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My mother-in-law sent me an email asking if I thought I was going to “make it” until Smalltopus’s birth date. “I’m having this feeling we should have our bags packed and be ready to go sooner than that,” she wrote.

Not sure why she’s having a feeling on this, but she’s not the only one. JB is convinced the baby is about to drop out of me at any moment, and when I mentioned the other evening that I wished it were summer so I could go for a walk, he practically crapped his pants right there and then. “You are TOTALLY about to give birth,” he moaned. “I mean, you want to go for a walk?”

I guess the fact that it was such an anomaly for me to be craving exercise is a sad testament to just how much slothing around I’ve been doing over the last few months, but at this point being upright is vastly preferable to sitting. Once I sit down, the baby smashes up half my body and I start getting the Heartburn From Hell along with the Jimmy Leg; at least if I’m upwardly mobile the boy has some room to stretch out in. I spent almost every evening of my last days of pregnancy with Riley waddling around the neighborhood with JB, but that’s not much of a viable option this time around: it’s dark out at 4 PM, the rain is endless and cold, I’d have to go by myself because the video monitor only transmits so far, etc.

I don’t personally have any early-birth feelings, other than the increasing disbelief that I can go on like this without erupting like a Gallagher watermelon. My actual due date isn’t until February 14, and the C-section is scheduled for February 4. At 35 weeks I am large, uncomfortable, and ungainly, but all systems are reading normal—no blood pressure problems, no signs of early labor.

What do you think? Will I make it until Feb. 4? Do you have a feeling one way or the other?

In other news, JB returned from CES with two adorable Las Vegas-themed toddler shirts for Riley. “I couldn’t find any onesies for Smalltopus,” he explained. Then, carefully glancing at me, “Or, um, anything in . . . your size.”

Yeah, I guess shirt sizes probably do stop short of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL. No problem, I didn’t want anything anyway, just the scintillating stories of gambling into the wee hours and eating Kobe beef appetizers cooked on hot rocks at the awesome Japanese restaurant and enjoying the bright Vegas sunshine while I stayed back here in Rainville eating Riley’s leftover chicken nuggets for dinner, hey you know what comes in all kinds of sizes? DIAMONDS.

We moved Riley into his own bedroom a little while ago, a transition that did not go completely hitch-free but with the exception of one Very Dramatic Evening has been fairly painless overall. In order to sort of detach him from his old room altogether I moved all of his diaper supplies to the new room and we’ve been changing him in there instead of his changing table—something we probably should have done a while back, since he’s long outgrown it. The problem is, his bed (a futon) is very low, and I am very very large. It has been extremely difficult to bend that far over in order to wipe my squirming kid’s butt and wrestle him into/out of his clothes; every time I do it I have to take a break afterwards and spend some quality time panting and gasping and blinking at all the pretty little sparkling stars floating around my head.

Anyway, it randomly occurred to me this morning that my own bed is about four times higher than Riley’s, and if I changed him there it would be just as ergonomically helpful as the changing table was. It’s taken me, let’s see, about two weeks to come to this realization, so I guess we can officially cross “Able to Problem-Solve In a Timely Manner” off my list of Things I Still Feel Capable Of This Late in Pregnancy.

That list does include Eat Ice Cream Every Single Night, which is something I remember doing in the last weeks of being pregnant with Riley. And I do I mean every night. There’s just something so soothing and happy about ice cream, I feel internally comforted with every slurpy bite. Well, except for about halfway through the bowl, when the sugar high or the coldness of my stomach contents turns Smalltopus into a Rolfing expert hell-bent on pulverizing the various muscle fascia within his reach.

I can’t get over how much this kid moves, and how truly uncomfortable it is when he does so. None of the pregnancy books warn you that those heartwarming little bubbles early on will turn into the sort of sensations that make you wonder just how secure of a containment system your body can possibly be, because we’re just talking about tissue and skin and stuff, right? It’s not like the baby is held securely behind bones or anything, surely he could just claw his way through if he tried hard enough? Which worries me, because it really seems like he is TRYING VERY HARD.

My belly doesn’t look or feel like a round balloon any more, now it’s a roiling mass of babyparts. I wish like hell I could peek in there and see what position he’s in, because a lot of time it doesn’t make any kind of anatomical sense to me (“What IS that, a leg? A butt? A battery-powered Whack-A-Mole game?”).

All in all, I have the increasing feeling that there’s not nearly enough room for the both of us, and yet we’re expected to share quarters for a few more weeks still. Craziness! I know pregnancy is supposed to be the most natural thing in the world, but from my perspective it’s entirely UNnatural to house a whole entire human being inside your own body. A Chihuahua puppy, sure; a case of Eclipse “Polar Ice” gum, why not?—but a full-term BABY? Come on. Tell me another one, Fibby McBullshit.

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