I didn’t even wear a two-piece bathing suit until my mid-twenties, so it’s weird for me to post pictures of my bare stomach up here on the interweb. But pregnancy is all about the belly, and friends and family afar have demanded photographic proof!

The thing is, I didn’t really start showing much until well into my second trimester. At around week 18 or so, someone said to me, “If I didn’t know you were pregnant I would think you were just a little heavy around the middle.” Under any other circumstances, that would have stung, but her description was entirely accurate. Until about week 23, I could hide the belly under a loose blouse, a zipped up fleece vest, or a chef’s coat and no one would have taken a second glance.

When you’re pregnant, you have this sort of unspoken camaraderie with other pregnant women, perfect strangers included. It’s like the Jeep wave, the gesture exchanged between drivers of Jeep Wranglers. So when you’re not yet showing, you catch yourself on the verge of a visual fist bump with a woman who is obviously pregnant and you have to pull back, because physically you’re still incognito, regardless of how pregnant you feel! It’s awfully strange.

I knew I’d become apparent to the outside world when I was running one day in mid-November and noticed several people headed at me from the other direction glance at my mid-section. Only recently have people been daring enough to come right out and call it. Our neighbor last week said “And congratulations are in order. I noticed the other day when you walked outside.” Tonight at the gym the owner came up to me and said that he’d just looked over and thought, “Tara looks like she’s got a chunky tummy thing going on, so I thought I’d come over and find out.”

Discernable progress was slow for me, given my height (I’m 5’11”) and that this is my first pregnancy (subsequent pregnancies tend to be apparent sooner). These days, at the start of my third trimester, I am finally obviously available for the mom-to-be fellowship acknowledgment. It’s good to be an unconcealed member of the club!

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