Being pregnant just gets weirder and weirder

Last week we had another baby shower and started our childbirth classes. It's weird, but after the shower I felt like we were going to have the baby at any second. Luckily, I have time to take a nap first.

Our childbirth classes are way better than I thought they'd be. Our newborn care class wasn't so great, and I wasn't sure how they were going to turn that kind of thing into a six-week course. I'd been feeling really anxious about labor, delivery and breastfeeding, and even going to the first class made me feel a lot better about the whole thing. We had to watch a video, which sounded like it was going to be really grizzly but wasn't, and it made me think the same kind of will to get my body through a tough triathlon is probably a little similar to how I'll will myself to get through this. That made me feel a little better about it. It's weird, when I think we have a month and a half left, that seems like a long time, but when I think of it in terms of seven weeks, it seems really soon.

It is all pretty exciting, and it's still striking to walk past the nursery and think we're soon going to have a little person in there. It's strange how different things make the reality of it sink in more. Some days I wake up and think I can't wait for this to happen and other days I wake up terrified and think I'm not ready for this and I hope I can handle it (but still excited; I just don't want to mess our kid up).

I think my size is starting to alarm people. Yesterday I was trying to interview someone for work and he jumped to get me a drink and get me to sit down. Then he introduced me to his friend who said, "She's not going to write an article, she's going to have a baby." I wasn't too worried about it because the guy who said it is 87 years old, but I still wish people didn't perceive me that way. People are also starting to ask me if and how I'm going to keep writing
after I have the baby. It's starting to make me feel a little freaked out about how I'm going to do it.

On the other hand, lots of people go out of their way to be really nice to me. The construction guys who are doing our siding watered my flowers for me this morning and one of them saw me through the window trying to move our couch so they could rip the window out, and he knocked on the door and asked if he could do it (and pointed out I'm not supposed to).

It's weird to think our lives are never going to be normal in the same sense again.