Ch-ch-ch-changes

Ok, I know pregnant women throw up, gain weight, get big bellies, have mood swings and all that good stuff, not to mention the grossness that goes along with delivery that really should never be mentioned in polite conversation. But I have been taken by surprise by a number of physical changes- things I didn't expect this soon, or never even crossed my mind. It's a little weird when my body, which I've grown fairly familiar with over the past 28 years, just up and decides to do something completely unprecedented. Here are a few of my non-disgusting surprises:

1. Acid reflux from week 5. Pretty much as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I started having terrible heartburn and burpy reflux. I thought I was crazy- the baby was just a little bundle of cells, there's no way she was crowding my stomach- but Nick explained that one of the pregnancy hormones causes parts of your body to relax, which can include the muscle at the top of your stomach that keeps things, like stomach acid and air, in your stomach. Luckily, Prilosec is pregnancy-safe, so I started on that after my first appointment because, as my doctor helpfully pointed out, "it's only going to get worse as the baby gets bigger."

2. Swollen fingers and feet at week 21. I expected this sometime around May, when I'm really pregnant and Texas is really hot. But one day in early February, I noticed that my fingers were a little puffy and tight, like when you take a walk on a hot day. They haven't gone back down. Of course, I immediately convinced myself that I was experiencing early onset preeclampsyia (pregnancy-induced high blood pressure and hypertension, very not good, especially before your baby is remotely viable)...despite the fact that I had been to the doctor two days before that and my blood pressure was fine. Now I'm just used to my fat hands (the rest of my body says "hey, hands, join the club!") and have taken up smokehouse almonds as my new snack of choice, because the straight-up saltlick was just a little too strong. Hey, if you're going to swell, might as well do it right.

3. Randomly waking up fully alert in the middle of the night. This is just mean. I know I'm not going to sleep from June through, oh, 2010. Why do I need to wake up for no reason now? People who say "it's just getting your body ready for getting up with a baby" are not funny or helpful.

4. My feet hurt. While cooking dinner one night, I noticed that someone snuck in and made the kitchen floor harder (I now have to wear my Crocs to stand on the linoleum for any length of time). Then that same evil gnome made all my shoes less padded. I don't know if my feet hurt because of the extra mass they're supporting or because they're spreading out. I hope it's the former- I'm already at the upper limit of women's shoe sizes and the one thing that might send me into a terrible postpartum depression is my feet getting permanently bigger. I'll have to wear shoe boxes- mens' shoe boxes.

5. Skin tags. Apparently a common side effect. Who knows why- maybe you're not feeling unattractive enough as it is, so your skin decides to randomly grow these little extra bits that sort of look like dangly moles? I don't consider myself to be especially vain, but if these bad boys don't recede after birth (as promised), I'm going to be some dermatologist's dream.

Despite all this, I really do love being pregnant. The anticipation of having a little baby is wonderful. My favorite times of the day are when she kicks or turns around, and I can't wait to meet her and be her mom. It would be nice if there were some way to produce Hannah that didn't involve sharp pains under my ribs after every meal (due to intestines that have been seriously displaced by a uterus that is now higher than my belly button), but if that's what it takes, I'll take it.