**Editor’s note below

** If anyone knows me, or has read any of my blogs, they’d know I’m sarcastic, I’m self-deprecating, and I’m honest. I’m also a major, MAJOR ball of worry. Whether it be about my asthma, my pregnancy, Paul’s health, a friend’s baby, my Dad’s unemployment, my mom’s unemployment, my brother and his family in Sydney, I worry all the time. Usually I throw myself into something to assuage this worry, to put it on the back burner. This post is about that. For some reason- perhaps it was the many tries it took me to get pregnant, or the fact that my inexplicable weight gain from years back that many thought was the reason it took us so long is still a threat, but I CAN NOT BELIEVE I’M PREGNANT. I KNOW I’m lucky (I seriously cry nearly every night) , but until I can know everything is okay for sure, I’m not going to believe it. I had to create something to get me to each milestone, because just making it every week isn’t helping my brain/heart finally relax and know all is okay. For me, it won’t be okay until I have that baby in my arms and it’s breathing and healthy. Of course, I know this “competition” isn’t real,  but I have nothing else to bring the silly side of me out-to distract me. This make believe rivalry of sorts brings me to a happier place where I can tell her (as I already have), “You felt something? LUCKY!” Honestly, I can’t bring myself to plan ahead as a distraction, I just can’t, I go to work each day, plan my night and mark off another day on the calendar. Call me a pessimist, but I do what I have to do to get to that next day. It seems to me that pregnancy is literally a day by day, week by week struggle to maintain your hope. Call me unhealthy, or imagine that I’m ungrateful (which you’d be SORELY mistaken to believe) but I see it as a person who tries take each step as it comes all the while waiting for the next one, and hoping it’ll all turn out okay. Thanks for listening.

The first rule? Don’t talk about the baby fight club. No, really, the first rule? Don’t be a jealous bitch, like me.

I’ve gotten myself into an imaginary competition/rivalry with a gal on my pregnancy board. I’ve “known” her since we were both getting engaged/married, and she also lives in So.Cal. She’s a year younger than I am (gasp!) but I think she’s been married a few months longer than I was. Why the rivalry, you ask?

Well. I was a veteran of a TTC forum, my reign there was with three other gals (the Golden Girls, as I refered to them) who had begun at the beginning of the board as well, and we welcome new TTCers, hoping that we wouldn’t be there that much longer, so we could pass the torch. This “rival” started TTC at around my 11th month of TTC, and got pregnant right away. DAG! Must have been those fresh new eggs she was shooting out, that youngin. Amazingly, that cycle I ALSO got pregnant.

She immediately jumped onto the preggo board, while I was a little more hesitant. Our appointment was set for my 6th week, where I had an ultrasound. Her first apppointment wasn’t until we were in our 9th weeks, where she wouldn’t even get an ultrasound (which SUCKS, right?). After my second appointment, I found out I was due the day after her!

As any woman knows, you compare yourself to other people in the same place in life that you are. Engaged? Let’s see the rings. Married? Who had the “better” wedding. Pregnant? Who can reach the milestones sooner? Well, she beat me.

I’m not showing so much as my layer of baby protection (disguised as fat) is hardening, making me look like I did before, with a harder belly. She’s showing now. Movement? All I’ve felt was the rumbling of my stomach when I smelled food nearby. This past weekend, she felt movement, not only that- but her HUSBAND felt movement. DAMN! Now, I know thinner women feel movement sooner, I totally understand that, but still- I want movement!! Damn her and her “healthyness”.

Thus I have created a mental competition between us, the final showdown being birth- who does it first?