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This was me two years ago this month:

You'll surely notice that I was sporting the official mom haircut. The one they make you get before you leave the hospital with your newborn. I got mine during my ultrasound a few weeks earlier.

Just for good measure:

Considering this view, it's rather surprising that I was such a collosal failure at breastfeeding. You'd think I could have put an end to world hunger with cleavage like that.

Where was I? Oh, right ... the whole pregnancy thing feels like it didn't happen, like I wasn't really there for nine months. Or for about nine months afterwards, for that matter. In fact, it's just been in the past few months that I've started feeling normal again. Like me. But with Clara Jane.

Pregnancy's a trippy place to be. I know women who loved nothing more than being pregnant. I didn't. I felt off-kilter the entire time. The physical changes, the feeling of not being in control of my body or my brain - I wasn't fond of it. Not to say that I didn't love feeling Clara Jane moving inside me. I loved how, as I was settling in to sleep every night, I could count on her doing some somersaults and high kicks. I could also count on her doing the same routine at 4 a.m. every single morning. She had a knack for punting my stomach, sending tidal waves of acid rocketing through my esophagus. How I managed to puke on my pillow only once during that time, I'll never know.

The weirdest thing about pregnancy wasn't the craziness with my body. It was the changes it made in my brain. The pregnancy depression and anxiety was bad and my God I'm fucking sick of talking about that so let's just acknowledge it existed and move on.

The real weirdness: I've always had a stunning memory for details. Ask me a date, and I can tell you what I did that exact day. What I wore, where I went, who I saw, what I ate. That's always been my parlor trick, this ability to recall every inconsequential detail of everything. I was virtually unbeatable at Trivial Pursuit because of this gift. Song lyrics? Play it once and I'll be able to recite it back for you.

There was about a two-week window between when I got pregnant and when I got the positive test. B. was the first to notice something was up, because I kept repeating stories to him. I'd call him at work to share an anecdote, only to repeat it when he got home. Of course, when he pointed this out to me, I threatened him with a tire iron.

That was another change: instead of being my usual delightfully acerbic self, I was homicidal.

There has been research that suggests women lose 20 i.q. points with each pregnancy. Of course, I can't remember where I heard that because all 20 of the points I lost were in the memory portion of my brain. I guess it's good they came from the part of my brain with an overabundance. If they came from the part of my brain that balances my bank account, we'd be living in a cardboard box right now.

The rambling point I'm making: I had memory issues which, thankfully, seem to be resolving, although there are huge chunks of my pregnancy and Clara Jane's first year that are simply gone from my mind. So many of those photos I have no memory of taking, or being in. It's a weird place for me, Memory Chick, to be.

So, it really cracks me up that tonight I drug my usual partner in crime into my little stumble down Memory Lane, and she had no recollection of this incident.

Shortly after those photos were taken, I popped. I mean, really popped. That's when my doctor and midwife started warning me that my child might take after her father, who was a member of The Ten Pound Mother-Ripping Newborn Club. My usual Rubenesque proportions shifted from looking like this Rubens and more like this one.

Kara and I were at my house, preparing for a little waddle through the mall. In the half an hour it took me to place my shoes on my watermelon-sized feet I told her, "I am no longer bending over. If anything belonging to me lands on the floor, well, it wasn't really mine to begin with." Being the true friend that she is, she promised to pick up anything that might slip from my fingers, which had turned into something resembling vegetarian corn dogs (the only thing I could eat at the time).

Fast-forward to West County Center a few hours later. Kara was in the restroom. My corn dog fingers and I were at the ATM, fumbling for cash. And because I'd declared I was no longer capable of bending over, you know what I did.

Come on, don't make me say it.

I dropped my ATM card. And you know, I really didn't want it back that badly. If it hand been stuck in a vegetarian corn dog, I might have been willing to manuever my child-girth around to retrieve it. But damn. It just wasn't worth it.

So I did want any exhausted, massive, heartburn-riddled pregnant woman would do. I put my swollen foot on the card and stood there in the middle of the busy mall walkway, waiting for Kara to pick it up. Which she did. It was easier to pick up the card than it would have been to pick me up. Because my center of gravity was so screwed, I surely would have fallen forward had I tried to lean forward. My gargantuan mom-boobs and belly probably would have crashed through the walkway, sending me careening down to the first level.

Well, maybe that wouldn't have happened, exactly. But I'm sure whatever really would have happened wouldn't have been much prettier.

So tonight, I was talking about this to Kara, and she had absolutely no recollection of it. No, she's not pregnant. But if her memory's this bad in a non-knocked-up state, can you imagine what she'll be like if she ever gets pregnant? It'll be nine months of "Who are you? Who am I? Why do I feel like I'm being kicked from the inside-out? Hey! Leave my ATM card alone! I'm sure I put it on the floor for a reason. Gimme a minute and I'll remember why. Um, can you tell me why is there liquid pouring out of my body?"

Yeah, I know, it took me forever to get to that lame-ass point. Really, I just wanted an excuse to post that photo of my tits.