s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d-!

It is amazing that of which the human body is capable.

I look down at my shiny, stretched-out belly. I feel tight in a way I've never felt before. Taking a breath can hurt, and a yawn is torture. But still, I stretch.

I have this vision in my head of reaching 36 weeks and my tight, stretched skin cracking and peeling back with the force of the growth, and Roman and Joel just popping right out. Hello boys! Somebody please fetch the king's horses and the king's men to put humpty-dumpty back together again.

I wonder what it will feel like, 14 or 15 weeks from now, when the boys arrive. Will my skin have stretched so much that there are stretchmarks from my hip to my ribs? Will my displaced organs seek places of refuge under my arms or above my collar bone?

Will my heart be able to bear the strain of loving three people as much as I love my husband and my two sons? Right now, I feel that organ stretching too. It strains under the weight of this thing, becoming a parent. I read about parenthood, and I cry. I see small children playing and I stifle the tears. I look at nursery furniture online and can't hold the tears back. Hormones, they say. I think maybe the hormones help the heart to stretch.

On another note, the boys have discovered my ribs in earnest over the weekend. The kicking was almost ceaseless, and I could watch a little appendage cross my skin just before landing a solid "thump" against my rib. While wincing and chuckling--how precocious my little ones are--I couldn't help but be amazed all over again at the wonders of the human body.