Pregnancy Envy

Yesterday, I had an another appointment at my OB's office. Most of his patients are pregnant women, of course. Going back into the office now that I'm all healed up and basically feeling like myself again (plus a pudgy stretchmarked belly), I looked at my fellow patients quite differently. I looked enviously at the woman next to me who was probably between five and 6 months pregnant, knowing that she's in the best part. The morning sickness is over, she's noticeably pregnant, but not uncomfortably so. There's also that deference you get from everyone else around you when you're pregnant. I got so used to people holding the door for me, letting me go in front of them in the bathroom line, and other genuinely nice things. A few times, someone would cut me off while I was driving, and I would get shocked, like, how dare you cut off a pregnant lady? Then I'd remind myself that #1 I wasn't actually entitled to going first, all the time, and that #2, they couldn't see my belly while I was behind the wheel. Now that I’ve been not pregnant for over three months, I can start to look back at my pregnant days pretty fondly. And right now, when I had to go through 3 different pairs of pants to contain my super pudgy belly, I’m certainly missing my elasto-waist pants. I even considered putting a pair on this morning…

A co-worker that travels between our Rehab Clinics delivered yesterday. A few far away facebook friends of mine are due before the end of this month, too. When I see their statuses, or see the pictures of their new babies, I can’t believe that they’re already done being pregnant. When you’re the pregnant one, those nine-almost-ten-months crawl by at a snail’s pace. I was seriously shocked to hear that my coworker delivered! My first thought was, Oh no! She delivered prematurely, I hope the baby’s OK. But my other co-workers set me straight, that she had actually gone a few days past her due date. Seriously, I’m still shocked.

As I said before, I had no real reason to complain during my pregnancy. Everything went just fine. I had normal blood pressure throughout (except for a spike right around the time I was in and out of court from Thanksgiving to Christmas last year), my feet didn’t even swell. My only complication was that I had sciatic nerve pain, which sucked, but was only uncomfortable for me and required no treatment and posed no danger to the baybay. At the time, I just didn’t like it. I’m sure I’m not the only woman to dislike being pregnant, so I guess it’s just something you start to forget after a while. How else would people ever have more than one baby?