38 Weeks

An incredibly rare and beautiful moment is happening right now; I'm awake before Rowan is. It's a strange thing to be able to just sit here and think about the new little one that will be in my arms in a few weeks. She has the hiccups right now and is happily (I think?) rolling around in there. Quiet moments like this are likely not going to happen much over the coming months. Somedays I feel okay about that fact, others I feel panicky about the new chapter of life about to start. 

I've become incredibly hormonal this week. This pregnancy has been so different emotionally than with Rowan. I've been pretty mellow without the intense ups and downs of last time. This week though, watch out.

I'm also so conflicted. One minute, all I want is for my water to break and get this show on the road. The next, I'm terrified and weepy at the idea that I'm so completely NOT ready for another baby. 

It was so different with preparing for our first. We had an entire room that we set up specifically for him. We went to a birth class. We spent endless hours together talking about what he would look like and what it would be like to be a parent.  This time around…Instead of spending hours sewing curtains, setting up a crib, buying wall decals and matching bedding, running my hands along the perfectly washed and hung baby boy outfits, I moved the rock'n'play into our room and called it good. Instead of registering for hundreds of baby things, we bought our solitary second baby item, a double stroller, two weeks ago. Instead of spending time having Sel feel the baby move or putting a flashlight on my belly and watching it shift around like crazy, we both look at one another with raised eyebrows during a middle of the night screaming toddler session and wonder how we are going to survive this coupled with a newborn who nurses constantly through the night. We just haven't had many things to check off of a magical "you're ready to have a baby" list this time around which makes me feel unprepared. 

Physically, it's been a weird merry-go-round too. I feel great and completely like myself most of the time. I don't feel that intense "I'm SO done" feeling that tends to hit during pregnancy. I've been vomiting and having other digestion issues lately though that we originally thought was food poisoning. I ended up going to the ER one night a few weeks ago because I was having intense abominable cramping (aka contractions) that weren't progressive. I went home from the hospital confused and still feeling so awful. I immediately threw up for the first time since having Rowan in our sink and continued to throw up for the next 48 hours. This random striking of barf has happened two other times now accompanied by endless stomach cramping and back pain. It would be a little bearable if I knew it was helping my body dilate or progress, but it's not. It's just me and my finger-tip dilated cervix being inexplicably sick. Throwing up for me is such an odd thing. Like I mentioned, I've thrown up once over the last 22-months. Before that, I'm pretty sure it was high school that was the last time. I don't barf. Even when I have felt crazy nauseous and wanted to throw up, no amount of sticking my fingers down my throat can make anything happen. When I have been getting sick like this, all I want to do is get this girl out. 

(The above was written before the appointment I just had)
I've been feeling bouts of being really down about my body. I had my OB appointment today and I'm still a fingertip dilated. My dear OB, who has been dangling induction dates in front of me like candy, let me know I wasn't a good candidate for induction until after 41 weeks. He somehow forgot that I didn't have Rowan until 42 weeks and that was after 3 days of being pumped full of drugs, having way too many things inserted downstairs, and being tethered to a marching band of machinery. It's hard not to feel like a failure again. The way some of the med staff talked to me in the hospital when I had Row couldn't have been clearer. I wasn't progressing. I was failing. I needed to "do better". Well meaning friends and family would excitedly ask if there was any news, movement, twinges that might indicate my body was actually doing something. Here we are again at that same point and I don't know if I can mentally handle it again.
Sure, something could magically change because every pregnancy is different, but it sure feels like we are on the same track here.
It hasn't helped that two disconcerting things have happened to me this week. At the gym, a kind woman who I had met the previous week told me she felt inspired by the spirit that the baby and I would have complications and she asked if she could pray for me. I was standing there in my sports bra and said, "Of course. Thank you!". She then sidled up to my bare belly, put her hand on there, closed her eyes and started praying that we would be healthy. I was so shaken by it and kept crying thinking maybe this crazy, kind lady actually had been inspired and something bad was going to happen to Lyra. This morning, Rowan randomly turned to my belly waved bye-bye then hugged it like he was saying goodbye. I asked him where baby sister was going and he just smiled and started watching baby signing time again.
Also, if you haven't had a baby at 42 weeks, you don't get to tell someone babies come when they are supposed to. It's actually a written law and I would hate to call the cops on you

35 Weeks

I've come to mile 18 and realized I still have 8.2 miles left with 4 of those being uphill.
The pregnancy marathon wall.
I don't remember feeling this way until about week 39 with Rowan sooo the next 5 weeks (please let it be 5 and not 7) should be interesting.
I've been weirdly nauseous/hungry most of the day, have started getting headaches, cramping, and feel dizzy if I move faster than a sedated sloth.
Today, however, I'm feeling better than I have the past few days. Bless this trend to continue.
I had my OB appointment today and little miss long legs is just under 7 lbs. I remember being unduly frightened when the tech exclaimed how giant Rowan was, but I don't feel like Lyra is going to be a giant ten pounder. I was expecting my bp to be high or something to explain why I feel so crummy, but it was 107/64. My OB told me the last few weeks of pregnancy are just hard sometimes. He remembers from all the times he's been pregnant. I also had to break his poor little heart and tell him Sel has not picked OB. I've been not completely lying to him every time he asks and just saying Sel is undecided still. I accidentally let it slip at this appointment that he scored an away rotation in anesthesia at my OB's old stomping grounds. He took it a little personally and was noticeably distant the rest of the appointment. I couldn't have just kept my mouth shut, given him false hope for the next few weeks and told him after she was born that OB is not Sel's future career path. He didn't even offer me a sucker when I left.

I was just telling myself how much smaller I feel than last time until I started trying to take a dumb pregnancy selfle and was like 'WHOA, girl, you're gigantic!' It must be her legs. Most of her body was measuring a few days to a week ahead of schedule except her legs. Her legs were measuring at 38 weeks 5 days. I'm not even sure how they can estimate that considering they are likely folded up pretty nicely in there, but they have been telling us at every ultrasound that her lower limbs are racing ahead of her body. I'll be interested to see if she really is daughter-long-legs or just a normally proportioned baby. Rowan does have long arms/legs and gigantic paws/feet compared to the rest of his body, so maybe that's just the fate of these two kiddos.
Little girl is blissfully head down and ready to go. The tech had a hard time measuring her head because she's nestled so nice and low in my pelvis. I've heard that one before, Miss False Hope Giver. Rowan was pretty low too and it made zero difference in helping him get out relatively on time despite the assurance from this same tech that it was a sign from the pregnancy gods that I wouldn't be pregnant for the next 1257 days.
I really know I shouldn't let myself have so much anxiety about being induced again/going over, but my crazy can't help it. I get hot flashes just thinking about being pregnant still in 7 weeks and then spending a bajillion days trying to evacuate her. It's worse this time around because the idea of being away from Rowan for a full week makes me want to cry. That little guy needs me and I for sure need him.
 A friend of mine mentioned hypnobirthing a few weeks ago and I recently read the book. I actually have a cousin who had her son using it and swears by it. I think I got turned on to it a little too late perhaps, but I have been doing my little rainbow relaxation CD everyday and am hoping it will help me during labor. If not, I'm pretty sure it's helping me stress less about never going into labor on my own.  I was telling my worries to an elderly woman at the gym the other day about going over and got handed a full plate of humility. This poor girl went 37 days over her due date with her first and averaged 24 days over on her following three pregnancies. It was before the time of induction for the first few and they just couldn't get her to go into labor when induction finally was a thing. 37 days everyone. Over a MONTH past your due date. My poor MIL had a similar thing happen with 3 of her 4 too. If they can go a month past their due dates, I can handle two weeks again, right? Right.
I think we are mostly ready for her arrival. It feels weird to not have as much stuff to get together this time around aka nothing to get together. The only thing we've really needed to buy is a double stroller (check!) and another rocking chair. Even though my body is starting to fall apart, I don't feel mentally ready for her to come just yet. I am so, so SO excited to meet her face to face, but I'm also dreading the lack of sleep. I haven't slept through the night in about two years and I remember just how tired I was after Rowan. It's a level of exhaustion I've tried desperately to forget over the past few months. I was able to take naps throughout the day when Row was a newbie, but obviously that isn't going to be an option with a toddler in tow. Hopefully her newborn glow and Row filling the role as adorable big brother will be enough to sustain me for the next two years of no sleep.

The pictures I tried to take for this month are not so great. SO here's some of the handsome boys in my life.

A really, really sweet friend gave me a pedicure a few weeks ago and Rowan has been obsessed with the idea ever since he watched her lean over my disgusting feet for two hours. 

Playing at the park

That's tape. He destroyed it while I was cleaning up paint he threw on the walls in the other room. One small disaster after another with this 21-month old. 

He's obsessed with her clothes. He tried to squeeze a newborn onsie on when I told him to put his clothes on.