The next chapter

I am so ready to welcome this little baby into my arms and into this world.
I am so ready to start the next chapter.

This pregnancy has been hard. It started unexpectedly, nearly didn't make it, almost started pre-term labour, and is now overdue. The emotions of this pregnancy have been beyond overwhelming. After losing Thomas my optimism has been shaken. I used to sit in the baby room and dream. I now sit in the baby room and fight back tears, working very hard to convince myself that I WILL bring home a healthy baby.

I am looking forward to the next chapter because in this part the baby will always be wanted. I feel sad that the child was not planned. That when I found out I was not happy. I feel sad that I cried for 15 weeks about being pregnant. It hurts my heart that I couldn't and didn't cherish every second I knew about this sweet child.
In the next chapter, from the second it arrives, it will be wanted and loved and cherished. Delta will know nothing else.

I'm looking forward to the next chapter, knowing that delta will complete our family. I am thrilled to see how the older three react to the new one. I am beyond excited to watch them grow up together. I'm excited to have a newborn to snuggle ONE MORE TIME and then excited to leave the baby stage behind us.

I am SO excited to not ever be pregnant again.

So Delta, come on out. Please. I love you and can't wait to meet you and snuggle you. And you're late.

So bring on the baby, and say goodbye to the belly.

Breaking the expectations

I’m not sure what I was expecting of this pregnancy. I mean, I wasn’t expecting the pregnancy, so how can I expect anything out of it? Or rather, how would I know what to expect out of my brain when I wasn’t planning this. I like planning. I’m a planner. I need to know what’s going on. And this has become more important to me since bravo and his allergies and since Thomas. Those two very unplanned things really threw (and continue to throw) me for big giant brain-breaking loops. So I really try to keep everything else orderly (as orderly as it can be with 3 very small kids) and planned and keep my life tidy. I don’t know why I haven’t accepted yet that life just isn’t tidy.

Add in another unplanned loop (baby icicle) and no wonder I feel like I’m going crazy.

I knew more or less what to expect with other pregnancies. I would get pregnant, have a baby, be unprepared (yes, I planned to be unprepared- see my problem??), land on my feet, repeat 2 more times.

And then the plan was to have an 18 month old and 3 year old and 4.5 year old for the summer and go to the beach and get on with life and find freedom that comes with no infants.

And then my plan was changed and I have since been knocked off my feet and am still struggling to get back on them. I don’t deal well with plans being changed for me. If I have some notice, fine. But with no notice…. I go a little crazy. Er.

I’ve been working the last bit at changing my expectations.

This baby was not expected.

This new family dynamic wasn’t expected.

Being pregnant with 3 other kids (which, by the way, is for the birds- what does that even mean??) was not expected.

(side note- how many idioms do I use in a day that I really don’t know why I use them or where they came from? I like idioms. They make things funny.)

So how do I be OK with this? I mean, I have no choice. But maybe it’s OK that I’m not doing cartwheels (metaphorical, not literal, I would land in bone breaking and uncomfortable positions if I attempted that right now and my pelvis may actually snap in half) over this pregnancy. Maybe it’s OK that I don’t know what to expect from this child and from my family. Maybe it’s OK that my life is not going according to plan (has it ever, though??) and that I am thrown for a loop with this.

Maybe it’s OK, maybe I should encourage myself even, to let go of expectations for this pregnancy and for this child and just feel what I’m going to feel and then get on with life. Because feeling guilt over not meeting my expectations for this pregnancy as I did for the previous ones is eating me up. And I’ve had just about enough of guilt. Now, it seems to not have enough of me, but maybe I can kick it to the curb for this pregnancy and baby and let myself revel in whatever experience this is shaping out to be. This is my LAST baby, so I would like to start enjoying the pregnancy (even the miseries of it- like peeing my pants because the 4 year old trumps the pregnant woman’s need for the toilet) despite not being prepared for it.

This baby was a surprise. And I have a feeling that the baby itself is going to be a surprise. Wait, I just repeated myself, didn’t I? I mean the existence of the baby was a shock, and maybe the whole parenting experience is just going to be a surprise with this one. The first 3 are radically different little people, so this one I’m sure is going to keep me guessing.

I have no idea anymore what this post is about.

So much for planning.

pregnancy

Oh pregnancy. How I love and loathe thee at the same time. Sometimes the love is stronger, sometimes the loathe.

Love:

1. Feeling a tiny little person moving around, doing summersaults, moving, playing with its fingers and toes, kicking in the ribs. I even love the painful movements of third trimester (though I grumble, I really do love it.) It’s a little less fun when ribs get moved because baby think s it’s awesome to stick his bum in there and then never move away (thanks, Alpha), but it’s just a wonderful feeling.

2. Watching my other kids love up the little baby. Alpha and Bravo regularly talk to my belly. Alpha has felt the baby kick him a few times now and then he over-reacts and rolls onto the floor saying “oooh, baby, you’re so strong, you knocked me all the way across the room”. Adorable.

3. knowing that I have life inside of me. It’s pretty incredible.

4. Feeling confident in my belly and body. Pregnancy is the one time of my life I’m not worried about my body image or how far my belly sticks out. It’s all good. The belly is SUPPOSED to be huge. And I seem to be one of the lucky pregnant women who simply look like they swallowed a beach ball and weight goes away from my face and legs and everywhere else and lands straight to my belly.

5. The fact that when it’s all over it ends with this incredible rush of joy and emotion and a tiny tiny perfect little wonderful-smelling new baby.

6. Pants without zippers. Handy. Just pull ‘em down and you’re good to pee! It always takes me a while to re-adjust to zippered pants.

7. Looking at tiny new-born clothes and going through the clothing in storage and washing and folding and sorting it and imagining the tiny person that will fill those tiny sleepers.

8. Naming small people. Coming up with all these names and trying them out with the other kids’ names and how they fit and what type of personality would come with the name. I guess it’s the dreaming part of pregnancy that I like. Dreaming of the name and the person and what they’ll be like and who they’ll turn out to be, and which sibling they’ll bond with the most as the years go on. Boy? Girl? It’s fun. Sure, it comes with heartburn (oooh, heartburn) but I love the dreaming.

Loathe:

1. Round ligament pain. It seems to be particularly bad this go-around. I woke up thinking I was dying and my belly was being torn in half. Then I recognized the agonizing pain of my too-big belly not being supported by a pillow and stretching these horrible round ligaments to the point of them screaming in my side. So bring on the body pillow. Today they were just so stretched out from last night that any time I move at all pain goes ripping down my side. Comfy.

2. Heartburn. Ooooh, heartburn. I would shake my fist at you but that would probably make you worse. Matthew thinks that copious amounts of Tums Is what makes our kids so darn cute.

3. The incredible instability of my emotions. Curse you, Pampers commercials! Why is your goal to make pregnant women cry? I’m still not buying your stinky smelly diapers, thank you very much. And now my face is red and blotchy. Jerks.

4. Not being able to take NeoCitran and other wonderful sick-relieving drugs. Though I suppose having a child born with all its appendages is worth the discomfort, but STILL.

5. The fact that pregnancy ends in labour and then post-partum. Yuck.

6. The worry of 40 weeks of pregnancy. Being terrified that something will go wrong. This is worse this go-around after Thomas, but it was bad with all of them. And then it leads to a life-time of worrying about your little person. That part I don’t mind so much. Worrying about them when they’re on the outside is easier because then at least you can hug them and smell their sweet little heads. But worrying about them on the inside is just so hard. How many times with the four of them have I poked and prodded my belly after drinking juice and laying on my left side just willing the kid to kick me in the ribs?

7. All the strangers who think that just because you have a cute belly means that you WANT to talk to them. I didn’t like people before I got pregnant, I certainly don’t like them now!

8. Trying to name small peoples. I am really out of names. And if this poor child is a boy it’s screwed. Alpha want to name him Bob after his teddy bear, and at this point it’s all we’ve got! Baby Bob. Named after a small brown bear. Either that or “Storm Trooper”. We’ve gotta get thinking on this…..

Taking a deep breath now.

And working on welcoming baby Delta to our crazy family.

We had our 20 week ultrasound on Friday. I had no idea just HOW worried I was about it until it was over. I’ve always heard that pregnancy after loss is hard. Harder than normal. I had a miscarriage between Alpha and bravo at 5 weeks, and it really didn’t affect me that much. I mean, I was sad, and it sucked, but I right away got pregnant with Bravo and without that miscarriage I just wouldn’t have bravo. And it really didn’t take long to get past my miscarriage point. Only a week after I found out. I was kind of on pins and needles until second trimester, but that’s pretty much every pregnant woman who has ever existed.

This time though, this time. Ugh. It’s not that I thought the same thing would happen. It was just knowing that terrible things happen to pregnancies every single day and knowing that I am not exempt from this. And getting to the 20 week ultrasound this time was terrifying because that’s when everything went pear shaped. (pear-shaped- what does that even mean, anyway??)

We got to the ultrasound and actually didn’t have to wait for an unreasonable amount of time like every single other time I’ve ever gone. Which at this point is a lot. Matthew came with me. He will never again miss another ultrasound. He was there for Alpha’s and not there for Bravos. He was only there for Charlie and Thomas’ because he hadn’t yet started the school year (it was August 26^th – a Thursday.) I don’t know how I would have gotten through that day if he wasn’t there. How do you call your husband to tell him news that your baby is dead? That one baby is in rough shape and the other, that you didn’t even know you had, was lying dead beside your living baby. I shudder just thinking of him not being there, of going by myself like I had with bravo. So now Matthew will cancel all plans and make it to every single ultrasound.

And this time? It was so nice having him there. Feeling the air come back into the room as we watched our one and only in-utero healthy baby kicking around with a healthy, beating, beautiful, 4 chambered heart. Mat held my hand and we both just fought back good tears. The tech was amazing. The biggest “struggle” was deciding if I wanted to know the gender. I did, Matthew said it was up to me, but I only wanted to know to deal with the intense curiosity. So I chose not to. The only time we DID know was when Charlie was in me. And we found out because we had to know because of whatever was going on with his cysts. So NOT knowing is kind of… celebrational for us. It’s been our healthy babies that we didn’t know. So I fought every urge I had and said I didn’t want to know. Not so bad for the toughest part of an ultrasound!!!!

The tech talked me through everything (I told her about Charlie’s 20 week scan) and pointed out every single part of the baby and at the end said ‘last time the doctor probably had to come in and then we would have rushed your results, right?” I said yes and she said “well, there is no reason at all for the doctor to come in and it will take the full 7-10 days for the results to get to your midwife”. Such wonderful words to hear. Without saying “baby looks awesome” she told me that everything is just fine.

And I feel like I can breathe. Like this heaviness that has been on my chest for the past 20 weeks has been moved. And let me tell you, breathing feels awesome. It feels kind of like I’m just finding out I’m pregnant though. I didn’t realize it, but I really hadn’t accepted this pregnancy as real, or at least as something that would result in a new baby. But now… I have no reason to think otherwise. I mean, there are still terrible things that can happen, and I know that. It’s just really nice to be past the part where I lost Thomas. Because whatever happens I got further than I did last time. I suspect, like every single other pregnant woman, I won’t rest easy until this baby is in my arms nursing. Because that’s what mom’s do is worry.

It’s just nice to feel positive. I haven’t felt like this in a very long time.

So, baby Delta, Welcome to our family. I can’t wait to meet you and see who you are and look into your beautiful eyes and kiss your beautiful wrinkly little alien-head. Be who you’re going to be, and I’ll see you in a few months. Love, Mommy.

Food Friday

Ok- I've seriously sucked at putting up new recipes. And this week is not going to be any better. But next week I'll do my dairy-free cream and mushroom sauces.

This week is the pregnant edition of food friday. Also known as
Everything I wish I was eating RIGHT NOW.

1. popcorn chicken form KFC
2. Sushi rolls
3. Chocolate cake
4. double pepperoni and mushroom pizza
5. cinnamon buns with icing
6. Hot dogs
7. A big mac
8. Mashed potatoes with gravy- but not gross gravy. Really really good gravy.
9. Poutine
10. nachos
11. Apple pie
12. Chicken pot pie with yummy crust and lots of sauce all piping hot.
13. Popcorn twists (you know those melty things that have no resemblance to real popcorn what so ever? those things. And maybe some hickory sticks.)


Hmmm. It seems like sweet or savory all I really want to eat is cmofort foods high in simple carbs. mmmmm, simple carbs. How I adore thee! It's a good thing I'm broke and too lazy to make these things or I'd be up 58 pounds 10 weeks in!