You will be arriving in T-4 weeks and a few days. However, Daddy and I think you have other plans and guess you might be a mid-September baby. Daddy thinks the first day of fall, his favorite season, while I'm hoping you'll hang on long enough for my students to meet their long term substitute at school!
If it's one thing your pregnancy isn't, it's uneventful. With Bean, week by week passed with textbook milestones and anticipation. This is similar to you but with added "excitement" along the way. The subchorrionic bleed is now a small sliver of a crescent moon overshadowed by a beautifully growing girl whom we've witnessed kicking and yawning on ultrasounds in the womb. It's hard to forget how scary it was when, at weeks 6-14, it was a massive black pool triple your size.
But I've learned:
God takes Time and Time does Heal. Quite literally, in fact.
As things become "normal", it becomes increasingly easy to forget to be thankful. So perhaps this is why Wednesday's 12 hour triage trip occurred - another wake up call. I woke up at 2 AM with dizziness and an inability to focus properly. When it didn't go away by 6, I'm glad I had the right mind to say that something was off. I went to the hospital armed with an amazing husband who sat in an incredibly uncomfortable chair beside me for 12 hours while we talked with nurses, PAs, and doctors about the "episode" and my symptoms. Many hours of magazine reading later, I had my first ever MRI which I believe is inaccurately portrayed on House as it sounded like a cross between a rave, construction site, and nuclear warfare. More waiting and the scan came back - nothing. I was diagnosed with vertigo. That I can handle. Dehydration could have also been a trigger so perhaps drinking more water wouldn't be a bad idea either. :)
Having a baby is not easy work. It takes strength to hold it together - for yourself and for your baby. For some it's in trying to conceive, others in staying pregnant, for others in labor or what to do when you're finally home with this human being you prayed so hard to receive. And a quick note about all those who raise a child without having gone through pregnancy themselves: It's not easier for them. Their strength came in the waiting for a child and having to trust that when the time was right, a child would enter their lives.
During all of my Wednesday waiting it really began to sink in that so many things could go wrong and that we are extremely BLESSED. While they don't seem like small things in the moment, everything I've gone through so far was just a little bump in the road. In fact, through every trial that we've had in our pregnancy with you, you were doing just fine. I found these logics on an elementary school friend's post today and thought it was fitting.
While #s 1 & 3 are logics I need to take the time to remember, #s 2 & 5 are especially difficult for me. I care deeply about what others think which somehow manifests itself in dwelling on how much better other people have it. But it's true. I don't know what their journey is about just as the strangers who comment on my pregnant size or shape have no idea of the stressful beginning of my pregnancy with you.
If it's one thing I'd like to teach you in life, it's to enjoy YOUR journey. Surround yourself with people who will stick by in the bad as well as good times and those who don't care how much or little you have, just how you make the best of it.
