My What to Expect Pregnancy update says: You're two-thirds of the way through your pregnancy and your uterus is about two and a half inches above your belly button. And speaking of your belly button, have you noticed that it's taken on a life of its own — a larger-than-life life? Protruding navels may not be your idea of forward fashion (especially when you're in a bikini, or when your once innie belly button now bulges through tight clothes), but it's de rigueur for the pregnant set. And it's easy to understand why. Beginning somewhere around the middle to end of your second trimester, your enlarging uterus swells enough to push your abdomen forward, making your navel pop out like a timer on a well-done turkey (even though you have a way to go before your baby is "well done"). Your belly button should revert back to its regular position a few months after delivery — (though it may have that stretched-out, "lived in" look. Until then, you can look at the bright side of your protruding navel: it gives you a chance to clean out all the lint that's accumulated there since you were a kid.
Sadly, I learned the hard way that it is NOT a great chance to clean all of the lint out of my belly button! You see, about a month ago, I had noticed some dirt fleck stuck in there so, I got out my trusty tweezers and was pulling out flecks of dirt the size of pepper. Then, I noticed that there was some other stuff in there so, I kept trying to get it out of one of the recessed areas of my belly button.... as it turns out, it kept pulling off little pieces of matter from this one area of my belly button. Well, for some reason, the goofball in me decided to give it a squeeze to see if I could get it to come out of that recession. Turns out, I managed to squeeze out a ball of stuff.
Instantly, I thought to myself that it probably was NOT a good idea to squeeze that matter out of my belly button, but instincively, I wondered if there was more so, naturally, I squeezed again. To my surprise, yet another ball of matter come out. Attached to the end of it was a little bit of skin that had just moments before lived INSIDE of my belly button and now, I had managed to squeeze it out of a tiny hole in my belly button. It did not hurt; although, you could tell that that skin had never seen the light of day before.
I called Aunt Sue, a medical assistant in her former life, to tell her what I had done. She wondered WHY in the heck I was digging in there.
I guess I was just glad that I could still see INTO my belly button at that time. Little did I know that I would soon be able to see in there EVEN MORE when it started to come to the surface from my growing belly!
I had the school nurse at work (the elementary school in MN) look at it and she thought it was probably some kind of an abcess that I managed to squeeze out, but that it looked like I will be OK. They suggested keeping it clean and putting antibiotic ointment on it. My new OB/GYN in Iowa also took a peek at it last week and thought it was kind of funny that I did that. All in all, the concensus is that I should STOP picking at (or in) my belly button.
Over the past month, that bright red skin (that once lived on the inside) has faded to a more natural color of skin. And the only time it ever really hurts is when one of the cats steps on it.
When I read the update about cleaning out the lint, I guess I was ahead of myself by a month or so. WHO KNEW?
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