Being the uninhibited blogger that I am, I always meant to document my pregnancy thoroughly and candidly. Somehow that didn’t happen early on, but with approximately 9 more weeks to go, I suppose it’s better late than never.

Ironically, while I am pretty transparent when describing anything about my life, from my struggles with infertility to graphic descriptions about my medical procedures, I am pretty modest and conservative when it comes to photos of myself. This is the barest you’ll ever see me, but in my opinion, being pregnant makes it okay to show more than a little midriff.

As I eagerly anticipate my maternity photo shoot this Saturday with Lisa of Windward Skies Photography, I did a search on Flickr and searched for maternity pictures. As you would imagine, thousands came up: 40,022 to be exact. It made me wonder what my own bare belly would look like in pixels, so on a whim, I took out my little Canon p&s and took some standard bathroom mirror shots. The photo above is the result of that little impromptu self-portrait session.

Somehow, I feel much larger than I appear in the photo. Since I entered my third trimester, it seems that I am growing exponentially. People have started to make comments about how big I’ve gotten, seemingly overnight.

Today, a co-worker gave me an endearing new nickname, “Roadblock,” since I was standing in the aisle and he claims that I was taking up all the space that he couldn’t pass, so he had to take a detour.

My belly button is threatening to become an outie. If you watch it long enough, Baby Champuru will put on a show for you, making my piko change shape and dance around. It’s actually quite entertaining and I’ll admit that there are times when I will just sit in a chair and literally gaze at my navel when Baby Champuru is particularly active.

I took the day off tomorrow to take care of my 3-hour glucose tolerance test and a dental appointment. I am praying that I don’t have gestational diabetes, because that would really put a damper on the rest of my pregnancy. I’d hate to have to cut out my favorite local fruits (pineapple, papaya, mangoes, bananas, and watermelon) as well as the only thing I’ve been craving lately, which is ice cream. Enjoying those refreshing treats makes being pregnant during the hottest time of the year bearable. Somehow celery sticks just don’t hit the spot like a li hing shave ice does.