I am getting scary pregnant. What exactly does “scary pregnant” mean you might ask? Well, to me, it means a few things…

For one, it means that my belly is getting bigger. I have now reached the point that there is no hiding my pregnancy. Not that I was trying to hide it but there have been a few times when I thought I wasn’t really showing. Then I would go out and get someone asking me when I was due. Or while talking with me they had trouble making eye contact and instead focused their gaze directly on my tummy.

I have this feeling that I look bigger than I should for 27 weeks. I’ve had more than a few people now act surprised when I tell them I’m due in February. I tried not to get offended when the auto body repair shop owner was particularly blunt in saying, “Wow, you are already that big and you are due in February?” After all, he is just an auto body repair shop owner, what does he know about pregnancy?

So you might say that I have gotten a little self-conscious about my belly. I mean I love it but I feel the need to justify my belly size by telling people this is my fourth pregnancy and that’s why. Which then opens up a whole other can of worms for me to explain why it is I have so many kids and then hearing the “Wow, you are brave” comments. At any rate my belly button definitely needs one of those little stickers they sell pregnant women to cover up their belly buttons so they don’t pop out through their shirts.

This leads me to the discussion about why I am not into Halloween this year. I have given up on any idea of dressing up for Halloween. Any costume I could think of would end up being “so-and-so” but a pregnant “so-and-so”. For example, at first I was so excited about my costume idea this year. I had wanted to be Flo from the Progressive insurance commercials. In addition to my husband thinking that no one would know who I was, I decided to rethink it all together because Flo isn’t pregnant. I didn’t want to end up being a pregnant Flo and confusing people.

Or if I dressed up like a pirate or a princess, I would just be a pregnant pirate or a pregnant princess. I just don’t think there are too many pregnant Disney characters wandering around and although pirates are known to pillage and plunder, I just didn’t want the “aww” factor in my pirate badness.

A few years ago, when I was pregnant with Georgia, I ended up dressing up for Halloween in 80’s clothing with crimped hair and everything. But my pregnant bump was a little embarrassing with my costume. It gave me this whole Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach vibe, which I wasn’t intending on going for. So unless I change my mind and go as a ghost in a big white sheet, I’m probably not dressing up this year.

The other thing about being pregnant that is scary to me is my sudden wicked desire to clean and my mad cleaning skills. There is another pregnant mom I know who recently posted on Facebook that she was really getting into nesting and cleaning. She is just a week or two ahead of me in my pregnancy so we are on a similar trajectory. I thought about emailing her to see if she wanted to go into a little side business while we were nesting. I think we would make some serious cash lending out our services. We could call it Preggo and Preggo and we would sweep through your house organizing every nook and cranny.

I am at the point where I am getting ride of stuff on craigslist, cleaning out any drawer that I open, and this weekend I even tackled the mack daddy of all projects: cleaning out the garage. The end result was my ability to park my mini-van inside of it. It was a modern day miracle that I am so proud of. We probably will only be able to park inside of it for a week, but we can park inside of it nonetheless. I will just ignore the fact that two cars are really supposed to fit in there and although I don’t believe it, I know it is possible because the neighbors down the street with the same model house can do it.

Yes, I have achieved scary pregnant on this Halloween weekend. I am a big-bellied cleaning fool who will have to live out my costume cravings vicariously through my children, who will be dressing up as Sleeping Beauty, Dorothy, and a peacock. Happy Halloween everyone! If you end up seeing a pregnant ghost out there, don’t laugh, it was all I could think of.