A couple of days ago when I was about to leave the house to go meet a friend for dinner, Chris asked if I was going to tell this friend that I was pregnant. I haven’t really been in a rush to share about my pregnancy with anyone outside of really close friends and my parents. Part of that is out of fear that this may end at any moment and just general uncertainty. The other part of it is, well, I’m not seeing that many people anytime soon, so what’s the rush in sharing? I told him I would be telling him, but I kind of had to because… well… I motioned towards my belly, which was definitely sticking out of the fitted dress I was wearing.

“Wow, you really are pregnant!” he commented, looking at my stomach. “It’s really popped out in the last week or so! I guess the clinic and doctors weren’t lying!”

Well, that lie would have been a huge conspiracy theory that would have taken a LOT of coordination, given I’ve already had tests and scans at four different offices — the clinic, my OB-GYN office, the maternal fetal medicine specialist, plus the women’s imaging center most recently at Lenox Hill Hospital. That doesn’t even include all the pregnancy symptoms I’ve been experiencing in addition to my growing belly.

But yes, a growing belly usually IS a sign of pregnancy, one that gets harder and harder to hide as time goes on.