June 12, 2008 – 35 weeks pregnant

To my dear little one,

I haven’t met you yet. I don’t know who you are, aside from the inkling that I get into your personality from the circus acts that you perform inside of me. I have a feeling that you are going to be Trouble, and I would expect nothing less! I love feeling you move and play within me and, even though I am anxious to meet you, I know that I will miss this time that we have had together when it is over.

We have had many months to prepare for you, and yet, although your nursery will be ready and the diapers will be washed and folded, I don’t think that anything really can prepare us for your arrival. We just can’t quite wrap our hearts around the idea that you will be here in person so soon – that this little life who has pushed back at us, kicked every internal organ that I have, and made my body move with their hiccups three times a day, is actually a real little human being. Yet we are so excited to meet you, to realize that you are real and that you are ours, come hell or high water.

Know, little one, that you were created and incubated with an incredible amount of love. I cannot explain the feeling that I had when I saw the little cross on the pregnancy test, back when you were just a minute ball of cells, and then again when we saw you for the first time on the ultrasound, already a rambunctious little person. You were so determined to exist, to flourish – and in doing so, you have somehow made me flourish and exist more, too. It is amazing to see the progress that you have made in the past 33 weeks – from a little mouse-shrimp who made me so incredibly sick and exhausted, to an out-of-proportion human-esque little being with a tail that made me feel the healthiest I have ever felt in my life, to this almost-ready-for-the-world little person who keeps trying to convince us just how precocious you really are.

Already, although I have never held you in my arms or kissed you or seen your eyes, I cannot believe the love that I feel for you – and yet, I know that it is not even a smidgen of what I will feel for you when you are born, and in the days, weeks, months and years that will come. Right now, I love the feeling of you and the idea of you – I really cannot wait to meet you and learn who you are, to see who you grow to become. Whoever you are, you are incredibly special and loved, by me, by your amazingly proud daddy, and by each of our families. You certainly seem sure that you are ready to take on the world already – the big question is, is the world ready for you??? A Curtis-Celena cross, now that is a frightening thought – I wonder whose stubbornness you will inherit!

No matter who you are or what you become, you will be wonderful and you will make us proud. You will change us into people who we never knew we could be. You will add an element to our lives that, until that moment of your birth, we never could have imagined. You will teach us a new meaning of love. Already, you are an incredible person.

Just know how much you are loved, even now, even before we have met you. Just a week ago, your father said, “I just want to meet it!” (Yes, to us you are still an ‘it’ – although we all have our theories about what gender you will turn out to be!) And I echo those feelings. Yet I will hold onto you for a little while longer, cherish this time that we have that is just ours, when we are so interconnected that I have to pee for you! I will enjoy your kicks and rolls and jabs, you hiccups, your startles, and I will savour this brief moment in time, that admittedly occasionally feels like it might last forever, while I am your whole world.

With so much love,

Mummy

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MAY 10, 2008

Getting closer! I am now on (hopefully) temporary medical leave from work due to low blood pressure, which is at least better than high blood pressure! After a faint at work and a bit of bleeding, I think it is probably good to take some time off - but I am not very good at relaxing. Baby is forcing me, however, and because of that, I will be kinder to my body. I cannot wait to meet the little troublemaker, hopefully in less than 10 weeks! It will be nice to see the little bugger again when they do the ultrasound next week to make sure there is no bleeding in my placenta. One last look in-utero before we meet him/her face-to-face!

Most Hilarious Aspects of Being Pregnant:

• EVERYONE, regardless of their own weight, feels the need to tactlessly comment on your size - continually! What you say to them: "No, I'm not having sextuplets" or "Actually, I'm not due for three more months." What you want to say to them: "I'm pregnant - what's your excuse?!"
• One word - HORMONES. Okay, they may not be hilarious to you when they are making you extremely annoyable (I might have just invented that word) or emotional, but looking back, the irrationality seems pretty darn funny!
• Attempting a bikini wax - this involves a mirror, almost falling over (a lot) and 3-4 times the regular amount of time necessary.
• Putting socks on - "the dance." That is, when your pelvis doesn't hurt so much that you can't even lift your legs!
• When your baby is lying on one side and your belly looks completely deformed.
• Knowing that you're actually peeing for two!
• When your baby kicks you and makes your jump, and everyone who sees you jump for no apparent reason just thinks you are crazy.
• Pregnancy brain - all I can say is thank goodness I have that to use as an excuse!
• Nesting - you go to get a roll of toilet paper out from under the bathroom sink and end up taking everything out and re-organizing it. You see all these little things that need doing - and then you do them! You spend an obscene amount of time arranging towels in the guest bathroom just so. You arrange and re-arrange and re-re-arrange everthing.
• When you push on your baby - and your baby pushes back!
• People treat you as though you have some uncurable disease and part the red sea so that you can pass by.... The belly apparently has the power of Moses. (courtesy of MooMommy)
• You forget that you can't fit through spaces that you used to be able to (yes, I got stuck in the door the other day!) and that you actually take up more space - much in the way that you might have a branch knock your cowgirl hat off your head because you forget that it adds height.
• to be continued!

* * *

MARCH 17, 2008

Four months to go until our due date! This is very exciting; while I know that Tigger probably won't arrive on his/her due date, it is still exciting to see the weeks pass by, watch my tummy grow and feel the little critter bouncing around like - well - Tigger! I am just wondering - what is this going to feel like in ten weeks if the baby is already able to startle me with his/her sudden, powerful movements? I think s/he might punch a hole in me!

I LOVE this second trimester! I have never felt so healthy in my life - tons of energy and motivation, and so happy with everything. That is, when I'm not throwing up or crying for no apparent reason.... Ah, the joys. At any rate, I feel so blessed to be able to experience this. I can't wait to go on maternity leave and devote myself full time to being a mummy!

* * *

FEBRUARY 27, 2008

Tomorrow is, theoretically speaking, halfway to meeting our baby! Wow, how amazing. It seems like time went so slow as it has happened, but looking back, it seems so fast! Now I feel the Karate Kid moving around and banging on me often - it always makes me smile. It seems like yesterday when I was telling people about the microscopic shrimp-baby mouse cross that was growing inside me. Now the critter is 6 inches and more than half a pound!

I am so excited - to meet our baby, to get to know it, to learn who it is and why it is here. I am excited to see what it likes and dislikes. I am excited to see recognition and love in its eyes when it looks at me. I am excited to watch my husband as he learns how to be a father - and I know that he will be an amazing one! I am excited to learn what it is to be a mother, how it changes my priorities even more than it already has, how it changes me in ways I can't yet imagine.

Oh yes, these are exciting times! Love and luck, as always, to you and yours!

* * *

IN THE BEGINNING....

Hello, fellow pregos and trying-to-be-pregos! I am a 25-year-old Accounts Manager with a wonderful and supportive new-ish husband. We were preparing to prepare to have a child... but apparently one was very determined to sneak in a little early, so here we are! I absolutely knew I was on November 7 - I had pain that was different from any that I had ever known and I felt... pregnant. By the next morning, I was sure that I was wrong (although I had dreamed of children that night) but it was the day I was supposed to get my period and it hadn't show up yet so I figured I'd take a test just to make sure I could down some wine that evening with friends at a get-together. I have done so many of those tests because I have a crazily irregular cycle and I would become concerned after a while of period no-show. The little blue line that tells me the test is working showed up... and then a faint cross. I could not believe it! It almost looked like a shadow. So I hopped in the shower and when I got out, sure enough, there was the cross; a positive pregnancy test.

So I woke my husband up (he had only gotten home from work a few hours earlier) and gave him the exciting news, then headed off to work. I stopped in, then proceeded to a walk-in clinic, where I had a negative urine test. The doctor decided to send me for a blood test and there it was - positive confirmation that I am going to by a mummy!

We are so very excited. The same day that we found out we closed a deal on a house, so we will have a new house for our new bambino, too.

These are happy times! Love and luck to us all!