I don’t want to complain.

Why is it that whenever someone says that, they follow it with a lot of complaining?

So let’s talk, instead, of the third trimester of a woman’s pregnancy. The third trimester has a firm, distinct purpose, and it isn’t what doctors may tell you, some scientific mumbo-jumbo about the baby growing and developing. No. The purpose of the third trimester is to put the mother (or “host,” rather) through so much discomfort that she actually begins to look forward to, and happily anticipate, the painful ordeal of childbirth.

Welcome to the third trimester, sucka.

Two nights ago, when I tried to heave myself over in bed like the large sea mammal I am beginning to resemble, I felt a very intense pain in my pelvis. Later that morning, I had a conversation with Homes:

Ever-Suffering Mother: Homes, I feel like someone took a hammer to my pelvis last night while I slept.

Snarky Husband: I didn’t think you’d notice.

Ever-Suffering Mother: And then they pieced the bones back together with screws.

Snarky Husband: I used the tiny ones.

The pain could have been a hammer-and-screw-wielding Snarky Husband, or it could have been my new Just Dance 3 game. But more likely, it was Maverick.

About Maverick. We like to give our unborn children nicknames in this family. Before we learned Z was a girl, we called her Perry. Short for “Parasite.” And even though we know this one’s a boy, we still haven’t decided on a name. So for the time being, I’m calling him Maverick.

(Cue jet engine sound effects.)

Highway to the danger zone!

But after the broken pelvis incident he gets a subtitle. Now he’s Maverick: Instrument of My Destruction.

(It’s either that, or Renesmee, after the famous literary half-vampire baby freak who famously tore apart her own ever-suffering mother.)