“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.
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