So, where’s my baby bump?

Even though I’m almost halfway through my pregnancy, I still don’t trust that I’m pregnant. Some people might feel this way in the beginning of theirs (at least for a little while); shocked into disbelief that some very specific cells in our bodies can become babies. But I have a hard time believing because of my bump. Or rather, because I don’t appear to have one at all.

I thought the bump would be a big part of my pregnancy and I’m bummed it’s not. I assumed it would knight me into the world of impending motherhood, where you hold a funeral for all the clothes you will never fit into again; where the other people in your yoga class think you’re being lazy but they don’t realize you have to modify the poses so you don’t squish the baby; and where you believe (unreasonably) that your dog will calm down on walks because he senses you’re suddenly much more afraid of falling.

Even without it, I do get a lot of reminders that I’m pregnant: My nipples itch constantly. I need to use the bathroom every 30 minutes (sometimes 20!). I just started getting heartburn, which I’ve never had before. My hobbies are picking fights with my husband, going to sleep at 8pm and not knowing what to eat for lunch because nothing is appetizing. Today I did, however, put salt on a half sour pickle.

But I’m still skeptical because my body hasn’t changed. If you saw me on the street today, you would not be able to tell I’m expecting a boy in April.

I’ve coveted the baby bump ever since I experienced a miscarriage earlier this year. With that pregnancy, I had no symptoms at all (no nausea, no stomach twinges, no breast pain, no nothing), which I thought was a little weird, but I assumed everything would be fine. Then after the doctor confirmed I miscarried at six weeks, it made sense why I didn’t feel anything.

When I found out I was pregnant this time, I was obsessed with what and how I felt and I interpreted every tiny disruption from the norm as an assurance the baby was still in there and okay. This helped ease my anxiety for a while.

A second failed pregnancy felt imminent when friends and acquaintances began remarking that I was “not showing” or “hardly showing.” It seemed that while I had accumulated many pieces of pregnancy that I didn’t have before, I was still missing the most universally accepted indicator I was doing a good job supporting the growth of a healthy baby: The bump.

But since I don’t have it, it feels like I’m already a bad mother. It feels like my body is gaslighting me. Am I even really pregnant if there’s no bump to indicate I am? It’s easy to explain the symptoms away without one, as if they are caused by other factors like the weather or doing too much physical activity or just being in my 30s. It’s feels like my body is betraying me. After all I’ve been through, my body can’t (or won’t) do the biggest thing that would reassure me this pregnancy is going to work out? What other mischief is it capable of?

The longed baby bump arrives at different times during pregnancy for different people and I know there are no benefits to comparing my pregnancy to anyone else’s. The best thing for my health (and therefore the health of the baby) is to try and remain as calm as possible. There’s no evidence to suggest anything’s wrong with the baby. All my blood tests come back normal, as do all the routine screens for things like spina bifida and trisomies.

But once you doubt your body for the first time, it’s very easy to do it again. From there, it’s not long until you’re doubting each individual piece of yourself. In addition to struggling with the fact that I don’t have a bump, I also worry about my motherly intuition—that special sauce that will get me through the toughest parts of having a newborn. It would be nice if I could simply acquire it before the birth, like the baby bottles or the baby bathtub or any of the other numerous items on our baby shower registry.

Friends and family say it doesn’t happen that way—it shows up after birth. This doesn’t seem right! It feels like I need to have these instincts before the baby arrives. They all say, “It’s hard to believe, but you’ll be fine. Once the baby is here, that’s when your instincts kick in. It’s almost like you wake up one morning and you know enough to get through the coming days.” This may be acceptable to other people, but I find it hard to believe because I have only ever been uncomfortable around infants.

I don’t want my child to doubt himself the way I doubt myself. I would like him to be confident in his skills, his knowledge, in who he is as a person. I also know that in order for him to be this way, I have to show him how.

So for the next five months, I’m going to practice trusting myself. I’m going to trust my body — that it will do what I expect it to do, which is help my baby develop and grow until he can be born. Even if it doesn’t look like the bodies of any other pregnant people I see, I will believe it is working in my favor. Even if it is not as obvious that I am pregnant as I think it should be.

I’m also not going to worry I don’t know enough to have a baby. I’m sure someone will say to me soon, no one knows enough to have a baby before they have a baby. Until they say it, I’m going to say it to myself. I will say it to myself when I am in the shower and when I am loading the dishwasher and when I am looking for something to watch on Netflix and when I am reading a book that I am not sure if I’m enjoying. And I will say it to pregnant women when they see I have a baby and ask for advice.

I will trust that I am going to be a good mother, for him.