A Downside to Being Single and Pregnant

I seem to have been inundated lately with photos of pregnant women. Women who are a little pregnant, women who are somewhat pregnant and women who are really, really pregnant. Aside from feeling a bit saddened by and/or envious of the photos of the really, really pregnant women, this recent photo montage has made me realize that there are apparently only two photos of me while pregnant with Eliza Grace. Well, there was a third one, but it was lost when my computer died and unless the person who took the photo still has it on his computer, that one will never be seen again.

I think there is a direct correlation between being single and not having any cute pregnancy photos. I mean really now, is a girl to walk up to a stranger in Central Park and say "hey there good fellow mind snapping a few shots of my pregnancy belly." I think not. Also I was pretty well into my second trimester before I even told more than one or two people that I was pregnant. Given my not-so-stellar pregnancy history I thought I would wait a bit before making an announcement. This decision pretty well eliminated asking my family and friends to take some photos. Although I suppose I could have just started randomly hiking my shirt up to expose my belly in the occasional family photo.

Interestingly these two known photos were taken by my cousin Tracey who later attended Eliza's delivery with me "in lieu of a husband."

This first photo was taken on my birthday in early February 2006.



I spent the 48 hours following this photo shoot on the L&D floor sick as a dog with what turned out to be food poisoning contracted at the swanky restaurant that my cousin, brother and sister-in-law and I went to for said birthday celebration.

This second photo, also courtesy of cousin Tracey, was taken later in February:



The day after this photo was taken I ended up for my long term stay at Lenox Hill thanks to my ever worsening pre-eclampsia.

Anyone noticing a theme here? Take a photo, head to the L&D floor. Maybe I should be thankful that I had no one to take any pictures sooner than 22 weeks.