It’s Christmas Eve! Want to hear about my nipples? If not, turn back now, friend. It’s gonna get all kinds of TMI up in here by the next paragraph. You sure you want to stay? Last chance. Alright, but I did warn you.

So I woke up yesterday morning, took off my jammies and stood naked in front of the mirror for a moment before hopping into the shower. It seems like every morning I look a little different. Bigger in some places, other places look smaller because they are dwarfed by the bigger places, new stretch marks, etc. So I almost always see something new every morning. This morning, I noticed my nipples looked flaky. Like they were covered in dry skin.

I’d had pretty dry nips in my first trimester when my breasts first started to get larger, so I just tried to flake it off while waiting for the water to warm up for the shower. But the damn flakes didn’t stop. I mean, it seemed every time I would sweep my finger over the affected area, more little flakes would come out of the nooks and crannies. This was not dry skin. This was something new.

As a first time mom, I am a little compulsive about all the little changes that are happening. I want to know exactly what’s happening and why. Can I control it or change it? The answer most of the time seems to be no. And I think that’s the same in this case. I don’t think that was dry skin. I think it was dried up colostrum.

MY BOOBS ARE LEAKING ALREADY! I’m only 28 weeks. I thought it wouldn’t start until I was much closer to delivery.

I know it’s gross and really not the same thing at all, but for me this is akin to starting my period 18 years ago. I mean when something starts that has never happened to you before, you might freak out a little, right? I feel just as uncoordinated and unattractive as I did at 13 years old. And now new fluid is falling out of me in a place it never has before. It’s like going through puberty all over again.

Between this and my belly button threatening to turn inside out, I’m not feeling exactly comfortable with my body. At least this time round, I’m not in grade school where the boys will openly compare the budding breasts of the girls in class. Even though it’s not through the school hallways anymore, I really feel like I’m being judged on my appearance now more than ever.

Maybe it’s because everyone is busy with the holiday season, but while out shopping I don’t get little knowing smiles from the ladies in line. I just get stares. I’m at once relieved and pissed off when the waiter offers me a libations menu after I lumber through the restaurant and collapse in my seat like a beached whale.  Maybe I don’t look as bad as all that if the waiter doesn’t think I’m pregnant. But if he doesn’t think I look pregnant, what must he think is going on? And just like at 13, no I can’t have a drink.

I don’t know why I thought I was going to feel all Earth Mama during this pregnancy. Like I would emit this inner glow, and everyone around me would know what a freaking miracle I am. I’m growing a baby! And you, woman in line in front of me, don’t even notice. I’m torn between hoping the waiter will ask me when I’m due and hoping he’ll ignore the fact that my midsection has its own gravity.

Yesterday morning, at my local coffee shop, I knocked over a display of chocolate bars with my stomach. It’s like the time my father insisted we eat at Hooters (when I was 13,) and I was so nervous about all the boobs on display compared to mine that I knocked over my tea and ruined my own meal. Seriously, I haven’t felt this uncomfortable in my own skin since I was in my teens.