Passing By

It seems like time is starting to go by a quite the breakneck pace lately. Of the standard 40 weeks of pregnancy, I'm officially in week 30. That's 3/4 of the way finished (unless baby does me a favour and comes a week or two early!). I have 3 weeks until I sing at Austin's wedding and 4 weeks until my driving test. I've always used my sister's birthday as a benchmark for when the summer was pretty much over, and since she became fully legal yesterday, for me, summer is rapidly wrapping up.

Don't get me wrong, that's a lovely feeling. As much as I enjoy the summer, autumn is - hands down - my favourite season of the year. I love watching the leaves change and the cooler weather (time to break out all my cute scarves and sweaters!) and that distinct, yet indefinable "autumn smell" that permeates the air. Plus, since this is now the second year in my life where autumn doesn't mean Back to School, I can continue to enjoy it in much the same way as I enjoy the summer.

The other insane reason I know that time has been shuffling on? I've now officially been pregnant for half of my married life. Creepy. Thankfully, that average will significantly decrease pretty soon (by the end of the year or so), but with only 14 months of wifey-time under my belt so far, they split quite evenly between "growing a baby time" and "normal time". And yeah - this will probably be the only time that the percentages work out that way. We're both slightly creeped out by the idea of spending more time gestating than you do being free to sleep on your back, eat soft cheese, and not have random strangers molest your midsection.

That does not need to be my family. It's not my ambition to birth an entire orchestra, soccer team, or a large a cappella group.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging all large families: my own mom was one of 13 kids (try imagining family dinners!), I'm just saying that I don't enjoy being pregnant so much that I want to do it all the time as much as I can. Besides, how minted do you have to be able to afford raising that many kids!? I get that some people really enjoy children and having a huge family, I just question when it starts to become like people who have piercings or tattoos all over because they just enjoy it so much they can't stop.

Say it with me now: "Psychological disease!"

I mean, seriously. I know that some people (including, I believe, the Duggars, whose family I pictured above) take the line of reasoning: "God gave me the ability to have babies, so I'm going to have as many as I can until I can't have them any more." Fair enough: celebrate your reproductive capability. It's an awesome power to create new life. But saying: "I can, so I'll do it until I have to stop" is like saying, "My body can tolerate alcohol, so I'm always going to drink until I'm blackout and can't physically drink any more." It's the sort of reasoning that can rationalize all sorts of what I call PLDs: Poor Life Decisions.

Lesson for the day? Moderation in all things. Whether it's beers or babies or body art.

In the meantime, I'm going to wait impatiently for the email that tells me when our antenatal classes are supposed to start. I registered for those things ages ago when my midwife gave me the email address and I've had nothing but radio silence ever since. Get with it, NHS! I know you're free, but you don't have to get all "you get what you pay for..." with your services. I mean, I don't feel significantly unprepared, but if I have this baby before I hear back about the classes I signed up for, that's a pretty shabby job. You don't get much more lame train than that.