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.