I love my body when I’m pregnant. I love that my bras are full and my belly gets round. I love the feeling of the life growing inside me, kicking me whenever he or she can as if to say “hello mama”. This baby, like all of my babies seems to respond well to familiar voices. Tonight as I tentatively found myself at the bottom of a daughter dog pile, I felt the baby kicking away at it’s sisters while they were giggling on top of me. This baby also loves music. I make sure to play my favorites for baby so when he or she arrives they will be conditioned for greatness.

After I had Raquel, I remember missing my pregnant belly immediately. I hoped and prayed that I would get to experience pregnancy again some day (I repeat: this is a lot sooner than we had expected it to be). But now apparently I can no longer pass as not looking pregnant. Even though, I love my pregnant body there are things about other people noticing it that I would rather just skip.

At 20 weeks this week, I have had the experience of not being able to fit into two of my favorite skirts. I tried them on one after another and couldn’t believe I couldn’t get them either of them zipped or buttoned. Last time around I bragged about being able to wear my pre-pregnancy jeans up until the end of my 7^th month. So even though the scale hasn’t revealed a huge weight gain or anything, my belly clearly isn’t as forgiving this fourth time around. Perhaps it’s my karmic reward for bragging.

Today seemed to be a day that garnered me more attention than usual. I might be in denial here but I place the blame entirely on my outfit. After my experiences today I’ve decided that the shirt I was wearing is going straight into the wash and then maybe I’ll make it disappear and it will not be seen again, EVER.

My housecleaner, who I adore, said to me today, “your baby is growing well”, which to me was her nice way of saying that I was looking bigger. She then confirmed that she meant exactly that by following it up with “it looks like a big baby”. Yeah that pretty much sealed the deal on the fact that she thought I looked huge today.

Also today, I was walking around downtown just after lunch when I encountered another woman who noticed my belly. I probably was drawing extra attention to it as I walked around with my hand on my belly. The owner of the store I was in asked me when I was due.  After I proudly told her “February” and told her that I was 20 weeks along she replied with, “Wow. Are you having twins?”  I laughed it off with a smile and said “ha…ha, no, but it’s my fourth baby so my body is probably less forgiving than the previous pregnancies”. I’m wearing all black tomorrow.

Yes, while I love my pregnant belly, I don’t love is the sea of stupidity that I seem to swim in on a regular basis when random people say things about it. I know they may not intend to hurt my feelings but often times I’ve walked away from such occasions wondering, “Wait. What did they just say to me?” As much as I would like these comments not to exist I do love that they give me something to blog about. Lucky for them, I’m not a mean person or I might just have to put out there the store they work in, their physical description, and their first and last names.

I’m not sure how many times I’ve said it in my blog before but people say the dumbest stuff to pregnant women. I’m sure that now my almost-5-months-going-on-8-months belly is here to stay I’m going to get a lot of new material to talk about too.

The best critiques come from the wee ones in my life. I remember a friend of mine was over with her two boys and her daughter. I came down wearing a tunic and a pair of leggings. Upon seeing me, her 3-year-old asked me where my pants were. I was embarrassed and thought that maybe I couldn’t pull off the look. Then my friend said, “Please don’t take fashion advice from my 3-year-old”.

My belly has started to get water on it while I wash dishes at the sink and my sweet little daughters have noticed it getting bigger too. I know Georgia doesn’t mean to call me “fat” and then smack my belly but she really doesn’t have the vocabulary to properly address my growing mid-section. “Thanks, Georgia” I say to which she follows with a “You’re welcome mommy”.

Then there is my sweet Olivia who didn’t like my new reading/computer glasses. “I don’t really like your glasses Mommy” she said to me a couple of days ago. I asked her how she would like them better to which she replied, “Pink with sparkles”. I’m sure only then would they have definitely gotten two thumbs up from her.

I have learned to take these comments from random people with a grain of salt. I may never see them again anyway, so why get too upset?  And if I should ever feel sad upon getting comments from my little girls, I check in with my sleep status or when I ate last before getting riled up by people who wear stripes with polka-dots, mix-matching socks, and every piece of plastic jewelry they own. If all fails and I get a real doosy of a comment about my pregnant belly from someone, either young or old, I am thankful that indeed I am pregnant least that comment take hurt to a whole new level.