I Have Sunburned my Bellybutton

Seriously. At 6 months pregnant, I have developed somewhat of an “outtie” . It’s not outrageously out yet, and it depends on how I’m sitting or standing and what time of day it is. And thus, it would never occur to me to put sunblock on my bellybutton. My sunblock application techniques, developed over the last couple of decades, involves rubbing lotion in a circular motion around my tummy, never paying heed to the little hole in the center which has not seen the sun in as many years.

It was a shock, seeing my bellybutton again for the first time. I remember the day I looked in the mirror and could see into my bellybutton hole and the light from the lamp was actually shining on the crumpled bit of skin at the back. "Holy cow," I thought. Before then, I’d always had to reach in and stretch it or poke q-tips in there in order to ascertain what was going on. Suddenly one day I could just SEE it.

And NOW that little soft fleshy piece of crumpled skin is beginning to turn inside out and poke out sometimes. Apparently when I’m on the beach it pokes out, because I have an excruciating sunburn on the tip of it. Remember: this piece of my body hasn’t seen the sun in a score or so. And then I went and thrust it into the tropical Hawaii sun as if it’s been hardened and calloused like the rest of me. Unfortunately, it responded like baby skin. Now everywhere I go, my shirt painfully rubs against it, causing my hand to reach down and try to press it back into the hole from whence it came.

And as such, I have developed a sort of obsession with my bellybutton. It’s so SOFT! It’s so squishy and tender and cute, like a baby-something, and unlike anything else on my body. It’s maybe closest to an earlobe (a part I have also long had an obsession with), but even then there’s no contest. Touching it is like touching – I don’t know – but it’s like there’s really really soft baby skin over just air or just water or just feathers or jello or clouds or something. I feel like I have to touch it carefully how I would touch a baby bird, or a delicate flower petal, or how you would touch a tomato seed without it slipping from under your finger.

I understand now why you don’t want to sunburn babies. Their skin is probably all tender like that, having never seen the sun EVER, not even 20 years ago.

Learning to put sunblock on my bellybutton falls into the category of the many things about pregnancy that you find in no book. Or if it is in books, you don’t understand what the heck they’re talking about until it happens to you. So here’s my list of advice and warnings for pregnant women-to-be of things your pregnancy book won't tell you:

1. Put sunblock on your bellybutton.
   
2. Everybody knows that pregnant women have to pee a lot, but they don’t tell you that sometimes you have to pee but you don’t really. Like the equivalent of dry-heaving when you have the flu, sometimes you really think you have to go but there ain’t nothing in there.
3. It is entirely possible that all children will suddenly become annoying and unbearable to you. I assume this goes away when you give birth to your own, but I have yet to find out.
4. When “morning sickness” (a.k.a. every-minute-of-every-day sickness) finally “goes away” it morphs into this other thing: if you don’t eat for more than 90 minutes or so, you get this feeling like your intestines are eating themselves, and you must put food in them before you are consumed from the inside out.
5. You might turn into a total sex-hound, and your husband might find he has to hide at certain times of the day to avoid you ravishing him senseless all the time.
6. You’ll probably start to bump into people and furniture and corners, because you used to be able to squeeze through any teensy space by turning your svelt little body sideways and mincing a flirty “excuse me” through the aisle. I have bumped so many people with my stomach and knocked so many chairs over and stepped on so many feet losing my balance because I forget that my profile is no longer my slimmest dimension.
7. For some reason, lots of other women feel compelled to warn you about the horrors of birth by sharing their horrible birth stories. (Why they think I want to hear this is beyond me. I’m ALREADY pregnant people! There’s no way out of it. If you wanted to scare me out of having a baby it’s too late. Now you’re just giving me unnecessary anxiety.) (As if I don’t already have enough of it).
8. The stuff our mothers were told to do and not to do while pregnant was a bunch of wacko advice that’s all been debunked by now. Don’t trust your mother’s generation when they give you advice and do’s and don’t’s about pregnancy. (Also, this tells me that probably half of what doctors advise now will eventually be proved unnecessary, stupid, or harmful, so I can’t stress about it too much. Still… it’s not like I’m gonna go eating mercury-burgers or anything).
9. You might get cellulite on the FRONT of your thighs. The FRONT, people! (I know this makes you think I’m one of those fat pregnant ladies, but I’m really not. I look mostly normal. Not that being a fat pregnant lady is bad. I personally don’t understand how anyone could possibly “control” their weight while pregnant, given the host of nutrients we’re supposed to get daily (which is impossible without eating like a horse), and the fact that you are SO hungry all the time and you’re not supposed to diet or deprive yourself of food and you’re supposed to “listen to your body” – which is probably telling you to eat chocolate and pasta like there’s no tomorrow. Here’s to fat pregnant girls!)
10. Trying to sleep with a baby in your tummy is like trying to sleep with a 15-pound bowling ball strapped to you. Only all your skin is around it, so it will painfully yank all your organs wherever it goes. Unless, of course, you lie on your back and balance it on top of yourself cutting off your circulation, your air supply, and any space that previously existed in your bladder. Not to mention how it throws you off balance in your day-to-day operations.
11. Whatever ideas you had about being the hard-core, bike-riding, backpacking, super-productive pregnant lady were likely wrong.

…more to come as I think of them…