"How are you feeling?"

When you're pregnant, I'm pretty sure you get asked this question 300 times a day. And if I can be perfectly frank, the honest answer is...I've definitely been better, but I'll live. That's how I've felt for the last 8 months and how I expect to feel for at least 2 more (yes, for the blissfully unaware, pregnancy is 40 weeks = 10 months). All of these people who tell me they LOVED being pregnant, that it was magical and fantastic and absolutely the best time ever are completely nuts as far as I can tell.

But yes, I realize it could be much much worse, and I really have only the most common of complaints to recite when asked. True, I was nauseated by most smells and all public transportation for close to 5 months, but I didn't puke every morning and weird Chinese ginger candy allowed me to make it to work every day. And yes, the glucose tolerance test rivaled the worst hangovers of my youth and my last anatomy ultrasound left me feeling like I'd been punched in the belly by a prizefighter, but the results were all boringly normal. And of course, my back is starting to hurt and I can't sleep through the night anymore, but I'm still able to go to the gym 5 days a week and I can usually fall back asleep on the couch. I am endlessly thankful that the words "bed rest" have never been uttered by my doctor, that I can spend time with my friends and do laundry and ride the subway, and that for the most part, other than being noticeably more three-dimensional, I haven't really had to change that much. My heart truly goes out to all the women who sacrifice any semblance of a normal life for close to a year in order to have a healthy baby.

I don't remember ever considering how demanding incubating a living thing for so long would actually be. If I had known then what I know now, would I have waited a little longer before charging headlong into motherhood? Would I have demanded a blood oath from Sam that I would be exempt from household chores and civil behavior for the duration? Would I have finished my Masters program and cleared my calendar before tossing away that trusty package of birth control? Honestly, I don't know. It's all supposed to be worth it, or so I hear. I'll just try to focus on that for now.