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…
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