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Now that I am squarely in the home stretch to baby (2 months from Sunday is babe’s due date!), I’ve been receiving the age-old question of mother’s in the Third Trimester, “How are you feeling?”

And, oh, what a tricky question that is to answer.

What I want to say, even to strangers in the check out aisle at the grocery store, is that my vagina is experiencing so much dang pressure from baby that I constantly feel like I’m waddling around with a watermelon armed with spears in my underpants. And it’s been that way, sadly, since 20 weeks hashtagthirdpregnancyrealities. As my midwife explained, my body has fallen back on old habits and readily adapted, expanded, settled in for baby, so everything is loose and low. And with it, all the discomforts.

Extended walks are impossible. Spinning went out the window months ago. I waddle, I groan, I move at a snail’s pace. It is comically in line with what one expects of a mother a few weeks from her due date (not months!). I visit the chiropractor weekly. I struggle through pre-natal yoga even though I often feel like my pelvic floor is going to be ripped asunder. I’ve scheduled pre-natal massages with my doula for every other week from now until baby arrives to try to keep me functional during these final 9 weeks.

I am laughably pitiful.

Side story to fully capture my children’s perception of their mother in this state:

The other night, Sunny slept in bed with me as she was fitful and having trouble falling asleep (our totally blown schedule over winter break largely to blame). Ever the person to struggle with sleep in the family, I took her on as my bedtime compatriot. We lay side by side, whispering loudly, tossing and turning, every once and awhile checking in to see if the other had knocked out. It was reminiscent of two middle school girls at a slumber party – and I admittedly delighted in the sweetness of it, despite the impending sleep deprivation.

The next morning over breakfast, Sunny explained the evening’s proceedings to James, namely that I kept whining about needing to pee, but then not getting out of bed.

“Mama kept saying, UGGGGGHHHHH, I have to pee again! But it’s so hard to get up! Maybe I’ll just pee the bed! She did this over and over and over and then finally rolled out of bed but it took her forever to get up.”

Now, I don’t know if I was THAT mellow-dramatic, though I did threaten to wet the bed to get a righteous giggle out of her, but her description of my current state very accurately captures my pathetic-ness and my whininess. James is largely the one that suffers through my whining, but dang it, if I have to carry our baby, he can put up with my moans and groans (and he does so very graciously, with a nightly foot rub for good measure).

But despite the pelvic pressure and the resulting waddle and slow pace, I generally can’t complain. I’ve had an uneventful pregnancy, with normal test result after normal test result. I’m healthy. Baby is healthy. I am all too aware of what a gift it is to have pregnancy move along with normal, and average, and healthy as the buzzwords of the day. I can only hope that we continue at this pace, and while I know my discomfort will increase, that it will all fall within the boundaries of normal and expected.

Now that the New Year has begun, and we’ve fully packed away the holidays, I am ready to turn my focus more deliberately to baby. In the preparation of our home and his/her “stuff.” Of which I think we actually need very little – my ideas of what a baby requires have changed dramatically since navigating two prior infancies. Less is more. But we should still probably invest in a crib, an infant car seat, and find and launder the diapers, blankets, burp cloths and baby clothes we’ve got stashed away in our basement. And in revisiting my birth “plan” (which really isn’t the right word because nothing ever goes as “planned” when it comes to labor and birth, but captures my values and hopes for L&D). And spending quiet time connecting with body and baby as I prepare for birth and nursing and all the biological madness that happens postpartum.

The girls are counting down the days until they meet their baby brother or sister. They are so eager and excited to have a new friend and playmate, and it makes the whole process all the more thrilling and wonderful to share the anticipation with them.

There’s lots to do before s/he makes her entrance, but I know s/he’ll be here before we know it. And here’s hoping that the shooting pain in my vagina doesn’t turn me into too much of an inappropriate dinner/check-out aisle/water cooler/party-conversationalist.