Taking on the World, One Tub at a Time

Do you have any idea just how hard it is to get in and out of a bathtub when you're 8 months pregnant? Well, if you're 8 months pregnant, I'm sure you do! Let me tell you, when you gaze down at that bathtub and think to yourself, "There's so much room in there, I'll be able to float!" you're wrong, DEAD WRONG.

When you sit down, it's like your ass and thighs have magically widened and you don't have even a third of the room you once thought you had. And then you try and get comfortable, somehow mangling your legs together in what appears to be some version of crossing them at the calves, with your knees resting on either side of the porcelain as the water floats up, up, up and around your belly, not quite being able to submerge it, but giving you enough bouyancy that if you close your eyes you can imagine you're out at sea. In a very cramped lifeboat. But it can be done!

But because it was so absolutely dreadfully, unbearably hot when you got in the tub, you don't mind the crampiness so much because you're partially submerged under nearly-cold water, and the cool southerly breeze is dancing across your bare skin through the open window directly above you, and you drift off to sleep for an hour, not thinking about the god-awful time you're going to have trying to get GET OUT of the tub later on.

And then you wake up. And while you're loving every minute of that bordering-on-cold tub of water, you're also shivering a little bit because even though it was so hot an hour earlier, that your skin stuck to itself, it has since cooled down and isn't nearly so hot and the cool breeze dancing across your skin feels colder and colder and colder. So you do some kinky manoeuvre in order to slide your hand down under your ass and past your thighs to reach the plug to pull it out so the water can drain away, and then do you begin the arduous process of trying to extract yourself from the shallow, porcelain apparatus.

You're not quite sure how you're going to achieve the actual getting to your feet stage, because your hands (and body) are quite prune-like by now, and are also somewhat slippery from being submerged for an hour. Isn't it funny that you can wipe your pruned hands on the towel for five solid minutes, and yet they're still sopping wet when you touch the sides of the bath in order to hoist yourself upward? It's like your skin is so waterlogged that it won't ever be dry again.

But, somehow you manage to thrust yourself upward while clinging vainly to the sides of the tub, hoping like hell you don't slip and fall. And as you stand on your feet, completely upright and overjoyed, you want to do a small victory dance right there in the open window, for all to see. But you don't do that victory dance. Instead, you grin stupidly at yourself in the mirror for not only being able to get INTO the tub, but now also OUT OF it while you're eight months pregnant.

And then, as you sit at the table this morning, recapping the highlights of yesterday, you hope with all your heart and soul that today will NOT be as hot as yesterday because as much as you're proud of yourself for being able to get in and out of a bathtub (something you USED to take for granted!) you really don't want to have to go through it all again if you can help it.