7 steps to a more pregnant you!

How to commiserate with somebody who is more than 40 weeks pregnant:

Supplies Needed for this Craft:
-Hair shirt
-Molded back brace for scoliosis (2 sizes too large)
-Two or three buckwheat pillows
-Bungee cords
-Ankle weights
-Chinese restaurant in close proximity
-Sauna
-A bevy of hired helpers

Step 1: Put on hair shirt. Feel the itchiness on your tummy. ENJOY IT.

Step 2: Attach buckwheat pillows to the front of your body via the molded back brace. (Non buckwheat pillows could be substituted but I feel like the buckwheat truly provides the most realistic firmness and heaviness to most accurately throw off your balance.) Tighten straps of back brace until you can no longer bend at the waist.

Step 3: If you can still breathe, wrap approximately 3-5 bungee cords around the brace at chest level. Surely that'll stop that pesky breathing you've been doing!

Step 4: Attach ankle weights to your ankles. (Flesh coloured ones work best because I mean, hey, if you really were pregnant those would be your ankles.) What? Can't bend over to reach your ankles anymore?! Try about 30 different yoga-like positions to try and get them on. Maybe that will work. ...No? Didn't work? Give in and ask somebody for help to strap them on for you and listen to the crap they give you about not being able to bend over. Honestly, the longer you listen the funnier it gets. You'll LOVE hearing that joke.

Step 5: Go to Leann Chin's or the Chinese restaurant of your choice. Go there for at least one meal a day, or until you 1.) have enough sodium in you that your extremities and face have bloated beyond recognition and 2.) know each & every employee by name. Revel in that bloated feeling, and also in the looks that you get from the restaurant's employees. Of course they're staring at you because you're gorgeous, not because you are x days past due, shoveling in obscene amounts of Moo Goo Gai Pan, swollen little fingers struggling with the chopsticks.

Step 6: Go about your normal daily activities... IN A SAUNA. Sweating is very motherly. Don't wear deodorant because I am sure there is something in it that is ABSOLUTELY DREADFULLY POISONOUS to you and your unborn baby. Just because there isn't proof of that yet doesn't mean its not true. Somebody's cousin's uncle's baby was born with a lopsided head & weak cheekbones and you know what, his mother wore deodorant every day and that is probably what caused it! You wouldn't want to be a bad mom, would you?!

Step 7: Enlist your hired helpers to call you on your cell phone and/or email you several times an hour just to double check that the baby has not come out yet. Because of course they know more than you do, and you are CERTAINLY going to have that baby in the next half hour and you had better be getting to the hospital RIGHT NOW. You will receive bonus realism points if they manage to call every time you are in the bathroom and/or trying to take a nap.