I've reached the huffing and puffing stage of pregnancy. I heave up from a chair, and let out an audible grunt followed by a few pants. I reach down to the floor to pick up the pen I've dropped, and try to stifle an almost automatic groan. I waddle through the day panting and oof-ing. For some reason, I assumed pregnancy-related grunts did not arrive until labor, but I'm exercising my gutteral side far before then. I made the mistake of wearing pull-on knee-high boots the other day, and, with the amount of heavy breathing and groans that pulling on and off the boots elicited, you would have thought I was practicing to be a championship weightlifter. I'm considering looking in to a new career doing sound effects for adult films, or voice-overs for stalkers' telephone calls in Lifetime movies. I still have six and a half weeks, weeks in which the weather will get cooler and might call for boot-wearing, to grunt my way through.
The size of my belly has forced me to come up with creative ways to get in and out of the car. I can't just turn to the side and step out in one swift motion. No, I have to walk up to the door, grab the handle, slowly ease myself down, pull down my shirt which has gotten wrinkled up by this point, duck my head in to the car, twist to the side while grabbing the steering wheel, and then stop and take a few deep breaths before adjusting the car seat once again and buckling my seat belt. Getting out of the car is basically the reverse. It's added a good five minutes to my commute. And, if, for some reason, I forget I'm pregnant and try to just hop out like a normal person, my organs get an unpleasant squashed feeling and my belly tightens up and I get stuck. I need one of those emergency buttons they used to advertise on late night TV - help, I'm pregnant and I can't get up.
It doesn't help that I've been socked with third-trimester exhaustion. It comes out of nowhere; like so many pregnancy side effects, it's just waiting in the wings to slam me when I least expect it. I'll walk up the stairs and my legs will threaten to give out. Last night, I considered laying my head down on the table next to my bowl of chicken soup and taking a nap. I huff and puff to propel my waddling body along, to push through the thick, heavy exhaustion.
I always thought Martina Hingis, with her wah-uhhh yells when she slams a tennis ball, or the grunts and yelps of the gargantuan men in the World's Strongest Man competitions, were a little silly and deliberately showing off. Couldn't they play tennis or roll tires just as well if they were quieter? What were they trying to prove? Now, as a new grunter myself, I know they weren't trying to show off or prove anything. They're just muscling up the energy to whack a tennis ball, pull a Volkswagen, or, like me, get out of bed in the morning. Hey, whatever works.
