Kara of "Not a Couple's Blog"

Just a reminder: I'm on "maternity leave." No baby yet, but any day now, right? In the meantime, I've got several guest bloggers lined up over the next little while to keep you entertained.
 
Kara is a local blogger who I have yet to meet in real life but I'm pretty sure we'd be best friends if we did. (Bear in mind, those of you whom I also call "best friend," that "best friends" isn't a person, it's a tier. Thus spake Mindy. And it was so.) ANYWAY, she is awesome and cracks me up and you should check her out over at Not a Couple's Blog.

No small part of me is jealous that Jen’s due date falls in April. April is a gorgeous month to live in Arizona. It’s basically 80 degrees and sunshine - all the time. My due date was last August. August is not the best month to be an Arizonan. There’s sunshine, sure, but there is also 115 degree heat that is so oppressive it nearly robs you of your will to live.

That being said, I have been thinking a little bit about my late summer baby and I have even come up with a few reasons why being 9 months pregnant in August is not the worst thing in the entire world. (Even though it kind of is.) So here is my list of the 5 Best Things About A Late Summer Baby.

1.       You can live in the swimming pool. I only have the one baby (a boy named Owen) but I have to imagine that being 9 months pregnant is unbearable no matter what time of year it is. I was lucky enough to be able to spend my entire third trimester floating in the swimming pool and no one questioned me when I wore my swim suit to the grocery store.

2.       Everyone knows you’re pregnant. Speaking of swimsuits, by the time I finally slipped on my maternity suit my belly was nice and large. And round. SO round. There was no is-she-or-isn’t she drama associated with me and my belly. Plus, there is something so freeing about putting on a swimsuit and not caring about how thin you look while wearing it. Bonus: I had almost an entire year to shed my baby weight before I will have to put on another swimsuit. Win-win.

3.       It’s not the sick season. When I was pregnant I had someone tell me that if I took my baby out of the house before he was 6 weeks old I was risking the fact that he would die. I may have given her words an ounce of consideration if Owen was born in January instead of August, when RSV and the flu are making the rounds. Because he was born in the summer, however, I was not scared to take him out of the house and let other people touch him.

4.       The weather cools down eventually. After Owen was born my husband had 12 weeks of Paternity leave. (I know.) We had a lot of down time in those 12 weeks and ended up going for a lot of family walks, usually late at night in order to help Owen go to sleep. It was warm enough on those September and October evenings that we did not worry about Owen and cool enough that we did not want to die. (Most of the time, anyway.)

5.       The worst of the sickness is over before heat sets in. I was pretty sick throughout the duration of my pregnancy but the first trimester was a nightmare from which I may never recover. Like many people, my nausea was heightened by heat. Fortunately, the earliest days of my pregnancy took place in the dead of winter. I cannot even imagine how bad it would have been if I had been dealing with morning sickness and triple digit heat.

So there you have it. I’m not necessarily saying you should try for an August baby, (especially if you live in Arizona) but it’s not the end of the world, either. I mean, it will feel like it’s the end of the world once August gets here, but I promise you’ll live to tell the tale.