We'd Have a One-year-old

Time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears us all away.*

Can you believe that my first baby was due more than a year ago? I can, but that doesn't make it easy to picture what it would be like to have a one-year-old already. Time continues to heal and I can view last year's emotions from a comfortable distance. I spent a lot of last spring and summer thinking about how far along I should be. To a lesser extent, I thought about how old Keiki would be after the EDD passed. But as life continued, the stream of time rolled along, those thoughts simply faded.

Anniversaries, though, have a way of bringing things back to the surface. In the past few weeks, I've seen a few one-year-olds and was struck by the notion that I would have one of those had things been different. I can't be sad about these thoughts; it's just not worth the turmoil. One thing miscarriage has taught me is that I just have to let myself feel what I'm going to feel and not try to force any emotions.

And I really am doing well continuing to look at the silver lining. If we had a one-year-old, we almost certainly would not have bought a house and moved. I would be a different kind of parent than I plan to be for this little one. I've had longer to think about pregnancy and parenting and my views have matured in many facets. And, in a general sense, I've learned to appreciate pregnancy far more and in different ways than I might have otherwise.

Now that I'm more than halfway there (!), I'm feeling Lily move around more and more, and I can barely change the size of my bump by sucking in. I'm really, really pregnant. I finally told all my piano students' parents so that they know what's going to happen after the baby comes. None of them knew about my miscarriages, and they still don't.

But the more people know and can tell I'm pregnant by looking at me, the more I feel compelled to explain my history. For every ten people who are really excited and happy for us, there's one or two that I suspect might be dealing with pain as regards pregnancy. Like that lady who just had her second child after a nine-year-gap. And that not-old-but-no-longer-childbearing-age couple who may not be childless by choice. My heightened sensitivity feels the need to explain to them that I have put in my time in the school of hard knocks, that even though I'm young and a relative newlywed, this road hasn't been as easy as you might assume. I'm pregnant, but I'm trying not to flaunt it.

That's just another unfair thing about miscarriage. Why should anyone's pain make someone feel better? Why should I feel like I have truly earned the right to be pregnant with a healthy baby by virtue of what I've gone through? No amount of explanation or attempts at justification will make my or anyone else's situation fair. There's just no fairness to be had in this fallen world. All I can really do, therefore, is to be at peace and pray. Pray for myself, for my Lily, and for all others out there who long to be parents but for whom the unfairness of life has intervened. Amen.



*from the hymn "O God, Our Help in Ages Past"

Fourth Appointment

Now that the wonderment of actually getting to go to my scheduled second appointment has faded, these regular appointments are getting to be pretty boring. And that makes me happy. :)

I was also glad to have an afternoon appointment--the office is much less crazy in the afternoon than in the morning. Today was pretty routine. Lily's heart rate was 152 and found easily on the Doppler, and Dr. J confirmed that everything looks fine and normal from the ultrasound. And the nurse gave me a small bottle of glucola for my next appointment.

I'm not looking forward to fasting for my gestational diabetes test, but I know it's an important test, especially since I have family history of diabetes. I've also heard that the glucola is pretty gross, but we'll see. Luckily, they scheduled me for an 8:45am appointment so I don't have to fast through the morning. I have to drink the elixir within 15 minutes an hour before the appointment. I'm expecting Erich to be Harry Potter to my Dumbledore at the end of Half-Blood Prince, making sure I drink it all so we can be sure I'm healthy.

The bigger task at hand is keeping that little bottle of orange potion safe in the next four weeks. I keep having visions of accidentally grabbing it and drinking it. As if!

Ultrasound Pictures

As promised, I have ultrasound pictures to share and show off. Lily is still pretty little and skinny, so some of these pictures came out a little creepy. I don't think it makes me a bad mom to say that. :) To the left here you can see her little face. The 3-d ultrasound doesn't give the clearest picture ever, and sometimes parts of the baby are missing in the pictures where she's up against the uterine wall. So, just like with the 2-d ultrasound, we have to use our imaginations a little bit to fill in the blanks. And what I see is my daughter! [That feels weirder to say than "my husband" felt in the first few weeks of marriage.] And she's darn cute!

So without further ado, here are the results of Lily's first glamor shots photo shoot:

Here you can see her little feet off to the left attached to skinny little legs, and her non-butt is on the right.

Here is the "alien baby face" shot. You can see the head on the left and the abdomen on the right. Through the first half of the scan her head was on the right, then she wriggled around to this position.

The very top is my skin, then you can see the layers of flesh. Right above the baby is the placenta. This image shows how her motions are cushioned from me by the placenta. Also, right above her head is her arm. This next 3-d picture gives a better idea of what she's doing:

She's got her elbows out and hands behind her head. Aawwwww.

In these two images above, she's getting physical. Doesn't it look like she's doing sit-ups? :)

Sucking on her fist.

That concludes Lily's first photo shoot. Hope you enjoyed it!

It's a...

...baby! Yes, we found out the sex today in our big ultrasound. But before I tell you what that is, I have to pause to reflect on my excitement that Wrigley's gender was the most significant thing we found out today. The tech obviously couldn't tell us if everything was completely fine and that there were no concerns, but in my semi-educated but completely amateur opinion, everything looked great.

Okay, I don't want to be pronoun-neutral any more, so here it is: it's a girl! Little Lily Anne was calm for a while and halfway through started jumping around like crazy. It was so cute! She lived up to her now-defunct nickname as a little wriggler.

A few items of note:

1. I have an anterior placenta, which means the placenta is laying across the front part of my uterus. I have felt not much more than flutters in the past few weeks, and it turns out it's pretty amazing that I have felt anything at all. Now I have permission not to worry if I don't feel big kicks for a while! I hope for Erich's sake that it's not terribly long; we're both looking forward to feeling it from the outside.

2. Lily measured 19w2. I had a feeling all along that she'd measure big. My official due date puts me at 18w3d, but that was from a transabdominal ultrasound at 7 weeks. I theorized at the time that because it's hard to get a clear picture so early that Wrigley might have actually been a little bigger. I'm 18w5d according to when I ovulated, so 19w2d is only four days ahead of that. But the big question is: will my doctor change my due date?

On the one hand, having an EDD of January 13 and delivering early would be quite nice. But having an EDD of January 7 and going a week late would be rather agonizing. I suppose I'd rather stay 18 weeks pregnant now than deliver past 41 weeks. I'm sure Lily will have her own plans, regardless.

3. Lily's overall measurement was 19w2d, and I'm not sure how they calculate that. Her estimated weight right now is 10 ounces. As the tech measured each body part, Erich saw different gestational ages pop up, and he noted that her head measures 19w4d. Not shocking at all, as Erich and especially I have proportionately large heads. But I'm hoping I also have a proportionately wide pelvis internally, you know what I'm sayin'?

Okee dokee, next up: ultrasound pictures!