The third trimester

I really don't know how this happened, but somehow I've found myself in the third trimester. It's become clear to me that pregnancy has its own time frame, which is completely different from every other kind of time that I've ever experienced. TTC time feels like dog years. Each month seems to take almost a year off of your life. Before TTC, a month took about a month, more or less. But in pregna-world, a month seems to take about five minutes.

Don't misunderstand me, they are an action-packed five minutes. I laughed, I cried. In the last month, I've experienced constipation, anemia, hypoglycemia, diarrhea, bizarre navel pains, a level of sweating that MUST put Seoul in danger of flooding, and many other strange symptoms. Still, pregnancy III, The Belly Strikes Back, has somehow snuck up on me. So far it's kind of like pregnancy II, but with hem*orrhhoids.

On the one hand, I'm thrilled. Somewhere along the way, I've started to believe that there might actually be a baby at the end of all of this. On the other hand, the fact that my due date is now less than three months away forces me to start actually preparing for the arrival of this so-far fictitious baby, which freaks me out. We now have baby clothes in the house. And bottles. Ack! We almost bought diapers the other day, but at the last minute we choked. As for the big-ticket items, well, it turns out that Korea had another trick up its sleeve for us. We have now spent three straight weekends shopping, and STILL haven't found a single crib for sale. Or a decent stroller for under $1000. Or for that matter, a Baby Bj*orn or a onesie. If I don't find where these items are kept, I may be forced to draw the conclusions that Korean parents keep their babies at home and naked until they can walk. Surely there must be another explanation, something that involves mandatory cosleeping, a preference for separate pants and little tops, and a belief that strollers are foreign luxury items, rather than basic necessities. Still, it's pretty alarming. We can always buy the Bj*orn on line, and we plan to visit the US while I'm on maternity leave, so we can wait and buy the stroller then. The crib issue is a more vexing problem, though. While I love the idea of cosleeping, the reality is that both Mystery and I are terrible flailers. We regularly whack each other upside the head in our sleep. Somehow I just don't think this is the ideal sleeping environment for a newborn.

A newborn. Holy cow. If everything goes well (please let it go well!) Eggbert will be a newborn in only three months.