We’re all so busy that the transition from spring to summer usually seems to creep up on us. One day we notice we’re just a little too bundled up while running errands, smile at the sun as we remove a layer, and happily realize that the season has changed.
This is not the case for women who are pregnant during that change.
Once there is a human growing in you, you become a walking furnace. You somehow absorb the heat radiating around you, fanning the flames even further, exacerbating every pregnancy side effect ten-fold (at least). Of course, you are thrilled you are with child, but you’d be equally thrilled to have popsicles running through your veins once the temperature creeps up to, say, 65.
And the later in the pregnancy you are, the stranger your reality is, come summertime. Here are some truths only those who have been there know as fact:
1. Summer arrives with the subtlety of a hot wet towel being thrown at your face.
2. Feet can expand one shoe size a day for 60 days straight.
3. Underboob sweat is an even less pleasant sensation than being in an actual swamp.
4. It’s possible to have literal hate for all non-pregnant people when the thermometer rises above 80.
5. Maternity swimsuit skirts are the most optimistic piece of fabric in existence.
6. The urge to move into a meat locker until you go into labor.
7. That sense of smell increases exponentially at the same rate as peoples’ sweatiness and, coincidentally, the desire to never ever inhale ever again.
8. Recognition of amusement parks as the tenth circle of hell.
9. That it is possible for someone who normally takes five sweaty minutes to wobble across a bathroom to catch up to an ice cream truck two blocks away while barefoot and carrying a toddler.
10. Nary a single stitch of flattering summertime maternity clothes exist. I’m talkin’ to you, stretchy white capris.
11. Your older kids will only be clingy on days the A/C breaks, during heat waves, and through scheduled vaginal exams.
12. Needing 112 8-ounce glasses of water a day to stay hydrated + a 0.006-ounce bladder = The Worst Math Ever.
13. Unless you’re a Cirque du Soleil performer, it’s logistically impossible to do bikini line maintenance before the beach — but it’s not like anyone can see anything down there, anyway.
14. The burning-yet-sticky sensation of inner thigh rub that makes you never want to walk anywhere ever again.
15. That it’s normal to change out of your giant, full-coverage underwear into fresh giant, full-coverage underwear 3 to 4 times a day.
16. Being too hot to eat is a real thing.
17. The way most people will greet you is, “Wow, you look miserable.” It will cause you physical pain to not cause them physical pain for saying that.
18. Cankles are for autumn, winter, and spring pregnancies. Kielbasa legs are for summer.
19. Virgin tropical cocktails are frosty disappointment under a paper umbrella of shame.
20. You will have no problem asking other people to shave your legs for you: your husband, your 5-year-old, your neighbor, it doesn’t matter. Anyone will do.
21. If the rest of the family isn’t wearing parkas to the dinner table, the A/C isn’t up high enough.
More Mom Truths:
- Confessions of a Sentimental, Sappy Mom
- I Missed You While You Were Sleeping (& Other White Lies I’ll Tell My Daughter
- I Swore I’d Never Put My Kid in Daycare, Then I Became a Mom
