| Week 17 I am officially 17 weeks pregnant. Yesterday I realized, that God willing, in 20 weeks a new baby will arrive. It's been an interesting week and I'm not exactly sure where the time has gone. There isn't anything specifically that was done, although I know I was busy every night. On Wednesday Dylan and I celebrated our anniversary. We have now been married three years and I wonder where the time has gone. I always knew that I would be married young and I wanted to have children young. How is it then that three years have passed and I have yet to spend nights or days comforting and loving a baby? In our original plans, we would wait a year before starting a family. Somewhere I picked up the notion that we needed to learn to live with eachother for at least one year before even thinking about adding a third little human being. I still think this is a good idea. Except after we had been married a year, I switched jobs and it just didn't seem like a good idea to be thinking about possibly delivering a baby before I had been there a year. Then in the fall of that year I went back to school and it just didn't seem like a good idea to be working full time, going to school and trying to take care of a baby. So we waited again. A cousin mentioned that if we weren't careful, we might just keep putting off children forever. Finally we were ready and then it took almost 6 months to get pregnant. Funny how plans get sidetracked. Back to the anniversary. We went to the Olive Garden for dinner. A restaraunt that both of us really like. The host seated us at a table in a little cove area where there were only 6 total tables. Neither of us has ever been big alcohol drinkers. Occasional cocktails here and there or a beer at a bonfire. That night I would have given my eye teeth to have a glass of wine. Every other table ordered at least a glass of wine. It seems that I really want some of those no-no's that I know I can't have. When I was pregnant with Matthew, this was not a problem. I didn't mind going without alcohol, caffeine, even a lot of the sweets I'm fond of. It's not really that I mind going without this time either, it just seems that I've had to avoid all of this for over a year and a half now and instead of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, I'm looking at at least another year of refraining from all those naughty pleasures. The meal was very good and we spent the rest of the evening curled up with a movie. There was an incident that happened in week 16 that I'm going to touch on this week because I've been thinking about it. I mentioned that I held a candle party at my house last week. One of the ladies who came is a friend I've known for quite awhile, but never been really close to. She's a really, really sweet person. The type of person that remembers you at special times and doesn't really seem to have a mean bone in her body. She and her husband will have been married for four years this August and they have two beautiful little girls. In September, they will welcome their third child. At first she was almost upset to be pregnant again, but in a very short time became very excited. At the party she kept asking me "Aren't you excited?" Several times, she repeated this question and I always responded yes. The question started to bother me after the first couple of times and I had to think about why. I am excited, I'm thrilled to be growing a new, unique life within me. I'm just not excited in the same way as someone who has delivered two healthy children and never experienced a loss, is excited. For me there is no anticipatory event to compare to or imagine. I can't wonder if this baby will have the same birth as my last child, how my other children will react or if it will look like them. Nor can I wonder what it will be like to see my first child, to experience my first birth. I have neither of those to worlds. Having delivered a stillborn baby, I'm in a limbo world, where this is neither my first baby nor my second child. This is truthfully my second baby, but it will be our first child in a way that only those who have lost a baby can understand. I've realized that this pregnancy is a sort of no man's land and it would almost seem no woman's land. There isn't any material out there that involves what to expect during a subsequent pregnancy. This is a unique experience that so many women will go through. A book I'm reading, Misconceptions, mentions how pregnancy is really a road that a woman travels all alone. I would argue that during a first pregnancy and even later pregnancies a woman at least has her girlfriends to some extent. However, when traveling the road of a subsequent pregnancy after a loss, that support somehow gets lost. The girlfriends who are pregnant or have been pregnant don't know how to reassure me when I'm anxious or worried. They don't know what to say because they cannot give the standard answers given to first time pregnant moms or even those reserved for women who have already had children. Everyone around me knows that every pregnancy doesn't have a happy ending. On a happier note, mostly. I still have not felt this little darling moving. By this time when I was pregnant with Matthew, he was already making his preferences in clothing known. If the pants I was wearing were a little snug for his liking, he would kick at the waistband until I moved it. Friday I decided to make a little trip to the doctor's office so that I could hear the baby's heartbeat again. My doctor is wonderful and his nurse's, both the current and previous, are equally wonderful and willing to listen for the heartbeat when I need a little reassurance. When I got there Friday afternoon, the nurse brought me into the room with an ultrasound and said that since I was 17 weeks we would just take a peek at the baby. So I got an impromptu ultrasound on Friday. There was the head and that perfect little string of pearls known as the spine. We watched the baby cross and uncross legs and arms. I saw perfect little fingers and there in the middle of the baby's chest was that little blinking light, otherwise know as the heart. There is nothing so amazing as sneaking a peak into that other world where my baby dwells. This child is so absolutely and completely loved and is not yet much bigger than my hand. With the friendships I've made online and the family around me and friends who've been with us, this baby is loved by so many more than he or she will ever know. |