I am currently a few days away from my due date. Contrary to the proliferation of cursive-scripted, Earth toned “Mama Blogs” you have likely come across whether or not you too are pregnant, my experience has clearly been nothing in the remote vicinity of blissful, magical, or earth-goddess-like. The first third was an astonishingly lonely, wholly isolating, and quite literally nauseating experience. The second trimester improved greatly, allowing me the energy and psychological room to enjoy the active snorkeler inside my belly, and my final trimester has settled into a kind of multifaceted discomfort that I also, somehow, couldn’t have anticipated. But of course we all must stumble through this alone, there’s no way even the most well-read and well-prepared of incubating mothers could know what pregnancy feels like until she finds out firsthand.