I have been hiding behind passwords for a long time now because our journey back to parenthood has been a painful and scary one, one that I haven’t wanted to share with the whole world, and, frankly, once BG got sick and then died, I have had little way of knowing who has found this blog, who is reading, and, well, that was worrisome to me for a number of reasons, but mostly because I just wanted to hold all of our news, good and bad, pretty close to the vest. In the process, though, I seem to have forgotten to blog altogether, and now I’m starting to regret that.
As many of you know, whether you read under passwords or you read the other blog or you are active on social media where I am, I am finally, finally pregnant with a kicky, bouncy, lively little girl. In fact, so pregnant am I that this past week, I reached the third trimester. I’m two thirds of the way through this pregnancy, and the months and weeks I was wishing it would speed by have passed. Now I’m ready for it all to slow down a little so that I can breathe for a minute before TinyDancer (her in utero blog moniker) makes her arrival.
Oh, don’t get me wrong: I want to meet this little girl so badly. I want to hold her and smell her head and touch her toes and remember that feeling of all-consuming love. But it’s a big transition moving from being a mom of a preschooler to a mom of a deceased child to an expectant mother all over again. It’s different looking forward to this baby while missing her brother.
It’s also different because I am feeling my age oh so much more. I went into this pregnancy in better shape and at a much healthier weight than I was with BG, but my age of 39 seems to trump all of that great progress. I have felt slow and achy, even whiny. Last time I was buoyant with joy and life and the love of being pregnant. I still love being pregnant in some ways, but other times, times like this weekend when I was in so much physical discomfort that I cried, I hate to admit that I’m not loving it so much. On days like those, I’m relieved to be two-thirds finished with this pregnancy.
But then I catch myself. This is very, highly likely the last time I will be pregnant. This is the last time I’m going to feel my child growing inside of me, kicking me and rolling around, the last time I’ll have this amazing feeling that despite all the odds, I was able to create life, a sibling for my beloved boy, a new child for my wife and I to mother. I don’t want to forget that. I spent so much of the first trimester in utter terror and disbelief that I would lose this pregnancy too, and so much of the second with more terror that somehow test results would come back abnormal, that now I just need to settle in and relish the last few months of what feels so much like a miracle.
School is ending soon, and while we have plenty of activities going on afterward, I’m going to have the benefit of slowing down a little, sitting in the sun and rubbing my belly, and I need that so, so much. I need the long, hot, endless days of summer to bring me into my body, into the present so that I can burn it all into my memory.
So I suppose returning to this blog now is part of that. I have chronicled part of this pregnancy in a real pen and paper kind of journal, but my Tiny Dancer deserves a few updates here as well. After all, before long, she will be the resident Girl Genius.
And so, in the interest of sharing and being brave, and living in the present, and celebrating that I’m growing what appears to be a very healthy little life, I present to you me at 28 weeks, big bare belly and all.
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reproducing genius 