10. You’re HUGE!

9. Wow, you look uncomfortable.

8. How many babies you got in there?

7. Hot enough for ya?

6. Here’s what you should do when you go into labor…

5. I’ll be in the bathroom a while.

4. I NEVER got that big when I was pregnant!

3. You must be due any day now.

2. I swear this _________ doesn’t taste as good as it looks. (insert forbidden beverage or food item, such as coffee, booze, etc.)

1. You’re HUGE!

As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there’s been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, “some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. “We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,” the principal says, shaking his head. (read more)

“Your baby’s due when?” …sigh… Yes, I’m due to pop late August of ‘08, that’s right, I’m the first pregnant woman in history to have a baby born that time of year, the first woman to be stuck being hugely pregnant mid-Summer, the first - a pioneer if you will.

I can’t tell you how many people have ‘warned’ me (if you could call it that) from the moment I mentioned that I was pregnant and uttered my due date, “You will be miserable!” Gee, thanks, or perhaps I should say, Wow that’s helpful I’ll consider that. I was feeling rather determined back in April when it was still cold and I could hide the belly underneath a decent amount of layers, miserable ha! I’ll show them, I’ll be fine, sure I’ll be much larger and the weather will be much hotter but criminy, I’m NOT the first woman to be big and preggo through the long hot summer and I’m sure there are bigger women in hotter areas of the world that have endured worse.  read more »

You may have noticed that Dr.Wilma and I have daughters with birthday’s that are fairly close together. She just finished celebrating her daughters’ first birthday and my daughter’s 3rd birthday is rapidly approaching. If only it was the first - they’re so easy & mellow, a little family, a little meal and maybe some simple water fun and voila, a party fit for a 1yr old. As they get older, everything has to get more complicated it seems. I don’t know why I chose to have such a big shin dig for my daughter’s second party, I probably still could have gotten away with something tiny, it ended up about thirty people (adults and children) and it was almost completely missed by daughter who still took naps back then. I had to wake her up and sell her on the idea that cake and pizza and friends were waiting for her presence.  read more »