7 weeks.

This week has been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.  I was hoping I would surprise myself like I did with the pregnancy up until now and fill it with positivity.   But instead, I’ve woken up every day wondering if this is the day it will end.  I hate having these thoughts.  I keep trying to push them out of my head, but I’m failing.  I feel like I’m just waiting for the inevitable and this is the week it will happen.

I know that’s not logical.  Intellectually, I know that.  But my heart doesn’t, my heart remembers every second of 7 weeks 5 days that I lost  this baby’s brother or sister.  My heart is aching for what it lost and is doing everything it can to protect itself from that pain again.  Just like that baby, I love this baby with every ounce of me, and all I want is to allow it to grow strong and healthy.  There are moments where I just don’t know how I’ll do this, how I’ll make it these next 8 months.

I need to breathe.  I know this one is different.  Sometimes that gets lost in the muck of my emotions, but that feeling is still there.  I only have 4 more days until I can get reassurance, until I can hear that little heartbeat.  A heartbeat that will change everything in my life from the very first beat.

Just let me get there.  Anyone who has any power in the universe: please, just let me get there.

I love this man.

Dear Baby – Week 7

Dear Little C,

It may be a little early to start these letters to you, but I think you and I need to have a talk.  See, it’s week 7 and this is a bit of a scary week for your mama.  This is the week that I lost your big brother or sister, and I just don’t want to lose you, too.  So you can you do mama your first favor?  Can you stick around for me?  I sure do love you, just like I loved your big sibling, and I’d really love to keep growing you so we can meet you in February.  And I know that your brother or sister had to leave so that you could come, and I’m pretty sure it’s you that’s supposed to be with your papa and I.  So if you could just stay right there in your warm little surroundings, that really would be swell.  I promise to give you all the ice cream you want, okay?  In fact, I’ll start tonight…how’s that sound?  Now do you promise to grow big and strong, like a good little boy or girl?  Because I know I’ve already said it, but I don’t think I will ever say it enough: your papa and I sure do love you and we want  you so badly.

I’ll get to see you for the first time next week, on your Aunt M’s and S’s birthday.  I’ll get to hear your strong little heartbeat and I’m pretty sure I’m going to cry.  Which, speaking of crying, you might want to get used to that now….your mama is a crier.  She comes by it honestly, as her mom, her sister and her grandmother are all criers!  (Also, truth be told, your papa can be a crier too.  Just don’t tell him I told you that.)  But don’t feel like you have to be!  Nope, you can feel free to change that right away starting with you, I won’t mind one bit!  But you should know, even if you do cry (and you will), I’ll be right there to hold you.  Always.

Love,

Mama

Superstitions and incomplete sentences.

I’ve been doing really well thinking positively.  I’m surprising myself daily.  And also?  It’s been incredibly easy keeping this private.  It just feels like the right thing to do.  The first time around, I wanted to tell everyone.  I wanted to shout it from the hills in Bodega.  But this time, keeping it between Tim and I is what feels important.  It’s our little secret.  Our wonderful, mind-blowing, insanely exciting and nerve-wracking secret.  I haven’t even felt pulled to write on the blog.  To be honest, most of the time I’m trying to talk myself out of thinking certain things are jinxes.  Even writing on the blog.  It’s so painful to look back on the posts before I lost the baby and see how happy I was…and then to read the aftermath.  I just don’t want to do that again.   Still, thoughts like that prevent me from writing.  The fact that I kept my positive pregnancy test out on the counter for weeks makes me hesitate when I go to put away…when exactly did it get put in the drawer last time?  If I do it sooner, will that jinx it?  It’s ridiculous, I know.  My first appointment is on 7 weeks 6 days, and I feel like I’m jinxing it because it won’t quite be 8 weeks.  When really it will still be 1 day after where I made it before, so that’s something, right?  Then I think that 1 day after is cutting too close, and I want to call the doctor’s and make it for a week later.  I am crazy, I know, I fully admit it.  And why Tim stays married to me is beyond me.  But I can’t help it.   I know that nothing is going to prevent this baby from miscarrying if that is it’s fate and that nothing I do is going to make it stick if it doesn’t want to, so if these stupid little superstitions help me along the way, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.  Even if it makes me seem crazy.  Because in a week and 5 days I’ll be further than I got before.  And that milestone is just lingering there. Waiting for us.  And I’m going to make it past it…and then some.  This baby is sticking!

Just look away.

I seriously go around molesting my boobs every chance I get to make sure they’re still sore (excuse me, Dad).  I may have also done this once or twice in public.  But it’s just so reassuring that they still hurt!

Here we go again.

For a month now, I’ve been taking my temperature every single day.  I told myself that it was to make sure I was ovulating with the cysts; but honestly, it had just as much to do with getting pregnant again.  I wasn’t fooling anyone.  And this morning my temperature went the highest it’s ever been, and I knew it was finally time to test.  The line came quickly and there was no questioning it like last time.  We’re pregnant again!  Let me just let that soak in for a second.

I. AM. PREGNANT.

Whew!

Last week I took a couple of tests at 10 and 11 dpo and they came out negative.  It was unbelievably heartbreaking, and I did not expect that amount of sadness to come over me.  I had no idea how much I had wanted to be pregnant again until the words on the digital test screamed back at me: “Not Pregnant.”  It was like this little stick was yelling at me in glaring font that I still wasn’t pregnant, and oh yes, that miscarriage really did happen!  I swore I wouldn’t take another until the very last moment.  And that moment was this morning after the third night in a row waking up in a pool of sweat, rushing to the bathroom because I had held my pee most of the early morning so that I wouldn’t ruin my temperature.  The temp was going to be my deciding factor.  Nevermind the fact that I was two days late on my period or that I’ve been feeling naseous for the past two weeks, what mattered was that my temperature needed to stay up.  Seeing my temperature drop on the thermometer was going to be much easier than reading another “You Lost a Child and Still Are Not Pregnant” on the home pregnancy test.  So I waited until the last minute.  And it was so worth it.  When I saw that line, I hit Tim on the shoulder as hard as I could.  And then I hit him again. (What?  That’s not how you show your joy with your loved one?)  I was ecstatic.  More so than the last time, for sure.  The first time I didn’t know how to react.  It felt odd for it to be okay to be pregnant, that my mom wasn’t in the next room about to give me a lecture on unprotected sex and my options (by the way Mom, still waiting on that talk).  But this time?  This time it was okay to feel happiness.  I deserve it.  It’s been a long 4 months of pain, both physical and emotional.  And even though I know the fear will creep in from time to time (it already has a couple of times today), I am determined to be excited about this pregnancy and not spend every waking day frightened of what could happen.  What is going to happen is going to happen and I have no control over that.  And this child deserves every bit of my excitement.

I feel like I’m in a perfect place mentally.  I’m better prepared for what could happen.  It would be just as painful emotionally, but I might be able to stand up and dust my pants off a little quicker this time.  That loss is always going to remain in me.  I was a mother before, and I am a mother again and that baby was just as real to me as this one is now.  I feel stronger, more ready; my voice doesn’t even feel the same.  So I guess I’m jumping off the bridge and not looking back.  And I think this time, it’s going to be different.