Five months.

And now, I have something very important to say. Something that has been bothering me for a good while now.

There are a lot of women I know who are pregnant right now, or who have very recently had children, or who just want to put their two cents in on my pregnancy.

There’s a “pregnancy boom” going on, that I suppose a lot of people might attribute to 50 Shades of Grey, but whatever, my baby’s definitely not a “Grey Baby.” He’s a “We tried for fifteen months, lost two, and now we’re finally growing our family and we’re ecstatic and terrified” baby.

There’s a lot of talk (mostly online) right now amongst aforementioned moms and moms-to-be about cravings and morning sickness and wonky sex drive and baby brain and indigestion. But even more than that, there’s talk of sizes. Comparison of sizes. And most of all, criticism of sizes. I do plenty of it myself.

I’m getting bigger more quickly with this baby. My hips, butt, and thighs are taking the brunt of the weight. Literally. I can’t wear any of my regular jeans, and haven’t been able to for at least 6 weeks, whereas I wore them until my third trimester with Logan. My bras don’t fit anymore. My fingers are swelling, and my wedding ring feels tight most of the time. I was fitted for that ring when I was eight months pregnant with Logan. I have serious “hail damage” at the tops of my thighs. I’m getting teeny little varicose veins around my knees and on the tops of my thighs. I’ve never had acne this bad in my entire life.

In short, I feel gross. I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin. I want to hide as much of my body as I can, all the time. I want to hide it in the dark, and with baggy clothes, and by wearing my hair down as some sort of diversion, and by wearing more makeup than normal. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror at all costs. If I could manage to somehow NOT have to weigh in at every midwife appointment, I wouldn’t. I don’t want to see the numbers. I don’t want to do the math (which I will, automatically, in my head, every time).

But this is what I keep hearing:

I keep hearing that I don’t get to feel “big,” because I’m not as big as this friend, or that friend, at the same point in her pregnancy.

I hear that I am doing pregnant women everywhere a disservice by saying I feel fat. Especially because I was so small to begin with.

I hear that I must think that every other pregnant woman out there is a total whale because, hell, if I’m only “this big,” and Woman X is “that big,” what must I think about her?!

I hear that I have no right to talk about calories, or my size, or how I feel about either, because I’m just rubbing it in the faces of those who “actually have to work at their weight.”

I am told over and over that I am not allowed to be upset with how quickly I’m getting thicker all around, and gaining weight with this baby, because lots of other women are bigger than I am, and stay bigger than I am after they give birth.

I also hear, very frequently, that I am not allowed to be happy with the fact that I have relatively easy pregnancies, and my body is likely to return to close to what I know as “normal” after I give birth to this child…because of my genetics. Because if I mention that, I’m the bitch mom who rubs stuff like this in other moms’ faces.

According to these apparently widely held opinions, my body – the thing that is changing so rapidly and completely turning on me, day after day feeling more and more like it must, in reality, not even be mine, the thing housing my next son, nurturing him until he enters this world – is not allowed to be discussed. Ever. At all.

I hate my body? Then I must not appreciate what I have, and I don’t get to complain because Women X, Y, and Z are “sooooo much bigger” than I am.

But what if I love it? Nobody wants to hear me brag. Nobody wants something like that rubbed in their faces. Why don’t I just keep that to myself?

You need to know some things, ladies (because, guess what, every comment I have gotten to this effect has been made by a woman).

I don’t compare myself to anyone EXCEPT myself. I feel big compared to the way I feel when my body is not assembling another human within itself. I don’t think you’re big. I think I’m big.

Enormous surprise, considering I have an entire website dedicated to my own life and thoughts: I’m focused on myself. Not other women.

Believe it or not, I don’t want to play “I have it worse than you.” I know it’s a super popular activity among lots of women, but that’s not what I’m in this for. I don’t need to convince you my acid reflux is worse than yours. I don’t need you to think my sciatica is more severe than yours. Sometimes, I just want to vent the fact that I DON’T FEEL LIKE THIS BODY IS EVEN MINE ANYMORE, and that I feel the least attractive I ever have, like, in my whole life.

I don’t believe I deserve hatred or criticism or passive aggression (we as women LOVE to go the passive-aggressive route, don’t we?) because I don’t like my body some days. ESPECIALLY when I’m pregnant.

Now, please, can every woman just let every other woman feel how she feels about her own pregnancy, without trying to criticize or shame her? Can we stop the “My life is worse than yours” game?