17w 3d

It's weird that this time around I can tell you almost to the day when I became visibly pregnant. It was right at the cusp of 16/17 weeks. I thought I had been doing a fairly decent job of not growing an enormous belly and I remember thinking that I was small last time in comparison to the other belly shots I saw, then I just popped out. Of the last three prospect meetings I've had, all of the people sitting across the table from me have asked me if I was pregnant. I don't try and deny it (because that would be silly in maternity clothes and dishonest) so instead I launch into a monologue about what will happen to my accounts when I'm out on maternity leave and the great support I have.

Now, I'm strictly forbidden to talk about the securities industry or divulge any proprietary secrets about my work life, but I think it's reasonable to talk about how I feel about my work (something that I've done very little of on here or in any other social media).

Basically, my job is to contact people, get meetings with people, and close accounts. The more people I talk to in one day, the better. Like today, I called 300 people and spoke to 100 of them. My voice was literally raw at the end of the day from talking so much. Fortunately, my voice does not give away my pregnancy, which is why I see a look of surprise lately in people's eyes when they meet me for the first time. And this is Texas. Everyone wants to know intimate details of my pregnancy, including how I handled my first trimester, what the future big brother thinks of my pregnancy, and if I'm currently too tired to meet with them. All this at barely 4.5 months pregnant.

My pregnancy feels like a distraction for people. Like, "How can we talk about money when you are gestating a human being in front of me?!?" Sometimes I can overcome the questions and manage to pull the topic back to where it needs to be and I like to think that we both blissfully forget I'm pregnant for an hour. Those are the good meetings. The not-so-good meetings are the ones where the women want to commiserate with me and their husbands look bored.

I'm just so scared about how I will handle my job as I get bigger and my pregnancy becomes more pronounced. Well, not so much scared about how I'll handle the job, but more scared about how people will handle me trying to do my job. I've tried to talk to some male coworkers in the office that I'm close to, but they've never been pregnant themselves. They think it's no big deal and I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm a natural introvert (hello writing instead of, I don't know, actually talking to someone) so it's challenging for me on the best days to engage with strangers. Now imagine being X months pregnant, feeling huge in your own body, and trying to meet the same strangers. What's even more challenging is there are no female role models for me to talk to. Most of the female advisors I know in other offices either don't have children or had already had them when they started their career.

What's hard is that I can't predict the future. I can't know how big I'll get or if my blood pressure will spike, leaving me on bed rest. I can only remember the past. I remember how distracting it was for me to be in a meeting with baby Zac kicking the crap out of me, even though I was in a completely different industry. I remember how much I waddled and how I got so big that people on the street would say things, "Any day now Mama!" and "Not too much longer now" when I was only seven months pregnant. Some days I'm just scared.