Through Pregnancy-Tinted Glasses.

When I was pregnant with Scarlet - and gosh darn, I start a lot of recent blogs with those words - I had a major food aversion to kale. Nothing personal, I'm sure. It's a mild enough green. Basically I had one week or two of queasiness/nerves and whatever I forced down that one early week, I couldn't even look at again. Kale, beets, pea soup. All good things. The kale one was so strong that I couldn't even look at it, raw or cooked. In fact, during that long, cold, icy first-trimester fall/winter, we sat with Cassidy's mom and her husband, Ernie, and watched all of "LOST" from seasons one through five. As you may know, it's a very lush, green show. Sometimes I had trouble looking at all of the greenery because it reminded me of kale. Totally bizarro. I'm happy to say that by mid-pregnancy, I didn't at all mind the look and smell of kale. I still didn't eat it until after birth, and even that was in a safe form - baked kale chips. They're pretty divine.

It's just funny to me how eating something at the wrong time could lead to such drama. Only in pregnancy, could one week of queasiness rage a war against kale, a war so strong you interpreted it into a TV show you were watching. A TV show that had nothing to do with kale. That's pregnancy for you. Even when you've got it good, so good, something will get you in the beginning. Something. I realize I wrote a long post about how I was the most non-pregnant pregnant woman I'd ever met, but that doesn't mean...that nothing at all happens when your entire, entire body gets completely invaded and all of your internal organs get moved around. Nice, huh? I probably lose male readers with these talks. I hope not.

So I was thinking lately about the way I view the world through pregnancy. Things that used to be so easy are no longer easy. I used to be able to carry my near two and a half-year-old a lot more than I can now. I never make long term plans to travel by plane because I just can never know if I'll be up for it when that time comes. This is such a shame because my grandfather is having a 100th birthday party this January and I'd love to have booked a trip already. But..I get winded at Target. Add a few more pounds on me and put me in an airport with a toddler in arms, and I'm scared. Very scared.

Then it's the way I look at people. Basically if I'm looking at a person who couldn't possibly be pregnant at this given time - this includes children, all men, and old women, I can't help but stare longingly at their un-invaded bellies. I try to be discreet about this. It's usually only done from the car passenger window. I do NOT want to be known as the creepy lady staring at stomachs.

Then, there's food. Cassidy and I watch Food Network sometimes. I thought this would be more of a problem in early pregnancy but luckily, it hasn't been. I have had to look away a few times but mostly it's when they're handling foods I wouldn't look at in my "real life" (non-pregnancy) anyway. However, every food commercial that comes on puts me in deep thought:

"Does that intrigue me or repulse me?" "It repulses me." "Good." Next commercial.

"Does that intrigue me or repulse me?" "It intrigues me." "A lot." "Enough to go out and get it or ask Cassidy to go out and get it for me?" "Well..I suppose not." "Tomorrow I will dine on that...(whatever it is)"

It's not just TV. When I'm in public and I catch whiffs of food when restaurant doors open, it starts the same inner dialogue. Just in that case, I don't have to wonder about whether I should go out and get it or Cassidy should. I just wonder if I should eat it at that given moment, or walk far, far away from the restaurant.

Let it be said - that I have never asked Cassidy to go out alone on a cold, dark night and get me some strange thing I'm craving. If he was already going out...different story. But I have yet to do that in either pregnancy.

Then there are babies and toddlers in public. It's true that I already have a child and I'm fairly certain that I tend to give birth to smallish, full-head-of-hair, big-eyed babies. Yet I will still gaze at your big, bald, dreamy, drooly balls of life and wonder if mine will look like that.

Lastly, we have names. I am an avid reader. Of good books. I also avidly read US Weekly. Both good books and US Weekly are filled with names and baby names. I can't read for even five minutes without running my tongue and mind (sounds dirty but isn't) over every name I hear. It was so much easier with Scarlet because we both loved that name well before we were married and we just got lucky with having a girl first. It's not so easy these days.

No one told me that going through it once does not, in fact, make it easier to go through it again. In some ways, it's easier. In some ways, it's more challenging.

I am totally invaded. I admit it. I am human-carrying-human, after all. You can't exactly not be affected by that.