(Diary) Week 26: Nobody Knows
Of course they know
Welcome to my diary. These are entires I wrote during my own pregnancy. What you’re about to read is unfiltered, unedited, and perhaps a bit uncanny. But these are my raw feelings written in real-time. Everyone’s perspective and journey is different. This is mine.
Week 26: Nobody Knows
You’re proud of yourself because you think nobody knows you’re pregnant.
And if nobody knows you are pregnant, then you can go on pretending this isn’t as real as it really is.
So you squeeze into your old skinny jeans, leaving the buttons wide open, and you dance around your room.
If a tree falls and nobody hears it, did it even fall?
If a women is pregnant but nobody sees it, can she continue being in denial that one day, soon-ish, she’s going to be a mom?
Ads on instagram tell you to embrace maternity clothes. Jeans with a stretchy sides, dress with lycra, bras three sizes up.
You block these ads and return to your closet.
You already have baggy shirts, stretchy pants, XL sweatshirts.
On the day when your pants start to feel tight, you take them off and stroll around your apartment with your butt hanging out.
You avoid mirrors, because mirrors tell the truth.
When you see one, you face forward. Everything appears smaller from that view, that view makes you look flat, like a paper doll.
You go to the foot doctor to get a callous scrapped off. He’s seen you before and doesn’t say anything is different about you today.
But your dad is with you and he says:
She’s having a girl!
Who is? The foot doctor asks.
There’s a hush of silence and so you speak:
I am. That’s me.
Well, congratulations! How many weeks are you? 6?
You get off the examining chair and turn to the side.
I’m 6-months.
He gasps in awe.
Well you certainly can’t tell. You hide it so well.
You feel proud because you feel like yourself.
All your life you’ve been good at hiding things. Why would this be anything different?
As the week goes on, you get a little sloppy. You pull out the crop tops, ditch the basketball shorts, pull up a pair of biker shorts that make it a little hard to breathe.
You run into a neighbor you hardly know. You feel this urge to tell her there’s a baby growing inside of you.
I saw a bump but didn’t want to say anything.
The cashier at The Loft rings you up and asks when you’re due.
For what? You respond, thinking she’s talking about some birthday promotion discount code.
When is your baby coming! She replies and you realize ahhh, you’ve been standing sideways, you’ve given it all away.
You touch your belly. You can feel deeply what nobody else can see.
March, I say before realizing that even when a damn tree falls, it doesn’t matter who is around to hear it. Eventually, everyone will see it, anyway.