Post 81...Pasta Shell Eyes

Tomorrow I will be 19 weeks along. And although, so far, everything is looking great and I have shown no sign of miscarriage, I'm still waiting with baited breath for 20 weeks. Getting past 20 weeks will be a huge turning point for this pregnancy considering it will be the longest I have ever carried, and honestly I am very scared to find out if my body is up to the task. This whole pregnancy has been flying along until now. It seems once we hit 17 weeks, we've been wading through molasses, pushing to get past the dreaded 20 week marker. And of course having all of this time to wait gives me plenty of chances to freak out and get extremely emotional about it all.

The only problem with getting all emotional is that I often end up full on crying right before bed. And then...it happens: pasta shell eyes! Yup, you read it right. I get what my mom and I jokingly call "pasta shell eyes." It's something I've had since puberty, passed on from my mom's side of the family. It's where, after crying the night before, our eyes will puff up, swelling so much that they look like little water-bloated pasta shells. Sometimes, if I'm crying hard enough, my eyes will puff up immediately after crying, but in most cases they'll puff up over night after a good cry. But lately it seems like my eyes are permanent pasta shells. If not from crying, my eyes look puffy from feeling so tired all the time.

Too many times I will look up at my husband after I've had a good cry and I'll ask him with a slight pout, "are my eyes puffy?" He then lovingly tries to stifle a smile and slowly nods his head. "Maybe just a little." he'll say, trying to be polite. I dash off to the closest mirror and yelp out "Augh! Pasta shell eyes! Their so pooooofy!" My husband will start to giggle as he hugs me from behind, trying to comfort me from the embarrassment.

Sometimes I call them my muppet eyes just because they look so silly. It kinda reminds me of that one old man muppet up in the balcony that used to hassle everyone. But more often than not, I call them my pasta shell eyes. Luckily for little Andy, he probably won't have the same problem since it seems to only affect the women in the family (with the exception of what we call my dad's "old man eye" when he'll wake up with one puffy eye for no reason other than he slept hard that night). For now, I guess I just have to get used to having poofy eyes. But with any luck, they'll soon be poofy from happy tears after celebrating being past 20 weeks.