An outie

I read a book about pregnancy once where the woman said that she can tell a woman has been pregnant just by looking at her belly button. This made me think of two things:

1) How is my belly button going to change when I'm pregnant?
2) What the heck is this woman doing looking at other people's belly buttons?

But of course, she was right. When you are pregnant, your belly button does fantastic things. It stretches, mostly, which is weird, but it also sticks out in crazy ways. My second pregnancy, it was particularly bad, so bad that it actually made my friends giggle. My niece even drew a picture of my pregnant, and added a HUGE belly button. It was actually pretty cute, and I found it much more endearing after I stopped looking like a beached whale.

And my belly button did go back to some semblance of its normal self after my daughter was born. A little worse for the wear, perhaps, a little gooshier, but on the whole, pretty much the same as always.

Now I have an outie again. And it hurts.

This can't be a good thing.

My last renal ultrasound showed a lot more cysts than I had ever seen before. When my daughter climbs up on me in bed and sits on my stomach while I sing to her, I can't have her sit too long there because it starts to hurt. I can't lie on my back for very long anymore, and if my husband hugs me the wrong way, I wince. And through it all, my outie sits there, a outward manifestation of the inside growth and movement of my kidneys.

At least this time it doesn't poke through my shirt.

I get new creatnine readings on Monday. Wish me luck.