While I’ve tried not to make every column about pregnancy since my mid-April announcement, it’s kind of the biggest (literally) thing going on in my life.

My brain ping-pongs back and forth; I’ll be minding my own business, reading or whatever, and all of a sudden I’ll realize, “Oh my God, there are two brains inside my body right now.”

We’re about halfway through the pregnancy — I’m about 21 weeks along (I can hear Bon Jovi now, ‘Woah-oh, we’re halfway there!’). So far, so good on the physical health front. Despite my preexisting condition of having one kidney, my blood pressure has been great, I’m eating healthily (mostly thanks to my wife), the weight gain has been normal and I’m maintaining my standard daily dog-walking exercise quotient (admittedly, a little slower and with a lot more panting than I did previously).

I’m at the point where my clothes still fit, but they don’t look good. We found out a few weeks ago from genetic testing (results all negative, which in this case is good!) that it’s a boy. I mean, probably. Obviously my kiddo can be whatever they want when they grow up. Statistically speaking, he’s probably going to be a boy.

We had the 20-week anatomy ultrasound last week, and the doctor literally wrote in the test results, an official medical record, “baby looks fabulous.”

I felt him move for the first time a few days ago. I might have actually been feeling him earlier without realizing it, because all the women I’ve spoken to about what feeling their baby’s first movement was like described it as “a flutter.” I did not feel a flutter. I felt what I thought was gas, until it happened several times in rapid succession in one spot and I realized, “Oh my God, that’s not a fart, that’s my son.”

I also didn’t feel a warm rush of maternal connection. If anything, the sensation kind of freaked me out. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad to be feeling it. It’s a sign that he’s healthy in there and developing normally. But it just felt so weird to have something moving inside me that wasn’t me. So far he’s kicked a lot when my wife and I were talking about ninjas, and when I was listening to an AI agent during a phone call. I don’t know what this means.

By all accounts, my pregnancy thus far should be considered an easy one. So I feel bad complaining, because I did happily sign up for this, and I’m very grateful to be pregnant because I want to meet this baby.

Even so, I am not really enjoying the experience of pregnancy.

You know the saying “It’s about the journey, not the destination”? No. It’s absolutely about the destination, here. The journey is over a terrible road with shot shock absorbers and a broken air conditioner.

In my first trimester, I had the first depressive episode I’ve ever had in my life. For weeks, I had no energy, even less desire to socialize than usual, was much crankier and quick to anger than usual, and generally just felt a sense of malaise. If I’d been left to my own devices, I probably just would have stayed in bed in a dark room all day scrolling videos on Instagram mindlessly. It was not fun. I was not myself. I genuinely don’t know what caused it — the pregnancy itself and its attendant hormones (most people know about postpartum depression) or if it was because I had to go off the trio of psychiatric medications that I had been on successfully for seven years.

One of the medications had some actual study data that indicated it could lead to an increased risk of heart defects in a fetus, so of course I stopped that one immediately. But the other two medications had no data on them one way or another, because apparently it’s easier to just tell pregnant women to go off their meds and deal with the consequences for nine months rather than bother with the cost and rigamarole of testing. That really cheesed me off. The most anxiety-inducing time in my life and all of a sudden one of my most reliable coping mechanisms has been taken away because nobody wanted to check if it was safe or not?

It’s not like I was on super uncommon medications. I can’t talk about most of the physical side effects in a family newspaper, but rest assured, they are real and they are uncomfortable. I have night sweats so bad that every morning my dogs race for my legs when I get out of bed because as far as they’re concerned, I’m a giant salt lick.

I’ve heard lots of women say their dogs sensed their pregnancy even before they did, but either my dogs haven’t noticed yet or they are playing it super cool, because they’re acting the same as ever. The cat, however, has become much more interested in curling up on my abdomen (as opposed to my head, which was her previous favorite spot). Science can’t say if she’s aware there’s another person in there or if she’s just gravitating toward the extra warmth. Time will tell.