Being pregnant, the more one learns about it, can become some sort of mystical all-encompassing miasma of symptoms, feelings and strange goings on in the woman’s body. For instance, a first-time mother recently learned from her doctor that it is not uncommon for her bowel movements to turn black in color and have the consistency of caulking putty.

That fact alone is nothing special, but combine it with the realization that it can also be normal to suddenly develop a new and often bright birth mark on her face, quaintly known as the pregnancy mask. Additionally she might gain a new headache she’s never experienced before, or get gas pain in her shoulder – not a place one might imagine gas pain to locate itself. She may even inexplicably find herself retching from foods she’s previously relished.

Of course there are still symptoms which are quite serious and warrant an immediate call to or trip to the doctor’s office. Constant and prolonged contractions or heavy, steady blood like a menstrual flow are the sorts of dangerous symptoms which need immediate care and action. But, if a woman who is beginning to show the baby bump experiences sudden and odd changes to her body, it’s going to become a running joke to blame everything on the pregnancy.

“It’s because you are pregnant,” she will hear over and over, as she asks why her nipples, nose or lips have suddenly doubled in size, or because she can’t stand Sheryl Crow anymore. She will soon realize this new human life growing inside her is change itself, embodied in a tiny, squirming body. It will change the way she moves, feels and even thinks before it’s all done. And of course at the moment the baby finally emerges, that’s when the changes really begin.