A Very Pregnant Day

I FELT VERY, VERY PREGNANT TODAY!

• Symptom number 1: I play the organ in sacrament meeting at Church every Sunday. After the sacrament hymn, I always leave the organ to go and sit with my family and then quickly return for the closing hymn and postlude. Well, in order to appreciate the dilemma I had today, you must know that an organ bench is not like a piano bench -- you can't just sit on it and adjust its placement by scooting forward or backward like you can a piano bench. You have to actually get off the bench and scoot it where you want it and then sit on it again. I always gauge where I want the bench on the comfort of my hands reaching the keyboards. I make sure to adjust the bench when I first get to Church and that's where the bench stays until somebody else adjusts it for themselves. Well... for the first time, today I had a hard time getting off and back on the bench quickly and discreetly (I try to be quick and discreet so as not to call any attention to myself since most organ players just stay up on the stand for the entire sacrament meeting)! What happened was that the distance between my hands and the keyboards was perfectly comfortable; what I didn't realize until it was too late, was that my quickly growing tummy was hitting up against the organ, thus making it hard to slide in and out. How embarrassing. From now on I'm going to have to scoot the bench farther back and stick my arms and hands out like a mummy in order to play without my tummy hitting the organ! I think Sister Cooper and I will have to start picking from the shorter hymns - at least until after the baby is born!

• Symptom number 2: Because I play postlude for a little bit, I'm always late to Sunday School. The only open seats when I got there were right on the front row. The very pretty mauve upholstered chairs are horribly uncomfortable -- they have a weird sitting angle, if you ask me. Several times, I caught myself totally slouching (kind of leaning way back on my chair) with my legs open out in front of me. Each time, I would try to cross my leg or at least tuck my feet back under my chair, but I'd eventually end up in my very un-ladylike pregnant position. I didn't realize how important having a row in front of me is! That chair that's usually in front of me forces me to sit up straighter. With all that free space in front of me today, it was hard not to use it and totally spread myself out. I won't be sitting in the front row anymore... no matter how late I am to class. Needless to say, I moved back to another chair for Relief Society!

• Symptom number 3: This one may have been magnified because I was already ticked about how uncomfortable I was during all of Sunday School. However, for the closing prayer, I went to cross my arms across my mid-abdomen, as I usually do. The prayer was not unusually long or anything, but I found that just a few seconds into it, I had to move my arms way up across my chest. I felt ridiculous and I'm sure I looked ridiculous, too. Hopefully everybody had their eyes closed like they're supposed to!

• Symptom number 4: Shouldn't I be past the "want to eat everything in sight" stage? Yesterday, I went to the grocery store "for some milk." $60.00 later, amongst other things, I was unloading a London broil, red potatoes, asparagus and a soda pop (we hardly ever drink soda!) into my kitchen. Not too bad, eh? At least it wasn't a bunch of ice cream or sugar. Even though we had plenty of food at home, I used the excuse that basketball season has ended and we needed to have a special celebratory dinner. I made some rolls and hollandaise sauce and when I served the meal, Jacob made a comment something like, "Wow... it's like Thanksgiving!" I guess that's because it wasn't the spaghetti or bean burritos that we usually have. I loaded up my plate and was ready to devour it all, when I realized that the meat was dry, the asparagus was too soft, and the potatoes needed more flavor. We were also out of butter, so even my yummy rolls weren't up to par. How frustrating. I cleared my plate anyway.
  

• Symptom number 5: I could hardly keep my eyes open towards the end of my less-than-satisfactory meal. I pretty much abandoned poor Jacob and the kids and went straight to my bed to crash. I did manage to set an alarm clock (February has taught me that when I sleep for too long on Sundays, the rest of the day ends up pretty messed up!) -- I was going to allow myself to take a one hour nap. Well, three and a half hours later... Umm, what responsible mother does that?
  

• Symptom number 6: I thought I was done complaining, but now my feet are swollen (not to mention my already usually swollen bad ankle which now looks like it's deformed) and I swear that the baby hasn't stopped kicking in about three hours. Shouldn't he be sleeping or something?
  

I put a countdown baby ticker on our blog. It's definitely time to start counting down!