about the new spring collection coming up from Dior.