Despite the fact that you had months and months to grow accustomed to it, your body still struggles to cope. You can feel the weight pulling down on your spine, pressing into your hips. Shirts that you had bought with the thought that you could never possibly outgrow now struggle to stay over your rounded, domed belly. No matter how much you pull, how far you attempt to stretch the fabric, they still expose a strip of skin around your middle, a smoothed bellybutton, and the reddish stretchmarks that will never fully fade.
It sticks so far out in front of you; there are precious few directions that you can look where your rounded middle does not encroach on your view. Reaching for things on high shelves was never easy, but with this pregnant belly in the way, it becomes nigh impossible. Even just crossing the room comes with a signature waddle, one hand on the small of your back, making the short trip from the couch to the kitchen and back all the more embarrassing. The weight is constant, even when seated, actively pinning you down and threatening to keep you there permanently, rendering you helpless and immobile. Trying to rock yourself up onto your feet allows you to feel just how round it is.
And there are other changes, too. Your breasts have never been larger and their aching is near constant. You can feel them swelling, getting ready to feed the child growing inside you. You haven't yet begun to leak so, day by day, you feel the tightness grow, wondering how much pressure your tits can withstand before milk begins to drip from your nipples. Even those have changed, darkening, thickening, becoming more sensitive. The temptation, the morbid curiosity to suckle on them yourself or at least make an attempt, grows by the day as well.
Pregnancy cravings have also introduced a layer of fat to your entire body, thickening what was there before and making you look softer than you've ever been. You can feel the flab settle in your hips, already widened by the reshaping of your pelvis, as well as your ass. It covers your belly in a protective layer, encouraging further the growth of your breasts. It even finds its way to embarrassing places such as the underside of your chin or the growing pad just above the slit whose needs put you in this mess in the first place.
When you stand in front of the mirror, you don't recognize the person that looks back at you. That must be someone else. Someone whose skin is marred with the signs of growth, carrying the promises of more. Someone whose appetite has made them softer, rounder, heavier. Someone whose hormones have forced their hips to widen, their tits to grow and swell, their middle to bloat with child. It's always staggering when you look down at yourself, hand on your belly, and face the reality of what you've become. Your old body is never coming back. What, will you go to the gym with a newborn to take care of? Once you have someone to feed, the demand will only encourage more milk and require larger breasts to hold it all. Your hips have widened down to the bone. This is who you are now. At a glance, everyone will know: you are a mother.
And you still have eight weeks to get even bigger.
