You Know You’re Pregnant If…

You often hear stories about women who are rushed to the Emergency Room with extreme abdominal pain only to find out, “with absolute shock and amazement,” that they are nine months pregnant and in labor. Having been pregnant myself, I’m always skeptical when I hear these stories; after all, a woman goes through so many changes, both physical and emotional, during the nine months of pregnancy, that it seems impossible to me that she could overlook more than a few of those changes. But, just in case I’m wrong and there are some women out there who are pregnant and truly unaware, I’ve compiled the following checklist:

You Know You’re Pregnant If:

1. You’ve been nauseous and vomiting unexplainably for months. There’s a good chance that if you open your mouth to talk to someone you will vomit on their feet. As a result, you’ve been canceling all of your plans and are living a hermit’s life.

2. The idea of drinking a glass of water causes you to shudder with repulsion.

3. You can suddenly smell everything. EVERYTHING. If your new mattress is off-gassing, you will smell yourself being poisoned.

4. You are exhausted to the point that walking three blocks feels like three miles, and when the clock says 10:02pm you can’t believe you’re going to bed so late.

5. Your breasts rest on top of your stomach like food on a platter (which they are, actually) because said stomach is four times its original size…because there’s a baby in it.

6. You now consider a layer of Pepperidge Farm cookies (i.e. all of the cookies between those crinkly, white dividers) to be a single serving. Likewise, a pint of ice cream. So you’ve graduated to the gallon size.

7. You feel someone kicking you, inside of your body.

8. You pee 27 times a day, 20 of those times during the night.

9. You burp all day and snore all night.

10. When you get up after having been sitting for a long period of time, you can’t put any pressure on one of your legs because of a horrible pinching feeling in your lower back that travels through your butt and down your leg. As a result, you need to crawl to the kitchen to get your gallon of ice cream out of the freezer.

11. One minute you’re hugging everyone in the room and the next minute you want to punch them all in the face.

12. Every commercial is sad. “Why is Jake from State Farm still at the office at three o’clock in the morning? Won’t they let him go home???”

13. Your lips are swollen, you have multiple chins and your socks are too tight, leaving indentations on your legs when you remove them at the end of the day. If you didn’t have cankles before, you have them now.

14. Your nipples are the size of saucers.

15. You are constantly out of breath, as if you’ve just run a marathon. But the only marathon taking place in your life is the race to the cookie jar.

16. It’s just the darndest thing…you’ve been consistently gaining five pounds every month and your stomach, which used to be a straight line, is now shaped like a ball.

17. You’re perpetually congested and blowing your nose, and you’ve become a mouth breather.

18. You are plagued by indigestion and are popping Tums like tic tacs.

19. You can’t remember anything. ANYTHING. Day of the week, month of the year, what you had for lunch, how old you are, the fact that you had unprotected sex and haven’t gotten your period since then (side note: hasn’t it been so nice not having to buy tampons for months?!) Wait, why haven’t you gotten your period in months???

If a few of the above conditions are plaguing you, you might be pregnant. No, really. Go see the doctor.

( Artwork provided by the very talented daughter of one of our writers…Rachael Jelonek )