Balance: Nonexistant. Always.

They say that during pregnancy your balance may be "a little off."

No. No, it is a LOT off.

I remember being 30-something weeks along with Lainey and attempting to cross a street. You know, where there isn't really a sidewalk but it's not REALLY jaywalking because it's at a corner? I looked down the road and saw a car coming, aways off, enough for me to make it across if I slowly jogged instead of pregnancy waddled across the street. So I took two jogging steps off the sidewalk and nearly pitched forward onto my face. It felt like someone had shoved me from behind as I flew gracelessly out into the middle of the road and thought, "This is it, I will die from being run over because I dared to move faster than a snail while pregnant." I crouched in the middle of the road for a moment, keenly aware that probably the entire neighborhood and for sure the person in the car coming towards me was staring at the idiot who couldn't cross a road properly, before I regained enough balance to finish jog-waddling across the street. The car slowed down briefly as it passed me, checking out my incompetence.

Today I stepped on something in the living room. I have a toddler, there are ALWAYS things in the middle of the living room. Plum pits. Banana peels. One Goldfish cracker that has turned into five billion tiny crumbs. Other tiny objects I manage to avoid.

I could have stereotypically slipped on the banana peel, but nothing I do can be stereotypical. Instead I managed to step on the largest damn object on the floor--Lainey's rain boots.

My ankle wobbled. I tipped backwards about 1/10th of a degree, meaning my entire center of balance flipped out on me and sent me flying onto the floor. I managed to slam into the couch and a few animal crackers on the way down as well, my butt landing directly on the hardest part of the rain boots. Of course.

Really, it wasn't a huge fall. But since I'm pregnant, for some reason it means I feel like I fell straight down a mountain. Every damn muscle hurts. To top it all off, Lainey toddled over yelling, "Uh-oh!" and pulled on my arm to help me stand back up. I am glad she is learning compassion and yadda yadda, but when you have to be helped back up by your one year old...you know things are either bad, or you are pregnant.

Lucky for me, I am pregnant. Yay.

The Honeymoon is a Lie. The (cheese) cake, however, is not.

During my last prenatal visit, the midwife helpfully scrawled on my after-visit summary printout, "Don't forget to enjoy the honeymoon of the second trimester! :)"

I like my midwife a lot, but I was filled with irrational anger. Probably because I'm in my second trimester.

I suppose the second trimester is the best trimester for me. The first trimester is filled with midnight puking (WHO thought up the term "morning sickness?) and awful headaches. The third one, at least with Lainey, was filled with leg cramps and ever-increasing hip pain. The second trimester, for me, isn't really much better than those other two, though.

All the books say that, oh, it's a wonderful trimester. You're not puking and you have a cute little baby bump people will compliment you on, you can find out the gender if you want and people start throwing you baby showers. I like free stuff so I'm totally cool with people giving me gifts. Even from strangers, I mean, if any readers out there want to send me anything.

But that middle trimester is really no better physically for me. Heartburn starts; I'm eating the tiniest meals and even if I stop eating at 7pm, I often wake up at 1am feeling like dinner is still stuck in my ribs and threatening to travel higher if I move wrong. My back aches. One cashier told me, "Oh, I just KNOW you're having a girl!" and was terribly offended when I said I was carrying a boy, like I had nothing better to do than to call her out on being completely wrong in front of her whole line. I guess other women like chatting about the miracle of pregnancy, but when someone says to me, "You MUST be so happy to be pregnant, you're absolutely glowing!" I want to reply, "Actually my face is a bright blushed color because it took me half an hour to poop earlier. My butt really hurts."

Then there's the whole I-already-have-a-kid-this-time-around thing. Unlike the first time around, where I could come home from work and collapse on the bed and sleep for 13 hours, there is no "come home from work" part of the day. I have to entertain my existing child ALL DAY LONG. And after a while you start running out of ideas.

We started cooking. Lainey finds this incredibly fun.

One tablespoon whipped cream for the cheesecake. Ten for my mouth. 

Even though the results are a little...messy. Edible, but messy. Still, when my back hurts and I'm exhausted but can't lie down, starving but can't eat, having to clean up the results of an experimental peanut butter no-bake cheesecake is daunting. You might as well have asked me to go scrub the entire exterior of a space shuttle with a sponge. While it's in space. 

A cheesecake channeling modern abstract art. Our child is just THAT talented. 

In conclusion, I believe that each trimester of pregnancy equally sucks. Each in its own special way.

But...do give me a cheesecake at any time. Mmm.