On a similar note, everytime I eat anything close to a full meal, I start feeling like John Hurt in the scene in "Alien" where the little alien baby starts to force its way through his chest. On Thanksgiving, I thought I was going to explode like Mr. Creosote after eating the ill-fated wafer thin mint. And forget trying to sit down on the floor to color with my niece Mary. Luckily my mom and my sister have both gone through two preganancies each so they started telling her that "Aunt Jennie can't get down on the floor like she used to." Speaking of that, I can't imagine going to a club looking like this.
The baby is now about 7 inches long and weighs about one pound. From what I could tell from a fuzzy ultrasound photo, she looks like her daddy. She's a show-off too. While the technician was looking at the monitor, she stuck her leg up over her head.
Overall, the strangest thing about being "with child" is the loss of control over your body. Not that I've taken to flinging my arms around or swearing uncontrollably, but my belly is expanding at a rate that is starting to outpace all sense of normalcy. At any other time, I'm pretty good at being able to adjust my weight. Jeans getting too tight? Cut back on the doughnuts. Fanny bones starting to ache after sitting for more than an hour on a firm chair? Eat more doughnuts.
But now, it's becoming a phenomenon. I'm actually eating less at one sitting than I used to, and I'm still waiting for all those cravings for ice cream to kick in, but I'm outgrowing my clothes like when I was 10. And I'm waddling like a duck. It's hard to move your legs around a 15 pound pillow strapped to your waist.
Getting kicked from the inside is wierd too. Every once in a while, usually after a meal, it feels as if there is a tiny kickboxer inside my abdomen practicing side kicks. I am also turning into a total baby about stairs ever since I went up three flights at work and actually had to stop and catch my breath.
At one point, about a year ago, I thought it would be fun to try writing a column for Inside Kungfu Magazine about being a pregnant woman doing martial arts. Unfortunately, the reason there is so little out there on the subject is because jumping up to do a hurricane kick and then dropping into three spinning floor sweeps followed by rising up into a tam tui is not recommended by most obstetricians. For now, I just try to do stuff in slow motion, or in my head.
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