What to Expect has been confidently telling me for weeks now that my belly button probably has gone from an outie to an innie and that it’s a normal part of pregnancy everyone (they seem to think) goes through.

But every time I get one of their helpful e-mails about belly buttons, I smirk and say, “Ah, but you don’t know my belly button.” My navel is - or I should say was - an endless crevasse where even the bravest spelunkers fear to travel. D, who has a lovely little round belly button, shallow and cute, has always teased me about my bottomless pit. He is forever trying to touch it, and I’m forever shooing him away from it because belly buttons are weird and I don’t want mine touched, okay, so back off, dude, would you???

Anyway, D and I agreed that my belly button was unlikely to ever “pop out like a timer on a well-done turkey,” as What to Expect puts it. I consulted the other women at my June moms message board, and there were several others whose belly buttons haven’t popped out yet and just as many women whose never did in their previous pregnancies.

So I felt pretty confident in my deduction that I would never see the bottom of my belly button. Then, two nights ago, I was sitting on this very sofa contemplating getting up and going to bed, and I decided to contemplate my navel while was at it. To my surprise - and, yes, horror - my belly button looked very strange indeed. It was all puffy, like the end of one of those water balloon snakes that slides out of your hand when you squeeze it too tight, or like a stocking you’re working on turning right side out.

Worse, when I touched it, it felt different, no longer stretched tight like all the skin around it but somehow - again - puffy. Eeewwghhhhew.

I contemplated this further in the mirror and came to the conclusion something was definitely happening. Then in the movie theater bathroom yesterday (my sister, some friends and I went to see Alice in Wonderland, so perhaps I was in the mood for the bizarre), I took a look at the creepy thing again. And the unthinkable had happened. Now, in the span of a day, my belly button had changed enough that I could see the unthinkable - the bottom!

I still haven’t quite recovered from the shock. This is a part of my anatomy that hasn’t seen the light of day since … ever? And just think - this baby still has several pounds to grow! Could my deep crevasse of a belly button turn into an outie after all?

For some reason, since seeing the bottom of my belly button, I’ve had that Brady Bunch song in my head, “Time to Change,” from when Peter’s voice changes right before the Brady clan’s big singing debut. Poor Peter just wanted his voice to go back to the way it was. My belly button - I’m told - will go back to the way it was post-baby, but other things won’t. My friend told me I have much worse shocks than this in store, and I’m sure that’s true.

But, I guess as my body keeps on freaking me out, I’ll just take Peter Brady’s advice:

“When it’s time to change (when it’s time to change)
Don’t fight the tide, go along for the ride
Don’t ya see.
When it’s time to change, you’ve got to rearrange,
Who you are and what you’re gonna be.
Sha na na na na na na na na
Sha na na na na.
Sha na na na na na na na na
Sha na na na na.”

1. My new Tempur-pedic mattress is like sleeping on a cloud of awesome. I don’t toss and turn nearly as much, and when I first stand up in the morning my hip/lower back feels only slightly twingey instead of excruciatingly painful. The only drawback so far is that it’s a few inches higher off the ground than our old mattress, and I anticipate a little trouble climbing into bed as my belly grows ever more gigantic in the coming weeks.

2. I went to our beloved chiropractor, and though I’m not cured yet, I’m going back for another session tomorrow and have high hopes.

3. My sister moved into her new house today, which is only 40 minutes away from mine instead of 4 hours and 40 minutes. This means an end to my boredom, not only because I will have someone to go to the movies with more often, but also because I’ll be training her to do the equivalent of my job for a new party supplies website we’ll be launching soon.

4. Today one of my sister’s movers asked me how far along I am - that’s now two strangers in the past week or so who have asked me about my pregnancy, so I take that as official proof that I finally look pregnant, not just extra-chubby.

5. The other day, I suddenly remembered we have a stationary bike (it hasn’t been used in years as anything other than a place to stack old video game consoles), and it occurred to me this might be the solution to my exercising woes. The treadmill makes my back ache, but a bike on which I can sit! By golly, that might just work! (It’s the kind of bike that has a chair to sit in, not one of those horrible pointy little seats.) I’ve ridden it twice now, and it isn’t a perfect solution - instead of making my back ache, it kinda makes my belly feel uncomfortable - but a few minutes afterward I feel good as new again, unlike with the pain-of-many-hours after treadmilling it. My doctor is satisfied with the amount of weight I’ve gained so far (23 pounds), but I’m eager to keep it from spiraling out of control, what with all the extra hot bean burritos with extra cheese that Ruby insists I must eat. Mostly, though, I just feel a little perkier in general when I can get off the couch and get moving a bit.

6. Only 12 weeks left until my due date! Seriously! I don’t know why, but 12 weeks sounds so much sooner than 13 weeks. And it means Ruby now would have an 80-90 percent chance of survival if she was born right now (depending on which source you read). I’m officially-officially in the third trimester (though by my calculations, it’s been a week already), and that means I have to step up from one doctor’s visit a month to one every two weeks. Little as I enjoy the doctor’s office, I think going every two weeks will make the time pass faster, as it creates more milestones to check off my list.

7. Speaking of doctor’s appointments, we’re going in just one week for our 3D/4D ultrasound! I didn’t care much about it before because I think the images from them look kinda freaky, but now it’s been seven weeks since we’ve seen the goings-on inside my uterus, and that’s a long time for people as ultrasound-spoiled as we’ve been. Especially now that the baby moves so much, I’m so curious what she’s up to in there! I have my doubts about how well this will turn out, but it’s possible we might see her face and even get a clue what she looks like! In just one week! I can hardly believe it!

But of course, not all the news is good in 1902Victorian-ville. Today at the doctor, I had the dreaded 1-hour gestational diabetes test. I already had one at 20 weeks because I’m at greater risk (40 percent of women with PCOS develop GD, as compared with 2-7 percent of women in general), and I passed it by four points.

I was thrilled at the time by my victory, but then I found out GD doesn’t usually start acting up till the third trimester and I would have to be retested at 28 weeks. I was so anxious about today’s test that I barely slept last night; I was too busy running through possible conversations with my doctor and seeing his smug face at my last appointment when he implied it would be a miracle if I didn’t develop GD.

Then this morning I fasted my two hours, and drank my cup of syrupy fruit punch, and waited another hour, and then came the moment of truth - the finger stick. The blood sugar machine blinked forever before finally settling on a number - 139. Oh, I thought, with a flicker of hope - did I pass? 130s were good, right?

Even the nurse thought I had passed for a second, and my flicker of hope tried to flare into a flame. Oh but wait - no, she was thinking of the score for the 3-hour test. My blood sugar level needed to be 135 or under. AAAAAAAAAAGH NOOOOOOOOOO. Missed it by four points!

Sigh. So now I have to go back another day for the even-more-dreaded 3-hour test, in which I, a person who is now ravenous every 2.5 hours, will not be allowed to eat for 12 hours. Should be awesome.

Extra bonus points of awesome? My iron is “a little low” also, which means I’m now required to take these little green pills every day. But I can’t take them with food, or one hour before or two hours after eating eggs, whole grain bread, milk or any number of other essential foods, and I can’t lie down for 30 minutes after taking them. So when exactly during my day am I supposed to take this pill? And what happens if you take it with an egg - do you explode or what?

I’ve also added a DHA supplement pill to my growing repertoire, because the Internet tells me if I don’t my baby won’t be smart and will have bad eyesight. Or something. Whatever - I’m just tired at this point. I’ll be glad when this baby is born, and every little thing I do won’t have some dire consequence for her existence … then again, does that ever really stop until she goes to college?

Anyway, I said I was in a less whiny mood, so I’ll stop the whinging. I still think I have a shot at passing the 3-hour GD test, because lots of people fail the first spectacularly and still manage to pass the second, and I only just barely failed the first. Right? Right? Just say, “Yes, you’re right. Surely, you will pass it. There’s no way you will have an 11-pound baby.” Indulge me. If I don’t pass, it may be the only indulgence I get for a while.

Let me first say the obligatory spiel - yes, of course, it will all be worth it in the end, I’m still super-excited about the baby herself, and there are definitely good parts, like feeling her move, and when D lays his head on my belly and talks to her.

But geez, lately I’ve been understanding the phrase “feeling like a beached whale” more and more. I can’t get comfortable in bed, so I turn over approximately 175 times per night, and each time is a massive undertaking. I start out on my right side, snuggling Mount Squishy, the enormous blue body pillow taking up precious real estate between me and D. Then I wake up with my shoulder hurting, or my hip, or my elbow, and decide to flip over. I push myself up with my arms, make a pained grunt like a muddy sow, and somehow manage to flop earth-shakingly onto my back.

In the old days, I could roll from one side to the other in one motion, but now I have to take a break in the middle and rest on my back. Sometimes, I give up and fall asleep there for a while, even though back-sleeping is not recommended for pregnant folks.

I can’t really get comfortable on my back because I know it makes my lower back/hip region hurt worse in the morning, it makes me snore more, and I worry it will cut off the blood flow to the baby or something, so a few minutes later, comes another grunty episode, wherein I flop to the other side, tidal-wave style.

And every time, I look at the clock and think, “Geez, isn’t it time to wake up yet? I can’t take this much longer!” I am a person who values - nay! worships! - my sleep, and now I’m hoping it’s morning? This is a new kind of misery. (And, as you can imagine, D isn’t exactly sleeping like a dream during all this, either.)

Then when it finally is time to get up, I have to roll out of bed in an undignified fashion, and my first several steps are agonizing in the lower back/hip region, so I walk exactly like my mother after a long car ride. Same thing happens after I’ve been sitting for a while, or lying on the couch in an awkward position, and awkward positions are the only ones I seem to be able to find anymore.

Sometimes, D even has to help me off the couch. Sometimes, bending over feels like squishing my insides. Yesterday, I almost had a heart attack trying to put on a pair of tights.

And what I can hardly believe about all this is that I am only just now entering the third trimester. I have an entire 13 weeks to go, and everything is only going to get worse. If my belly keeps up this rate of growth, I’m going to be four inches bigger in the waist by then. FOUR INCHES. My baby is going to weigh roughly SIX MORE POUNDS.

As it is, I can’t make it through a normal trip to the grocery store without being near collapsing with back pain by the end, and my baby only weighs a little over 2 pounds! Meanwhile, freakin’ WhattoExpect.com keeps sending me e-mails about pregnancy exercises and how some unidentified study indicates my baby is going to be underdeveloped and unintelligent if I don’t exercise, and labor will be worse, and basically I’m a terrible person if I don’t run a marathon three times a week. If I had a heated indoor swimming pool, I’d do that, but oh wait - I’m not a multi-millionaire. And there’s no way I’m dragging my gigantic self to town to swim in front of strangers.

Also, while I’m on a roll, I’m currently freaking out about my baby shower because my aunts and sisters-in-law are throwing it, yet my Mom seems to be the one running the show, and she keeps asking me questions about what I want, and I keep saying, “I don’t care - it doesn’t have to be complicated. Just do what you want.” And yet she keeps. on. asking. And my sisters-in-law want to help, but I don’t know what to tell them to do, and I just don’t want to be involved at all, frankly. I want to show up the day of, smile and eat my slice of cake, and open gifts and smile some more, and later write thank you notes.

Today, after dealing with the guest list with my mom and sister-in-law on the phone, I made D mute the TV for a few minutes because my head was just so full of stress and noise that I couldn’t stand one more second of Weather Channel Cantore-Stories-When-Good-Storms-Go-Bad-type blathering, and I covered my face with a pillow because the light from the window was piercing straight through my eyeballs to the back of my head.

Then I took a nap, which helped a little. And I ate a piece of cake, which also helped.

Now it’s dinner time, and I just want a Taco Casa extra hot bean burrito with extra cheese, like I’ve consistently craved every day for the last month, but I don’t want to get dressed and drive all the way to town to get one, and I don’t even have any of the little frozen burritos I make do with most of the time. RArrraggghaharhrrrr

Sorry. I think I need to take a chill pill. Oh wait, that’s not allowed either, along with deli meat and my precious tuna. I did my household chore for the day - did a few of them, even got rid of a whole plastic bin’s worth of old clothes - but the accompanying zen feeling has already dissipated. (You may have noticed?)

What I want to know is how am I supposed to last THIRTEEN more weeks like this? I keep telling myself this has just been a bad few days. The real problem is probably, once again, just how miserably bored I am, because that makes everything seem much more intolerable. The 26th week was the slowest yet, I swear. I need something to take my mind off how much longer I can expect to be this, or more, uncomfortable. I thought about learning to make a quilt, but then there was too much equipment involved and I gave up.

Fortunately, there are a few things to look forward to in the immediate future. I’m getting a haircut Wednesday; and I’m going to the chiropractor Thursday, which I hope will ease my back ailments; and our new Tempur-Pedic mattress will be arriving any day now, which I hope will help with the sleep problems; and I’m going to see Broadway Across America’s Wizard of Oz on Saturday; and my sister should be moving home next week if the *#!+&@#$(#!* closing on her house doesn’t get pushed back for the third (or is it fourth?) time.

So for now I guess I’ll go warm up some soup, and try not to feel too sorry for myself when I have to old-lady-hobble into the kitchen to do it.

P.S. Don’t feel too sorry for D - between my whining and self-pity, I did squeeze in time to give him a pedicure.

Harvey and Frank were the closest of the nine brothers and sisters, closest in age, in temperament, in appearance. Both were listed as 5′6″ tall on their World War II draft cards; both were small-boned and narrow-shouldered, with the same 1940s swoop to their hair and the same long-fingered hands. Both were quiet and funny and kind and wonderful.

They were born one year apart and died one year apart.

One of the hardest parts of Papaw’s funeral last year was seeing Harvey cry, seeing him mourn his last living brother and best friend. We stopped by his house later, and he was so much like Papaw still, watching his daytime soaps turned up loud, inviting us to stay a while - even his voice was like Papaw’s voice! - that I knew as long as he lived, a part of Papaw would still be here.

But even then Harvey was sick. His once-manicured piece of land was overgrown, so that we couldn’t even see the pond anymore; he had been too weak from the cancer to care for it for a long time. Everyone knew it was a matter of time.

These past few weeks he has been on hospice care, and my mom has been doing that thing she does, telling me every time she sees me, “They say Uncle Harvey doesn’t have long left.” Preparing me, preparing herself.

This morning, I told D if we ever have a boy, we should name him Harvey. An hour later, Mom called to tell us he had died.

It took a little while for the news to sink in. Mom told D on the phone, and he told me, and at first Mom’s careful preparation worked. I wasn’t surprised. He was 91 years old. He had been very sick.

But it’s one of those things where the more I think about it, the more it hurts. Harvey was Papaw’s closest brother, one of the few remaining from their generation, and one of the last remnants of my sweet childhood days, those precious summer weeks we would spend with Papaw and his brother, always outside in the grass and water and dirt.

Harvey’s death is the true end of an era, the closing of a door, the lock on the gate to the Secret Garden. Now, the only ones left to recall those lost sunlit times are my sister and me. But we will recall them - and him - always.

All that equals a lot of time sitting on my butt on the couch. One day about a week ago, I could no longer tolerate the sensation of my butt touching the couch and had a bit of a freak-out. D stared at me with a helpless expression as I tearfully insisted we had to DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING except sit on this couch and watch TV. I wandered around the house for a while, refusing to sit down, until I finally came to the conclusion I could do some laundry.

And to my surprise, the laundry cured my problem! Instead of sitting all day, trying to find a comfortable position for my irritable back, I could stand for a little while, toss clothes in the washer, then in the dryer, and then I could even fold them and put them away! Not only did it provide some interruption to my hours of boring couch-sitting, it made me feel productive and capable, feelings which have been in short supply lately, what with barely being able to roll over in bed, and D and my mother chastising me if I lift so much as a gallon of milk.

So the next morning, I decided to postpone my couch-sitting with a little housework. I unloaded the dishwasher, wiped down the counters, decluttered the kitchen some, sorted the mail, and broke down boxes for recycling. Easy stuff, that took less than an hour, and yet - I felt so much better. The day had barely begun, and I’d accomplished something.

Then and there I resolved to do at least one household chore per day - cleaning a bathroom, running the Roomba in a couple of rooms, doing a load of laundry, running the dishwasher, dusting, decluttering a room. The kind of stuff I normally do, only more often.

Because it’s not that I’m opposed to housework or that I even dislike it. It’s just that I forget to do it on a regular basis, or at least as often it should be done. With only me and D living here, there’s no one to care overly much if the dining room sideboard is dusty or if there are a couple dirty plates in the sink or if there’s a dead leaf stuck to the bathroom rug.

But, while in the past spic-and-spanness hasn’t been at the top of my priority list, I’m not entirely satisfied with this state of affairs. I’ve always been jealous of those people who keep perfectly tidy homes, and I’ve always been insecure about my apparent inability (or more accurately, lack of motivation) to do so. Now, with a kid on the way, and especially with my plan to use cloth diapers, I would definitely prefer things around here to be a little less haphazard.

My new plan has been in action for about a week, and so far I’m very pleased with the results. I’ve enjoyed seeking out ways to fulfill my quota of one chore a day (which inevitably turns into more than one because just wiping down the counters doesn’t take long enough). I’ve enjoyed the fact that there hasn’t been a dirty dish in the sink all week. I’ve enjoyed the satisfaction of washing, drying and folding a load of laundry all in one day, and the fact that there’s no more leftover laundry that kept getting pushed to the bottom of the pile. Best of all, I’ve had actual fun. If I could whistle, I would’ve whistled while I worked!

Already my house is neater, and I feel proud of that, even though it’s mostly in little ways no one would notice if they dropped by unannounced. To a neat-freaky person, my house would still not look like a paragon of cleanliness - there are still dead ladybugs lurking behind the furniture and cat hair tumbleweeds lingering around the edges of the rooms that haven’t been Roomba’d yet and too many issues of Lucky magazine and Entertainment Weekly piled on the kitchen table. Every gigantic window in this house needs cleaning inside and out, all the baseboards could use a good scrubbing, and every room could probably use 10 percent less STUFF.

But it’s only been a week, and the best part of my plan is that I think I can keep up with it. One (or two or three, as the mood strikes me) chores a day feels exceedingly doable, even for a lazy gal like me, even with my giganto-belly and aching back.

They say it takes about 21 days to form a habit, and I’ve got three months till the baby’s here. I know I’ll never be one of those people with a picture-perfect home, but I’m hoping I can at least set my standards a little higher. That way, when people drop by to meet the baby, they’ll be occupied with how adorable she is, not distracted by the dust bunnies.

Maybe it’s because I couldn’t feel her move until a relatively late 21 weeks (my anterior placenta cushions the blows), so by now she’s already moved beyond butterfly-strength moves to kung fu. Or maybe “flutters” is the only word people can think of to describe a sensation no words have been invented for yet.

I’ve been sitting here, concentrating on Ruby’s movements, trying to decide what’s a kick or a punch or a roll or a flip, and trying to define the way they feel. There are jabs, twitches, bumps and even scrapes. Sometimes, the bumps are strong enough they can move my hand if I lay it in the right place, especially late at night. Last week, on a day when I hadn’t felt her move yet and had us both freaking out, D put the heartbeat monitor on my belly, and she immediately kicked (or something) right next to it. I felt it, and D saw it, and we both looked up at each other with wide eyes and then laughed, because here she is still in the womb and already scaring us and relieving us in the next moment.

Tonight, D laid his ear against my belly and tried to hear the heartbeat, because soon he’s supposed to be able to do that. She’d been moving down low, and we hoped she’d give him a bump in the cheek, but even his voice crooning, “Rubyyyyy” wouldn’t coax her to move again.

So for a while longer yet, I am the only one in on the secret of her movements. I try to tell D about it - about the way she is still burrowed into my left side when I wake up in the morning, how this morning I rubbed the knot that is her and she started moving, the way her wiggling feels exactly like you’d think a little alien swimming in your belly would feel.

But the truth is, he will never fully understand how strange and amazing it feels, or how real it makes her for me. He loves her and is so excited about her, but she isn’t always present for him the way she is for me.

Earlier on, people asked me if I “felt pregnant,” and I didn’t always. But now there isn’t a moment I forget - even when she’s not moving, she’s there, making my body feel like a stranger’s under my hands, or turning an afternoon of the mildest manual labor into a monumental undertaking, or interfering with my ability to get off the couch quickly or put on socks. And I don’t mind these little hindrances, because they are harbingers of her and reminders of her.

While we won’t meet face to face for another 15 weeks or so, she is here already, and we are already getting to know one another. She hears me singing Pure Imagination while we cook dinner, demanding Millie stop eating the cats’ food, seducing her father, ordering endless extra hot bean burritos with extra cheese, and complaining about our ongoing ladybug infestation (not all at the same time, of course).

Meanwhile, the only clues I have about my girl are in these non-fluttery little flutters. Somehow, though, they are more than enough to stir my imagination.

Update: Of course, the night after I wrote this post, D felt Ruby move for the first time! We’d been folding laundry in the bedroom, and I lay down on the bed with my head at the foot. She started moving like crazy - she’s been a busy bee all day - so D lay down the opposite direction and put his hand on my belly. At first the movements were way down low where he couldn’t feel them, but suddenly she got really active. It felt like she was rolling over and over (I’ve been watching so much figure skating lately, maybe she was attempting a triple axle in utero?), and finally he felt the little knocks against his hand. Then he took his hand away and saw her move several times. I still haven’t seen it (seeing my belly past the boobs while lying down is kind of a challenge), so I asked him to describe what it looked like. He put his hand under the blanket and moved it around. And that is exactly what it feels like it would look like!