Kate: <tugs at rear end with scowl on face>
Justin: “What’s your problem?”
Kate: “My girdle is chafing.”

<silence>

That’s right, folks. You heard it here first. My girdle. A giant gestational jockstrap.

Before this, I’ve never had sympathy for an inanimate object — but I’ve also never subjected innocent poly-nylon blend to such near-ripping tautness.

It feels good (all things being relative) for about five minutes. Gives me a break from having to cup the heaving mass with both arms like a sixth-grade class runt buckling under the strain of forced laps around the gym with a medicine ball. Then, a spontaneous perimeter breach as a snap gives way with an audible TWANG! between my legs.

And the heckler comes to life inside what’s left of my brain: You’re wearing a GIRDLE. GirdleGirdleGirdle!

Am not, I say to the voice. Shut up. It’s an Intimate Prenatal Support Garment.

Are too, cackles the voice. It’s a GirdleGirdleGirdle! And you’re TORTURING IT. There’s a statute in the Geneva Convention that outlaws what you’re doing to that poor, helpless girdle right now. You’re a heartless despot to girdles everywhere. Everybody stand back — it’s going to BLOW!

This morning I woke up feeling impossibly stretched, like every joint and muscle and inch of overblown-balloon skin is about to stage an illegal wildcat strike. I can’t possibly get any bigger than this. I just can’t.

People tell me I look ‘cute’. But given context, I can see they’re aghast. I would qualify as cute if I had a bag of onesies and a box of breast pads waiting by the front door, ready for imminent labour. But I am only at 28 weeks, with two months of expansion still to come. A Mount Everest of both time and fundal height.

All that lies ahead is pregnancy of grotesque proportions. I know I’m supposed to be positive, and I’m supposed to glow. But my belly throbs with relentless pressure, crawls with itch. I want it to stop. Anything for it to stop.

Then, feeling completely miserable (as if I have to qualify that for you), I trip over this.

Me, a little more than slightly drunk on mai-tais in Hawaii, a day or two before Justin asked me to marry him. This night we went to the resort’s happy hour after baking on the beach all day, and then returned to our gorgeous suite to jump on all the beds and kick it to 70s funk.

I was all bronzed bubbliness. I was so thin. Was I ever so thin? Not appearances-thin but unoccupied-thin. What heaven it would be to inhabit that body right now, now when I can’t tie my own shoes without help.

I am miserable, huge, incapable, hormonal. I am a bottomless pit of complaints. I can’t help it: the only relief I have is for people to understand. I need you to know how this feels, this urgency to be empty again. They spill from me, these complaints, because sympathy is the only relief I can access other than distant birth.

I’m suddenly restless with it, this lust to be empty.

And guilty too, for souring my womb with such selfishness when I should be breathing deeply and sending waves of motherly affection to Alpha and Bravo, sumo-wrestlers dear.

The me in this picture didn’t whine and shuffle through the day. She buttoned up her pants, leapt out of bed in the morning, walked briskly. She must have been pleasant for Justin to spend time with, all ease and lightness and giggles. She had no idea how free she was.

Looking at her now I’d swear she skipped through life. If I met her today I’d use my belly to smush her into the wall like a bug just for provoking me with her perky existence.

Justin: “How are you feeling?”
Kate: “I can’t stop burping, but whenever I do, I feel like I’m going to barf.”
Justin: “I’m sorry I asked.”
Kate: “It’s like my digestive organs are all crammed up into my throat. It’s totally disgusting. Want to see?”

<silence>

Another one bites the dust. A pair of cords I’d bought second-hand, maternity but too big even for that. When I tried them on (pre-twin news) I could shimmy them clear off my hips and thought Ha! Never. They’ll always be too roomy but at least they’ll be really, really comfy when I’m on the way to the hospital.

The early retirement of the Too-Roomy Cords marks the beginning of the end …of the beginning.

I’ve even had to break out the dreaded nubbly sweater, the only article of clothing left standing at the last pregnancy’s bitter end. After nicknaming it The Hedgehog, Justin made me promise to throw it away. Alas, I didn’t. When I think it's at the bottom of the laundry pile, it takes its two-stroke dirtbike to the store to shoplift bags of jellybeans. After bedtime when I think it's stuffed in a drawer we hear it in the living room, munching on microwave popcorn while watching reruns of The Addams Family.

On me, its magnetic nubbles trap crumbs and other food-borne droppings. My belly, thanks to The Hedgehog, is a catalogueable exposé of everything I’ve eaten in the past week.

I emerged in it a while back and Justin shrieked like a little girl.

These are desperate days. The Great Heaving Mass pops out the bottom of every shirt I own, irrationally social, an upside-down shelf of breeze-exposed beach ball. Even The Hedgehog can’t contain it. My belly has its own MySpace page with a “My L’il Sluggers” explosion ticker, typed IN ALL CAPS WT FLSHING SMILYS :-P AND OMGs AND LOLs AND U GO GRLZ CUZ UR MY BFF HUN HAHAHA!!!!!

I am 27 weeks pregnant. I’ve gained somewhere close to 25 pounds, but my belly already appears around corners four seconds before the rest of me. People say, "Oh! You’re not as big as I thought you’d be," but they forget, I think, just how much farther I have to go. I wonder: when will they start saying, "Oh! You're... you're... oh dammit woman, you're ENORMOUS! Crap, did I just say that out loud? I was all set to tell you that you weren't as big as I thought you'd be, but no... no. I can't do it!"

Two months left… maybe less, maybe more. I still can’t figure it out: is it folly to lust for the end of this pregnancy when the end means two newborns?

Ants in their pants, the both of ‘em — do not rest your gaze on my independently wriggling belly unless you have a strong constitution. They are like pre-pubescent raccoons on a sugar high trapped in a potato sack. This morning, one of them blew a ziebert on the other side of my skin while the other played tetherball with a kidney.

So what's the upside? The 'trapped' bit, to be sure. Even though I'm sporting The Hedgehog for the third day in a row, I sleep through the night and wear underwired bras and smell delicious.

Two months. Precious little time, that is. All the pantless hobbling in the world can’t dilute the inevitability of this runaway train.

Twin and multiple-offspring mamas of all varieties: is it better to be humongously pregnant plus a toddler, or not-pregnant but immersed in newborn-bootcamp plus a toddler? The fact that I can't decide between the two says enough, methinks, about just how much I want to do the funky chicken around a celebratory Hedgehog bonfire and be done with it.

Kate: I dare you to hassle me about the amount of cream cheese on this bagel. I double-dare you.
Justin: I can’t wait for you to not be pregnant anymore.
Kate: Watch it, mister. Don’t poke the bear.
Justin: (sigh)
Kate: Some mornings you shouldn’t even try to talk to me before I’ve eaten.
Justin: SOME mornings? Are you kidding?

He is Borat. He sinks into a warm bubble bath: is niiice. Takes a bite of crispy pear: is niiice. Snuggles into bed with mama and dada in the morning: Jammies: off. Diaper: off. <stretches> Ahhh, is niiice.

He takes my hand, leads me to the couch, positions me like a raggedy Jabba the Hutt doll and curls up, doggedly perching on the last remaining ¾ inch of lap. Cuddle, ahhh. Is niiice.

Everything ends with ‘okay’. Okay means Yes, please. But it also means OBEY ME NOW. Dada, cuddle — OKAY. As if to say “This is settled. It has been discussed and decided upon. I now give you permission to pass me that cookie.”

He is Obi Wan Kenobi: These are not the droids you’re looking for. You may go about your business — OKAY.

Meanwhile, I am a giant banana slug. It is the first trimester, the sequel. The movie trailer booms: "Like before, ONLY BIGGER! In a time when time stood still…"

I am plastered to the couch, constantly winded. Blood rushes from my head and legs simultaneously, begging the question: where does it all go?

<sssccchhwuck! as Kate gets hit square in the forehead with cluegun> Uhh, right. The Belly. Duuh.

I can’t stand or walk for long without bending over, bracing hands to knees. I lay prostrate with my feet up, one pillow between my legs and another tucked underneath The Great Heaving Mass.

Some wretched, sheltered dolt asked me tonight, “Aren’t you doing yoga, like last time?”

“Absolutely,” I replied. “It’s very deep. Only the most elevated of yogis can appreciate the intensity of such devotion to my practice. Twelve hours every day, sideways-sprawl corpse pose. Lululemon is on their way over right now to shoot it for their fall campaign. I’m going to be so totally IT.”

To the perspective of all except my fetuses, I am completely useless. They thrive despite me, a nutritional black hole. I crave fluffy white carbs, nestle quik, salty eggs and spoonfuls of butter. I inhale fresh broccoli and omega-threes as I waddle past at the grocery store, banking on osmosis.

Evan and I share cans of alpha-getti. There. I said it. I can’t believe I just said that, but it’s true. Justin asks me what we had for lunch, and I tell him, and he stands there grimly with his hands on his hips, shaking his head at me like I’m a dog that’s just shat on the living room rug. “Oh, not again! BAD KATE!”

On getting up from the la-z-boy (whose velour is now permanently wile-coyoted with an imprint of my pregnant butt) I’ve actually been heard to moan, “Ohhh, my sciatica!” while bracing my lower back with the heels of my hands.

I am, finally, sitcom-pregnant.

And on a related side-note, Justin is a saint.

“I can’t believe I still have, like, MONTHS to go,” I said to him last night.

“Me neither,” he replied, quite miserably.

See, I wait until he gets up of his own accord, then: Oh! You’re getting up? Can you do me a favour? Can you fill up my water bottle and cut up that pint of strawberries and grab me a cookie? But only if there’s chocolate left if it’s just the ginger then never mind because ginger doesn’t go with strawberry. And can you put on some milk to heat up and can you stir it and add nutmeg and vanilla? The real vanilla, not the cheap stuff. And then can you pass me the duvet because my feet are cold but I can’t reach them. While you’re there is there any chance you could scratch my…

Poor guy. All he wanted was to take a piss.

Just like how <cue movie trailer narration> "IN THE BEGINNING... in a time before time stood still... all he wanted to do was PLAY HIDE THE PICKLE..."

Last time, I was so determined. Every month, I told myself, I’d capture the glory of My First Pregnancy with grinning, top-lifting profiles charting my miraculous transformation from overstuffed sausage to adorable basketball to land-borne whale.

But I slacked. And slacked. And then gained forty pounds, and other priorities mysteriously trumped picture-taking. Like counting onesies. Again. And again. And folding them (ha!) into precious baskets according to colour. No.. no… by size. No, no.. by season.

(Yes, it’s true. Waiting for a watermelon to emerge from between one’s legs inspires chronic, OCD-inspired nest-building.)

And then he arrived, and so it was done. But this pregnancy… well, let’s say it packs twice the spectacle. I am compelled to document JUST HOW HUGE I get, for the same reasons a tourist presses up against the glass of a bus window to snap a real-live New York City mugging.

In one of my only belly-shots from last time (aside from the halloween hippies and the embarrassing, due-date video of a crude interpretive dance involving a broccoli stalk), taken late September of 2004, I am six months along and smaller than I am now at four months.

With two passengers, I popped at a measly 12 weeks.

And yesterday at 18 weeks, perhaps halfway to Explosion Day, I'm already sick of maternity clothes weeks before single-baby mamas even have to unbutton the first snap of their favourite super-hip jeans in order to sit down.

Bring on the wheelbarrow! And pass me a glass of Nestle Quik while you're at it. And while you're up, can you do me another box of K.D.? And don't forget the ketchup. It's not for me. I'm no bottom-feeder. It's for THE BABIES.

“I’m almost ready,” said Justin the other day to his jaw-dropped wife. “I want another one. Knowing how much he changed us, how happy he made us, I almost want to do it again. Imagine how much more amazing it would be with two!”

And it’s settled: for the next year, I’m sleeping on the couch.

I’m kidding.

No I’m not.

Yes I am.

No I’m not.

“Don’t bother waiting,” my fellow yogi said at class on Saturday morning. “Just do it now. If you wait until Evan’s out of diapers, he’ll only end up regressing once the second comes along. It’s just like <name removed to protect the guilty>. When my second was born, he started pooping on the coffee table. I wouldn’t tell him that now – he’s 24. But that’s what he did.”

To impregnate, or not to impregnate? That is the question. We see ourselves as a two-fer family, so it’s not the numbers that are up for debate. It’s the timing.

If we were on the two-year-gap track, I’d have to get pregnant by the spring. But.. but.. but.. it’s not fair! I’m back to myself again, just. I’m not leaving milky puddles on the sheets. I smell good. I am light of foot and nimble of mind. I know what month it is, and I don’t open the fridge door to put a clean frying pan away. How do I love thee, mojo? Let me count the ways.

Three years: that’s what I’d been thinking. Give my recovered self a nice, long break; give Evan a chance to learn how to pee standing up; get through the terrible twos. My hopes, however naïve: that a three-year-old Evan would be more likely to respond to reason (or at least bribery), making it easier for us to cope as a family of four.

Now, we’re on the fence. The Do-It-Quick camp says:

• Compress the diaper years, even if it means they overlap.
• The sooner you get pregnant, the sooner you’ll be done with it for good. Your body is never really yours again until you’re done.
• Kids born closer together are closer in spirits.
• It might take you longer to concieve than you think. May as well get started now.

• Why would you allow yourself to have two in diapers at the same time? Why, in the name of all that’s holy?
• Why rush? You’re not ticking yet.
• Kids born further apart are easier to manage.
• Don’t start trying unless you’re ready to get pregnant tomorrow.

Readers, family, friends: please weigh in. Cast your vote in the Evan’s Little Sibling Sweepstakes! A prize, yet-to-be-determined, will be delivered nine months from the contest close (also yet-to-be-determined).

Remember those babies that would be dropping like crazy this fall and winter? It has begun. The air is thick with end-of-pregnancy anticipation, friends and family near and far.

We're so excited for all the moms and dads-to-be. Newbies take the leap and we move up in seniority within the cult of parenthood, by default. Second-timers are in another realm altogether.

At eight months, we finally feel seasoned. At least compared to the shell-shocked bliss and steep learning curve of the first few months. We perch Evan on our hips, wrangle him into semi-submission on the change table and don't jump out of our skins every time he makes a peep. We feel moderately competent – which is, of course, his cue to start crawling. Then the shell shock will return, along with a raging case of sharp-and-swallowable-object paranoia.

Reach, Grab and YANK. Reach, Grab and YANK. Evan’s favourite game surprises passing grocery carts, wayward ponytails and breakables alike. At least a half-dozen tiny new people will enter the world in the next while, and the frenzied growth (and grabbing) of an eight-month-old will seem light-years away for them. On seeing older babies I used to think, I can’t imagine he’ll ever be so big. And that he’ll know us, and smile at us, and have things to say.

Yet here we are. He pulls himself up to standing on the edge of the spool bed, and we gawk at each other with the same expressions of mingled pride and shock.

When a newborn exploded into our life, there were elements we didn't expect. Moments of complete serenity, sprinkled in amongst what felt like a prolonged drug trip. Stillness and perfection and awe.

Hang in there, girlfriends. Put a towel under you in bed, just in case. SPLASH!

Watch out: it’s contagious. Maybe it’s like when you get a new car – all of a sudden, all you see is Toyotas everywhere.

Everyone’s pregnant. An almost-sister, the almost-sister’s friend, a cousin, an elementary school classmate, an old neighbour’s girlfriend, a ski patroller’s may-as-well-be-wife. Babies are going to be dropping like crazy this fall. You know who you are.

Looking back, here's what I should have kept top of mind when I was pregnant.

• Even if you don’t feel all that great a lot of the time, you’re beloved by everyone. You have elevated status in the world right now. As you get bigger, strangers will stare at you, smile at you, hold doors for you and ask you how far along you are. Enjoy it.
• Don’t be afraid, and don’t worry. There’s no point.
• Moisturize! Moisturize! Moisturize!
• A whole new community is waiting for you on the other side. Despite your most noble intentions, you will find yourself having entire conversations about poop. And you’ll enjoy it.
• No matter how bewildered you feel right now, you will eventually get the hang of the following: a) picking up your floppy newborn; b) cutting teeny tiny fingernails; c) falling asleep and/or waking up in five seconds flat; d) breastfeeding; e) doing fifteen things at once, while breastfeeding.
• Don’t buy into grandiose declarations from people on the bus and in the grocery store. About pregnancy, about birth, about your life as you know it ending.
• Not that your life as you know it is ending – but go out and see movies. Now. Lots of them.
• Your baby may be covered in acne, be “a waker”, have forcep dents or a franciscan monk’s pattern baldness. But don’t worry. Your baby will be the most soft, the most delicious in the entire world. And he’s all yours. There’s no feeling quite like it.
  

We’ve just returned home after a couple of days holed up in soon-to-be great-granny’s apartment downtown, waiting out a blizzard.

With labour imminent and the city a 40-minute drive from home, we decided it was best to be close to the hospital in case baby started when the roads were bad. The sun is shining now and all is clear, and nothing new to report other than the usual prancing and dancing from below.

What an adrenalin rush that will be when it happens.

It’s such an interesting prospect to think about, since there are many hundreds of ways it could go. Will it start with a big splash on my shoes like in the movies? Not likely, I’m told. Maybe it will be just a vague kind of indigestion. Or maybe I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and be right in the thick of it.

The way I’m feeling right now, I’d swear this kid is trying to squiggle his way out by sheer force of personality.

With only one pair of pants and one very, very tired sweater left that (barely) fits, I’m starting to relish the idea of having my body back. I can’t even remember what it felt like to not have a passenger.

Top Pregnancy Necessities I Couldn’t Get Enough Of

• Body Shop Cocoa Butter Stick. Since about six weeks along, I’ve basted myself like a christmas goose morning, noon and night.
• Burt’s Bees Apricot Oil. Recently discovered. Was given a bottle for the baby. It’s half gone already. A little extra basting for the home stretch.
• Oatmeal. Only the really good stuff… Irish, Scottish, speerville mills. With peaches. With dates. With dried pears. With nothing. Baby likes a brick in his belly to start the day. Who am I to argue?
• Yoga. Total, complete heaven.

Top Things I’ll Get More of Next Time

• Yoga. Why do it two or three times a week when you can do it every day?
• Water. Never enough.
• Sleep. Never enough.
• Pictures. I started out determined to record the pregnancy, but didn’t take many pictures at all.
• End-of-pregnancy-friendly maternity clothes. Because as tempting as it is, you can’t go outside in nothing but slippers.