My main complaints are not that pregnancy has cramped my style, or even that I really get very many cramps at all. Because I don’t. My experience so far would hardly register as a pregnancy. Do I even look pregnant? I feel pregnant, I guess. But why don’t I feel more so? Maybe the pregnancy fairies wait to unleash bigger symptoms on my being in the next four months.

I haven’t gotten sick. Already almost halfway through this pregnancy, and I have yet to get legitimately sick, like catch a cold. Or vomit for real. I’ve gotten a couple of headaches and occasional heartburn, but usually more water and rest make them go away. I hear about pregnant women suffering because they can’t take certain medicines while they’re sick, and since I haven’t gotten sick, I feel somewhat left out of this crowd. What do I have to do? Eat more junk food? Drink less water? Sleep less? Get more stressed out? Hang out with more sick children? There’s got to be something.

Everything still tastes delicious. Aren’t some foods supposed to taste gross by now? If I have aversions to certain foods, it’s because those foods digest weirdly and not because of their taste. For example, spicy foods are so delicious, but they make my stomach hot for hours. Like Popeye’s chicken. But at least I can say that I have cravings for salty things. And vinegary things. But those aren’t the only things Baby and I love. We still love fresh fruits and vegetables. I mean, I made this fruit salad the other day with mangoes, oranges, apples, and pomegranate. I secretly want to hate it because I feel I’m supposed to hate a lot more food than I do, but there’s nothing more delicious right now.

My hair is too shiny. And it’s thicker. What the heck? And it’s the biggest waste of time because I spend way too many minutes in front of a mirror passing a brush through my hair. With every stroke, the hair gains luster, and I keep brushing to see if it will keep getting shinier. And it does! I feel that maybe I’m developing a weird Marcia Brady obsession and Jan will appear at any second and tell me to shut up about my vanity. Thing is, even if I don’t brush my hair, it’s still shiny. My life is so hard.

My nails grow too fast. This is pretty much the same issue as my hair. Instead of trimming and filing my nails every week and a half or so, I now do this almost twice a week. I’m used to typing with shorter nails, and now the tips of my nails tap against the keys, and it feels funny. Also, now there’s heightened enjoyment from Reilly when I scratch his back. So now it seems that he wants me to scratch his back all the time. He says his back itches, and I wonder if it’s the dry weather or if he just wants to feel my nails. This burden is almost too heavy to bear.

It takes longer to get cold. Although cold itself is not a cause for illness, I believe it’s a major part of why I haven’t gotten sick yet. I’m producing extra heat from gaining weight and the energy it takes to grow Baby. The added warmth generally deprives me of a complete pregnancy experience. At night, I end up kicking off the covers while I’m sleeping. At the end of the day when I’m in the privacy of my own home, one of the first things I do is bare my tummy and fan it with cooler air. I want to be cool all the time, but I can’t. If I could bare my tummy on the train or even at the grocery store, I wouldn’t have this complaint.

My wedding ring still fits. I guess there’s still time for swelling to take over my whole body, but I had expected to have trouble sliding my ring on and off by now. It still fits as well as the day Reilly proposed to me, and I worry that when people look at my hands they won’t even know that I’m pregnant. I guess since I’m craving salty foods, I could eat more salt and retain a lot of water, and that would aid the appearance of a real pregnancy. Then I would get the all the attention I seek! Because attention is all I want, ever! And then maybe more people would try to rub my tummy.

Only two people have touched/rubbed my tummy. And they asked first. Who knew that I would feel so excluded or less pregnant because not enough complete strangers have tried to touch the baby bump? Who knew that I had such a yen to slap away unsolicited hands that came near me? This seems a pretty easy fix. I’ll just slap people’s hands regardless of their trying to touch my tummy. Or to give these strangers some context, I’ll grab their hands and bring them close to my tummy and then slap them away. Yes, that’s a much better solution.

My linea negra is crooked. The bottom half runs perfectly down the middle of my abdomen below my belly button, but the upper half is about an inch off-center to the left. This could indicate that Baby will be a rebel, a noncomformist. Baby will draw lines incongruous with society’s expectations or worse, Mommy and Daddy’s. But we will be prepared for when Baby won’t color inside the lines. Baby will be a bad driver and discourteous double-parker. If Baby takes up gymnastics, Baby will purposely land outside the lines and accumulate deductions that result in lower scores. And Baby will develop an affinity for asymmetrical hairstyles.

My belly button looks like a circle. My navel used to look like a little coin slot, and now it appears definitively wider and round. The only explanation I have for this is that Baby needs more ways to get nutrients and another passage for feeding. I will start putting food in my belly button and hope for the best.

I usually try not to complain unless I can come up with productive solutions. While it feels so much better to get these issues off my chest, I’m glad that I can take positive actions to address these very legitimate and real-life concerns that will affect the world forever. I guess the biggest thing to do is just give it time.