By Kim Blakely

Wahoo! The fog is lifting. I’m starting to feel like the old me again … only pregnant.

Morning sickness (which for me was more like all-day, with a special emphasis on night, sickness) has mostly gone away, and although I still feel exhausted much of the time I’m not so tired that it’s hard for me to function.

(I had an “aha” moment about all this when I pulled up in front of a toy store while Mojo was in preschool just before Christmas break, hoping to sneak in a little last minute shopping. I suddenly just realized that, hey, I actually felt OK. Amazing.)

All that is super-fabu-magnifico, but quite possibly the most important thing is this: I now know I’m having a baby. All the pregnancy tests and ultrasounds and doctor’s checkups had failed to truly convince me – I guess I just didn’t believe, deep down inside, that this could really be happening. But over the last few days, just after I hit the 16 week mark, it has finally clicked. I’m pregnant!! (I know, I know … took long enough for me to figure it out.)

Just about everything, including that, has been different about this pregnancy. When I was pregnant with Mojo, I scarcely thought of anything BUT being pregnant. Oh, sure, I went about my life while I waited for him to be born, but always tucked away neatly just behind whatever thought process was required to complete tasks at hand was the realization that I was growing a person.

I’m just starting to feel this baby move, although it’s not a regular thing by any stretch of the imagination. I felt Mojo move before I was out of the first trimester, so it seems like I’ve been waiting forever this time around.

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, and everything measures right on track. I was blessed with pre-eclampsia toward the end of my pregnancy with Mojo (Note my sarcasm here? The only “blessing” in that is that I didn’t have to wait for labor to start. I had an emergency c-section and got to meet my sweet boy lots sooner than I thought possible.). I’ve been worrying about whether that will happen again, and whether there’s a chance it might hit me even earlier this time around. So far, my blood pressure is nice and low, and my labs look great.

And we heard the baby’s heartbeat again – in the 140s, as compared to Mojo’s typical 160-170 range in utero.

On Monday, we’ll go back to the perinatologist for the big anatomical ultrasound. Yikes!

When I was pregnant with Mojo, I counted the minutes before each and every scan. Monday’s scan, however, stands to be the first one I don’t dread this time around; I’m actually hoping for the best rather than fearing the worst. Until now, I’ve gone to most of my appointments pretty much expecting to hear that something had happened, that the baby wasn’t growing, its heart wasn’t beating, and various other forms of horrible-ness.

Don’t get me wrong – I do still harbor that brand of fear, and I suppose I always will. But this time, I’m simply excited to get another long look at my baby. I wonder what other differences (or similarities) between Mojo and this baby we’ll discover in that exam room…

Click here to see all All Akimbo posts (and get the back story!)

By Kim Blakely, Mojo’s conflicted mama

This may come as a surprise, but … I’m feeling conflicted.

Even if you’re not surprised, I am.

For two and a half years I thought I would be thrilled to get a positive pregnancy test. And I was … except that I was worried about whether the pregnancy would stick.

And then I thought I would be thrilled to get through the first ultrasound and know that there was actually a baby growing – and growing in the right place.

And I was … except that I wondered if the baby would keep growing through those critical first few weeks.

I held my breath through the second scan at about eight weeks, and then through my first ob/gyn appointment a couple of weeks later, and finally through the nuchal translucency scan at 12 weeks. All went well, and I even got a call from the perinatologist’s office last week about the accompanying blood screen, which also looks decent.

And yet, I feel like I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I know any number of things could still go wrong, dashing my hopes of adding to our family. I want so badly to have this baby, safe and sound in our home. I love her/him already … even though I still have trouble believing that she/he is truly coming just yet.

At the same time, I worry about what I might be taking away by adding another baby. I look at Mojo and I find myself thinking: “What have I done?! You’re changing his life forever! He’ll hate you for this!”

Now I wait for the big ultrasound in early January, and I tell myself that once that’s behind me this pregnancy will feel more real and I can start to adjust to the idea of being a family of four and that I can finally align all these feelings into one positive, heartfelt and all-encompassing rush.

Maybe all this isn’t so uncommon after a bout of infertility. Maybe it’s not even so uncommon for moms-to-be of second children.

I guess I should just take comfort – for now – in the fact that millions and trillions of women have gone through all this before me, and that most of them (and their children) have muddled through. I think I will, too. I hope.

By Kim Blakely, pregnant mama

I was so nervous about my Monday-morning ultrasound on Sunday night that I could hardly sleep. Well, that’s not exactly true … I slept like a log until about 2 a.m., then I was wide-awake until 5 a.m., only to finally fall back into a deep slumber until the alarm disrupted a very elaborate dream I couldn’t possibly explain at 6:45 a.m.

I made it to my nuchal translucency scan on time – early, actually – but the doctor did not. Isn’t that cruel? Leaving a pregnant woman anxious to see if her baby is still living to wait for an extra 45 minutes? Yeah, I thought so, too.

Anyway, I think I held my breath from the time I got to the perinatologist’s office until the time I saw the heartbeat flickering on the screen.

[Exhaling audibly here. Again, just from the recollection of it.]

Long story short, everything seems OK, at least so far.

The nuchal measurement, hoped to be under 3 millimeters, was 1.6 at its largest, and the doctor explained that there was fluid in the abdomen – indicating that the baby can swallow – no cysts apparent in the brain, a nasal bone is present, the spine appears intact, all the things I wanted to hear. It was hard to listen though, mesmerized as I was by that amazing creature on the screen seeming to stare right at me.

I’m sure she was just looking in the direction of whatever seemed to be intruding on her space … oh, and in case you’re wondering why I wrote “she,” the doctor is guessing that we’ll have a girl. Isn’t it amazing that he can even reasonably assume something like that at this stage? Wow – it is to me.

He’s won’t fully commit to that assumption until after my big anatomical scan in early January, and I’m not racing off to paint the nursery petal pink just yet (or actually ever).

And, truthfully, I won’t get the full picture from today’s screening until my bloodwork comes back in a week or so, but I’m still feeling a little more confident about things as they are.

We broke the news to Mojo last night. We told him that he’s going to be a big brother, and we deliberately avoided using the word “baby” because it seems to be a four-letter word in the worst sense in the preschool circles these days. We also avoided mentioning whether he could expect a little brother or a little sister, because we don’t want to get his hopes up (or down) either way. We explained to him that because he’ll be bigger and he’ll know more things he can teach his younger sibling all kinds of things – how to sing songs, how to play basketball, how to play Donkey Kong. His response to our announcement was … well, simple.

He said, “Oh. Can I have some ice cream?”

Maybe he’s still processing all this, just like his mama.

By Kim Blakely, pregnant mama

Lately, a night on which I can stay awake past 10 is a wild one indeed – but it’s no wilder than the ones on which I fall asleep at 9:30 and have the weirdest, most vivid dreams imaginable.

Last night, I dreamed my employer had trumped up some misdemeanor charge that was sending half the staff to prison for a year. I, of course, was wringing my hands about missing Christmas with Mojo and about how I would keep my unborn child safe while spending so much time with all those scary, hardened criminals. I woke up in a cold sweat trying to figure out what I would be allowed to bring with me when I reported for punishment.

And – here’s the real kicker – I was actually wondering if they would let me keep possession of my laptop and a cell phone so that I could meet my writing deadlines. Seriously. (Work-related stress diagnosis, anyone? I’m sure there’s some symbolism in that dream, but I’m slightly afraid to delve into what it might represent.)

Anyway, I wake up at 4 most mornings and I can’t go back to sleep … until around 7, when it’s time to get up for the day.

I’ve tried forcing myself to stay awake later in hopes that I can actually sleep through the night, but so far that’s just resulted in less sleep. I still wake up. My own little internal alarm clock chimes and that’s that. My brain snaps to attention, niggling about every little thing under the sun that could possibly be cause for concern – whether I’m really still pregnant, whether I’ll be able to get all my work done on time, whether we’ll be overcome by debt in these troubling economic times.

Over and over, though, I worry about whether I’m getting all the enjoyment I possibly can out of Mojo at age 3 – whether my deadlines and day-to-day responsibilities have overshadowed my real reason for being here, and whether my nighttime/early morning anxiety/all-day nausea and run-of-the-mill first trimester ill-feeling is sucking the enjoyment out of life for him.

Then the sun comes up, and we get up and get busy…

In the light of day, I mostly do feel OK about it all. I just realized as Mojo and I were giggling hysterically about something silly that I probably just need to relax.

There’s never enough time, it’s true. And what there is of it does seem to pass too quickly. But I know we all just have to relish the moments we have. Tomorrow is, after all, another day, and I know I’m free to make of it what I will. After all, that prison thing was just a dream.