PregnOt

Scrolling through my twitter feed today I came across @babycenter's tweet:  10 dresses that make me wish I was pregnant! http://bit.ly/LACHbJ

I scuffed out loud.  There is not a dress in this world that could make me wish I was pregnant. 

Yesterday, I celebrated my little guy's 3rd birthday.  Here he is the morning of his birth:

What a total joy he is.  Curly haired and smelly good and smiley faced.  His cheeks taste like love.  His smile makes my insides floppity flip.  The way his chubby hand unconsciously squeezes my collarbone when I hold him makes me feel definitively Mommy.  And my older son, so tall now that there's nothing in the house he can't manage to reach with the help of a step stool, has magical eyes that can remind my heart in one glance that this world is a miraculous place.  Those boys were worth the pregnancies.

They are worth the unconscionable gas.  The crotch pressure that I will never forget despite the fact that everyone said, "you'll forget it."  The transformation I made into a hungry hippo game piece.  I puked on the same tree on 102nd street for 3 consecutive months.  I sweat throughout both pregnancies like Jackie Joyner Kersee.  My fingers swelled beyond the fittings of my wedding bands.  Pregnant in the spring, sans allergy medication, I sneezed so intensely that I broke a rib.  For non feminist reasons, I boycotted bras - which was not a good idea.  Needless to say, I was not a comfortable pregnant lady.

Euphoria and relief struck immediately upon the births of both my sons.  I am not a particularly religious person, but that moment when there is suddenly a new life where there was none, is the closest to God I imagine I'll ever get.  I remember feeling like the world had literally opened up and light was shining just on me and my new baby.  There has been no greater feeling in the world.  Add to it, the fact that no one's elbow was jabbing my spleen anymore and my body relaxed into post-partum bliss. 

I loved those babies.  Their gurgles, those first few gifts of extended open eyes, the comfort of privately nursing as the sun rose - or set.  I would be pregnant again - for those babies.  But for a dress?  NO FRICKIN WAY. 

I loved being pregnant because I'm a results oriented person.  The promise of the baby was enough for me to set aside the booze and cope with the flatulence.  A cute summer empire waist Pea n' the Pod ditty?  Uhhhh ... Not so much.

So, heed this warning Mommies-To-Be:  If you are getting pregnant for a cute maternity dress you see on Babycenter.com, you can bet you'll have 40 weeks of not looking as cute in it as you'd hoped, coming your way.  Get pregnant for the baby.  Cause nothing else is worth it.