Thoughts on an Impending Baby

With the start of the new year, the rolling into 2014, I suddenly feel like the birth of this baby is imminent. It’s as though subconsciously I wasn’t paying too much attention to my pregnancy because April 2014 was so very far away. It would never come, right?

It turns out that if you don’t pay attention to something, it seems to happen very quickly. One day, I realized that I was heading to my 20 week appointment–wait a minute, 20 weeks? That’s halfway! Where did all that time go?! And then the year turned over, and it started feeling like the baby is going to come very soon. Now I’m 27 weeks, and I feel like the last 13-15 weeks will last forever, but simultaneously like it’s going to be over so soon and I’ll be in labor and have a tiny newborn in the blink of an eye.

Part of it, I think, is that I got a lot bigger over the holidays, and I feel like I’ve entered the final embiggening of pregnancy. In the last trimester, if what happened last time holds true, everything expands just a bit. My arms, my legs, my face, my torso. Even my maternity clothes don’t fit as well as they used to by the end. Along with the embiggening are the general discomforts of late pregnancy that have begun creeping in. I’ve definitely felt the tendons in my groin loosening in preparation for the birth, and random aches and pains flare up here and there. Heartburn is knocking at the door.

I vacillate between not wanting to have the baby yet, and desperately wanting the baby right now. There’s a part of me that wonders if we really thought through this whole having a newborn when Ruby still feels very much like a baby (it’s too late for second thoughts, guys!). But a number of my friends have been having babies recently, and seeing the pictures and hearing the stories makes me want to have my baby now now now now now so that I can snuggle my new little sweetie pie and love her or him on the outside. And get my body back.

With the turn of the year, I’ve started thinking about things that we need. Mostly we’ve got everything, but I need some new diapers (I inherited mine from my mother, and after being used on 5 babies, there are quite a few that are fraying), and then there’s just some of this and that. I’ll probably get disposable diapers again for the first week or so until things are a tad more settled, I want to make some new big swaddling blankets, I want to make cloth wipes–just things like that. I want to do all of these things now because I’m a list person and I like getting things accomplished. But at the same time, I feel like if I check off all those boxes, it means that the baby will be so much closer to arriving and I’m not 100% sure that I’m ready for baby to be here.

Mostly, pregnancy hormones seem to be making me run around in circles again. Overall, we’re thrilled about the baby’s upcoming birth, but there are some ambient fears that I think are pretty common in pregnancy. I remember feeling similar feelings towards the end with my pregnancy with Ruby. Did we really think through this whole “let’s have a baby” thing? Will my labor be ok? Will it hurt more this time? Will there be any complications? How will I sleep when the baby comes, since I will have two kids? What if the baby ends up in the NICU, like Ruby did? (Fortunately we are insured this time!) These fears aren’t a focus for me by any means, but sometimes out of the blue a small worry will pop up, and I will chew it around for a little bit. But then I remind myself that, as my dad says, it’s not the things you worry about that tend to go wrong. Things will be all right, and whatever problems that inevitably arise will be survivable, just like all of the problems that arose with Ruby have turned out to be. And whether or not we really thought through this whole having a second child business, this baby will end up being a beautiful addition to our family. Just like Ruby is.