Expecting

It’s strange to think about the baby growing inside me. Early on, when we first started to suspect, there were lots of symptoms – the nausea, the fatigue, the suddenly luscious breasts … but now that I’m into the second trimester, those symptoms have normalized and I feel pretty normal. The boobs are still bigger,  and I still do fall asleep by 10pm every night, but I’ve grown accustomed to these things. I know that pretty soon I’ll start to ‘show’, but for the time being I guess it’s the lull before the swell – I look softer around the middle now, but it’s still within the ‘had too many chocolates?’ realm of weight gain. Close family and friends know about the baby, but pretty soon everyone will.

It sounds funny for a blogger to say, but it will feel strange to have such a personal experience on display for everyone to see. The personal experiences I reveal online are to a certain extent under my control. While there’s a limit to how much I can limit public access to the information I put out there, it all starts with the decision to post or not to post. When the belly comes I no longer have the choice to keep news of the baby to myself. Everyone from the drugstore cashier to the transit cop will know.

I can’t tell yet whether this will bother me, but as the weeks pass it’s increasingly on my mind. One of the big adjustments to this time in my life is that so many things that have been private experiences will be in view of others, from the ‘yup, I had sex’ belly to the birth to breastfeeding later. It’s a big change from the privacy I’ve enjoyed until now.