Incremental Change
Last week, I took my semi-regular bump photo to send to my sister, who lives in NYC. Though I know she likes to see them, they’re partially for me, since I realize how I feel and how I look don’t always agree — And wow, I was not prepared for what I saw in the photo. I look back at photos from our South Africa trip 2 months ago, when I felt so obviously pregnant, and laugh to see that my belly wasn’t quite as visible as it felt at the time. It was a little insulting when someone would tell me they couldn’t tell if I had just gained weight or if I was pregnant (there we go with body commentary again), but looking at the photos now, I get it. Still inappropriate to make a comment like that though, in case it wasn’t clear.



As my pregnancy has progressed, it has admittedly been difficult to pin down all of the changes happening in my body and internalize how they are really affecting my everyday life. If you think about it, growing a human takes about 9 months. A lot of processes go into that, to be sure, and the progress is not linear — So of course, changes don’t appear all at once. Though a pregnant woman may feel different as early as 4–5 weeks into her pregnancy, no obvious outward signs may exist until closer to 12 weeks or even later, as you see in my 18-week photo. As with any other transformation, you feel it first and see results after. What seems obvious to you may not be to anyone else quite yet, but it doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening behind the scenes.
Then one day — BOOM.



After feeling pretty consistent over the past few months, I suddenly felt like I hit a brick wall last week — exhausted, nauseous, hot flashes — which culminated in an evening of sickness followed by a night of restless sleep. I had read about this, the dreaded 3rd trimester, and worried that my time had finally come. Months of incremental changes had been leaving their mark only to leave me curled in a ball on the couch feeling miserable. I had always heard that the 2nd trimester is the best time of pregnancy — You feel great, have lots of energy, and you’re not so large that your mobility and comfort are compromised. My 2nd trimester, luckily, had followed suit. After feeling terrible for 2 days and having no appetite, I wondered how I would make it for the next 10 weeks this way, and I suddenly appreciated my comparably easy pregnancy (up to this point) more than ever. But really, pregnancy is just another transformation, right? Beginning the process of making/breaking a habit or making a life change is terrifying and tough, but slow and steady progress can become comfortable and mundane after awhile, even before results begin to show. I had fallen into the relative comfort of the slow and steady changes of the 2nd trimester, and when presented with a relatively new sensation, it took me by surprise.
Luckily, the symptoms lasted only a couple of days, and I was relieved to learn that the pregnancy itself was not to blame for my misery. I suppose what scared me the most was the sudden nature of the change — Most shifts don’t happen that way. Progress — in pregnancy, in learning a new skill, in making a habit change — is pretty much always incremental. That extra 5 minutes a day you devote to meditation or the extra small effort to take the stairs instead of the elevator has a larger effect than you might think, and it may not be obvious for months. But it’s there, and just like a weekly bump photo, it may not be a bad idea to step back and take a small life snapshot every once in awhile.
Little changes add up, and in 2 more months (more or less), our little human will make his or her debut. If a human can be created in 9 months, what else can be created or changed in even less time?
