Getting learned

Here's me, with 3 weeks left to go before my due date and somewhere up to 5 weeks left to go before I have a little baby in my arms.

The belly is pretty dominant at this point, although strangely it's not getting in my way as much as it was a few weeks ago. I have rediscovered the ability to sleep...but maybe I speak too soon.

I was watching a DVD that came with a book I got out of the library - Happy Birth Day. It's very British, but has some interesting information and ideas about natural birth. The narrator pointed out that a lot of people don't put as much time into preparing for childbirth as they do into organising their weddings. She said this is due to the commonly held belief that childbirth can be taken care of by medical staff, whereas it will likely be a much more positive experience if you are well versed on what is going on inside you.

I thought about this...Our wedding was fun to organise and I know I bored a lot of people discussing the details of our plans (as perhaps I am doing in this blog right now?), but did I put more time into it than I am putting into birth planning?

As much as I experienced some emotional changes when I got married, the wedding itself didn't teach me much. It was pretty much just a party and celebration (although an awesome one at that!). Pregnancy and childbirth, on the other hand, is an educational experience. Unless you are studying to be a doctor or a midwife, it is unlikely you will read up on what goes on during this time, so when you are expecting your first child, there is a lot to learn.

It can be daunting, and I could see why some women, especially ones with busier lifestyles than mine, could be tempted to just let it slide and leave it to the professionals. I'm trying to take the advice, which I have heard time and time again during this pregnancy, that the more you know about what's going on, the more you see it as a physiological occurrence rather than a medical one, the better you will feel about it when it happens. I can't be sure that my mind will be in a logical enough place to say "oh, this contraction is just widening my cervix, not to worry" when I am in tremendous pain, but I guess it's worth having that knowledge in the back of my head.

I read a quote on the weekend which I thought was worth remembering. It was in a list of positive birth affirmations (a bit like looking up love poems and quotes for your wedding invitations!). It said something along the lines of: This isn't more than I can cope with, because it is my body that is doing it. I'm going to try to remember that one when the time comes.

Saturday morning pancakes

I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast this morning with jam and yoghurt smeared all over them, and I'm already thinking about the (Ferg)burgers we are going to eat for dinner. Yes, I was right about the need to retract that statement about my healthy, fruit-loving baby - he wants food now, stodgy, sugary, fatty food. He wants chocolate and lollies and pizza and chips. He's trying to ruin me!

We went down to Lumsden yesterday for our check up. Both me and baby are doing well, measurements are all on track, blood pressure is good, nothing to worry about. As the midwife put it: There are absolutely no concerns about this baby. What a good boy! Now to quell my/his sugar cravings...

This morning while eating those delicious pancakes I wondered, as I have many times lately, where the baby will fit into the picture once he's on the outside. When my husband and I are sitting at the table eating our pancakes, where is the baby? Or will there be no more Saturday morning pancakes in our near future? I think there will be - they've been happening for eight years - so I guess our pancake ritual will just be adjusted to fit in another small figure.

I had the same thought while hanging out the washing the other day. Will I take the baby with me when I go out the back with the laundry basket? Will I wait until he's sleeping and run out there, peg it out quickly, all the while wondering if he's woken up? I am guessing long showers will quickly become a distant memory.

Yes, it's definitely going to be an adjustment having a tag-along with me all the time, but in a way I haven't felt as if I was alone for a while now. When we had just arrived back from Canada, I remember going for a walk with my ipod headphones on and feeling a faint twinge of guilt that I was listening to music that the baby couldn't hear. I haven't put on my headphones since - I feel like it would be some kind of betrayal.

At this point his hearing has improved to the point where a loud noise would probably startle him. I also read that if I shine a bright light at my belly, he will turn towards it. That's how thinly stretched the skin across my stomach is. My husband is talking about teaching him morse code with a torch tonight. I guess that's our evening sorted. After the burgers that is.

The cut and cravings

It must be a strange thing for those women who know before time they are going to need a C-section for medical reasons. The pregnancy must have a different, more relaxed feel to it without the need to mentally prepare for birth. I realise that C-sections are not as easy as many people may think, but from the outside, it seems like it would be kind of a relief knowing you don't have a choice in the matter. At least the pain doesn't require the kind of mind-over-matter endurance feat that I gather childbirth necessitates.

As a woman in my preggo yoga class said last week (her C-section was booked for yesterday as she has a misshapen uterus): "I didn't choose this form of birth but I'm glad it choose me!"

Others may not agree. My cousin just went through a hellish-sounding Caesarean whereby the morphine didn't take hold properly. She hasn't yet been able to hold her baby due to the pain. Caesareans take about six weeks to recover from - they are major surgery.

At the moment, I am feeling pretty confident about childbirth. I have two older sisters who have each had two children without complications. Both birthed their second-borns without pain relief. I feel lucky to be getting a lot of rest and not working up until the birth, as I think all this time to myself is helping me to gain the mental strength I will need. Relaxation is good for us, I think.

The baby is definitely starting to feel cramped in there. His movements are like squirms now rather than kicks, and he seems to move around a lot after I eat, as if complaining that the food is taking up his space. As my husband put it after dinner last night, it must be a double edged sword - the baby wants the food (these are the weeks when they are concentrating on putting on that cute baby fat) but he also wants to be able to stretch his legs.

I feel my appetite increasing this week, to the point where I may have to retract my statement about not having any cravings. Yesterday I felt like pizza real bad - and not the healthy, wholemeal crust, spinach and tomato variety we usually make at home, but the really greasy, fatty, cheesy type you buy at somewhere like Dominos.

Today it's cookies. I think this afternoon may involve some baking...

Advice

When you're pregnant, everyone has advice to give you. Every other woman who has ever birthed a baby has something to say, but I'm not here to rant about how annoying this is, just to say this: So far, pregnancy to me seems to be a very personal experience and something that no one else can relate to without resorting to cliche. Of course there are the obvious similarities between pregnancies - tiredness, swelling, the increased urge to urinate - but other than these physical manifestations, I think the emotional experience of pregnancy is different for everyone.

Saying that, if (and probably when) I become the been-there-done-that mother at the other end of the journey, I already know what my advice will be: Don't read too much, especially early on.

I figured this out in the first trimester when I was madly googling statistics and freaking out unnecessarily about miscarriage, to the point where any little twinge would send me hyperventilating. I knew this meant I wanted the baby badly, so that was a good thing, but it was also totally unnecessary. One in five babies miscarry! Arggh! I imagined a room with four other pregnant women in it, and me looking around and thinking, one of us has got to go. A horrible thought! There is no need to know these statistics. There is no need to know about what can go wrong, unless it does, in which case it is definitely sensible to find out why and how it happened.

But when things are going well, I would say don't read too much. Just think positive thoughts and let them emanate into your womb. Don't be afraid to imagine the baby early on. Don't be afraid to be happy.

Practical prep

I just hung out a load of baby laundry. First time. It looks exceptionally cute on the line, but I feel a bit like a crazy person, like one of those old women you see pushing empty prams. Still, with five weeks to go and my energy dissipating daily, it is a sensible thing to be doing. Babies have sensitive skin, I have been told, so all the clothes and blankets and nappies need to be pre-washed. When it comes to the nappies, this also helps with absorbency, something I am sure I will be well-versed in a few weeks from now.

Half of the women who were in my pre-natal classes have had their babies a couple of weeks before their due dates. This is kind of exciting. Although I know it doesn't by any stretch mean it will happen to me, it does mean that it could. We could have a little tag-along with us in three weeks, or even two. This also means it's time to pack the hospital bag, just in case.

We have decided to give birth at Lumsden Maternity, a small rural birthing centre about an hour from here, so if all goes well, I'm not packing for a hospital stay as such. So far, I know one woman who had planned to birth there, but twelve hours after her waters breaking, her labour hadn't progressed, so the nurses at Lumsden sent her to Invercargill Hospital and she had her baby there, but then went back to Lumsden for some post-natal R&R. I'm hoping things go to plan for us so we don't have to venture down to the hospital. I'm sure our son will thank us if his birth certificate doesn't say Invercargill on it! I am told that at Lumsden the midwives and nurses give plenty of one-on-one care to new parents, helping them bath, feed and change their babies and making sure the new family goes home familiar and comfortable with one another. To me this seems almost more important than the birth.

So, the hospital bag - another reason to do the laundry. There are a few different requirements for such a trip. There's going to be an extra person with us, someone who has until now not needed his own clothing. Baby needs clothes and nappies to go home in, and the weather must factor in that - a few warm things, a few cooler things, and of course something super cute for those first photos!

Then there's me. What do I want to give birth in? The only thing I can imagine wearing is a sarong, which I have taken to wrapping myself in island-style on hot days anyway. It seems a lot of women throw off the restrictions of clothing for birth, but without having experienced it, I can't tell if I will be comfortable getting all nakey. So, sarong, dressing gown, comfortable clothes. A change of clothes for the new daddy.

And then there's snacks. Labour is apparently a bit like a marathon, so I have bought isotonic drinks, protein and carbohydrate-rich muesli bars and a packet of jellybeans. I have rescue remedy and massage oils. Closer to the time I will throw in the ipod speakers and oil burner - I'm hoping happy music and nice smells will keep me from freaking out when it's time to hatch.

Before I got pregnant I would never have imagined that all these details go into having a baby, and I guess in a way they don't, seeing as without all this, the result would likely be the same. However, feeling prepared aids relaxation, and relaxation is what I need right now. I'm guessing there won't be much of it later on.

Plus, looking out at a clothesline of baby clothes is a sure way to replace anxiety and exhaustion with hopefulness and excitement, and positivity is key.

Countdown - on one hand!

It's Monday again and we are another week closer to the arrival of our baby boy. Just 5 weeks now! My dreams are becoming more vivid as the days pass, and sleep is becoming a bit easier too, possibly out of sheer exhaustion. Last night I dreamed that my husband was looking after the baby because I had to go to school. I was wearing my old EGGS school uniform and waiting for the bus in Newmarket, thinking to myself that this was bullshit, I shouldn't have to go to school when I have a small baby at home waiting for me. Then I suddenly realised - I've finished school! So I rang my husband and told him I was done with high school so I was coming home after all. It was quite a relief.

I think the appearance of my old school days in my dream world is due to my thoughts just before I went to sleep last night. I was calculating that it has been 12 years since high school finished. I wonder if that girl who spent the morning of the last day of school high on sleep deprivation, throwing toilet paper into trees around the school grounds and eggs at teachers' cars, as well as squirting water pistols at third formers, would be pleased with life now. She probably would have expected more. A house perhaps, a fancier car, some semblance of a real career, instead of a piecemeal one.

A house has become our next target, which, judging by our achievements to date, means it will happen and probably fairly soon. As I said in an earlier post, the pair of us tend to get our minds fixed on what we want and we achieve it pretty readily. I don't think a house is going to be any different, although to me right now it represents a new reality. We have not stayed in one place for longer than a year in the nine years we have been together. When we haven't been traveling, we have at least moved suburbs annually, trying out a new area. And we have always had plans of traveling, even when we were staying still. We still have a list of future destinations where we will likely try to travel to with a small baby (Japan is at the top of that list...I'm obsessed with the idea of Japan), but we are realistic that for now and for the next year at least, we are staying put.

Looking at a job website the other day, I noticed possible positions for my husband in Christchurch. Strangely, although I can't see us living there, the idea of moving filled me with excitement. Suddenly I was googling Akaroa and nearby areas where I thought we could settle. I was imagining cheaper land and houses due to the recent earthquakes (perhaps not the best reason to buy!). And then I thought to myself - wait, we have only been here three months. We really have to give situations a better chance to progress.

Buying a house would be a big step for us. It would mean staying in one place and making a real home. It would mean making purchases that are not just "for now" but forever...or nearly ever. And I guess this is really where we should be at, thinking long term, so that the little guy who likes to kick my ribs at night has some sense of stability in his life.

With the pregnancy, we have become more housebound and more interested in the idea of making a home. My husband has been trying his hand (very successfully!) at carpentry - his next project is a changing table for the baby. We have been talking about how nice it would be to have chickens and a goat in the back yard. I guess, like the title of this blog, we are finally getting all growsed up. And just in time too.

Sobriety

There are two questions I tend to get asked often about pregnancy. One is whether or not I've had any 'weird cravings' - disappointingly, no; he seems to be into fruit but I haven't combined any mustard and tofu with my apricots lately - and the other is whether I miss booze.

The obvious answer would be yes, but actually, not really. I guess when you can't have it, you don't really think about it. What I am amazed at is the amount of money that remains in our bank account (or used to, before I stopped working and the budget got super tight) now that there is only one of us drinking (and without a drinking buddy, he only indulges about once a week). 

In Montreal in the days before the positive pregnancy test, we were drinking at least a bottle of wine most nights (and often the one litre bottles....oops!). How did we afford it? Who knows. In Revelstoke in October 2009, the dead month for jobs in a ski town, we were totally skint but somehow managed to be drunk pretty much the whole time. 

I always knew we drank too much, in the back of my mind, but being pregnant has made me realise that we really did drink a lot more than most people. I guess when you get into a habit of enhancing any situation with alcohol (or social lube, as a past flatmate used to call it), it starts to feel a little dull when the booze isn't there. But conversely, when you spend nearly eight months NOT adding alcohol to any situation, it starts to seem a bit superfluous. There are a lot of movies I thought I had seen, but after watching them again, I realise I must have been drunk the first time, cos the plot is suddenly a lot easier to understand and I find I have not remembered how it ends. 

All this is not to say that I won't be looking forward to a glass of wine after the baby is born, but just that pregnancy has perhaps alerted me to the possibility that alcohol could have been a smaller part of my life than it was for the past ten years. 

Being sober at parties is weird though. There is something in that 'social lube' moniker. I feel I am a much more interesting person to talk to after a couple of drinks, a fact that has been proved by my recent stone-cold sober appearances at parties. I find the conversation doesn't flow from me quite so readily. I struggle to find interesting things to say - and when I do, I struggle to word them in the quick, witty manner that party talk requires. I tend to give up, hover near the people I know, feel a little awkward. 

I'm also amazed at the amount of energy drunk people have. They dance and run around and seem to be constantly on the move. Is it the sugar or just the destruction of inhibitions that does it? I guess, both. Suddenly, the idea of staying up until 4am drinking seems insane. How quickly I forget!

Perhaps my new, slightly dulled personality at parties is also due to the fact that I have a lot on my mind, and none of it really relates to those around me. I don't want to become one of those people who can only talk about her kid, but that is quite likely where this is heading. I also don't want to be one of those disturbingly drunk party mums who everyone is amused but slightly disgusted by. My upcoming new role has already required some changes to my lifestyle, and no doubt there are more to come. 

Sleepytime

Right now sleeping is not my favourite thing to do. My hands go numb due to carpal tunnel, which is apparently brought on by pregnancy hormones, my nose runs because of hayfever, and I get this stabbing pain in my side every time I roll over, I guess from the weight of the baby pulling on the ligaments there.

I get up in the morning at the same time as my husband, partly so I can eat breakfast with him and partly because being in bed is not very enjoyable. Then, sometimes, like today, I go back to bed and try to get another hour or so of sleep. Not always easy.

Those are my complaints. They are few, I think, and I feel lucky not to have some of the problems other women get in pregnancy. But for today they are enough to make me feel less inclined to post anything intelligent...I'm too tired to think! Instead, I just spent a pointless half hour making this silly baby picture from a silly baby face generator website.

How silly! (Our baby is clearly going to be cuter than that.)

I promise to do better tomorrow.

Snapshots

Today my marriage turns two and my baby turns -6 weeks! There's not a lot of outward celebration in the household - our budget doesn't really allow for it - but this provides me with a standpoint from which to view our progress since the wedding. There are a lot of things we yearn for, like our own home and a better job for my husband in the field he studied so hard to work in. For me, I yearn to become a more established writer, but progress is slow. However, I think we should take the time to look at what we have achieved and be thankful for what we have, because otherwise it is easy to lose sight of the good stuff.

A snapshot of my life today would show me living in a comfortable home in a beautiful mountain town, with the sun shining across the lake outside my door. It's summer and the temperature is about 18'C right now, and it will climb to about 24'C by the evening. I am (in case you didn't realise) 34 weeks pregnant with my first child. I'm not working - the Canadian company I worked for as an online editor was sold to another company in Pakistan, so I lost my job in early December - and my days are filled with attempts to get all the little things done that may prove impossible after the baby's birth. I also spend some time preparing myself physically and mentally for the birth by reading, doing yoga, walking and writing. Aside from this blog, I'm keeping a journal for the little guy to read when he is older, so that he will know how I felt about him. I appreciate having the time to do these things, despite the fact that working would have been more practically useful. My husband is at work and tonight when he gets home we will probably go for a swim in the lake, eat some dinner and watch a movie. Our life is quiet these days, but it's probably about time it became that way.

After all, turn the clock back one year...and here's us, living in Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada. We had just returned from a two-week shift working at a remote heli ski lodge in the middle of the Selkirk Mountains. The shift had encompassed Christmas and New Year and had been physically and emotionally draining. Physically, due to the 13-hour work day for 14 days in a row (and the heli-skiing, of course!), and emotionally because Christmas away from home is always difficult, but even more so when you have to spend it serving others and cleaning up! So we were back in town for a week and ready to party, which was not hard to do in Revelstoke. As you can glimpse outside the door, it had been snowing quite a bit since we left. Judging from our outfits, it was pretty cold out there, but we were venturing out to a Japanese restaurant in town for a bit of a date night. The next day, we would almost certainly have gone snowboarding.

Go back another year and it's the day of our wedding. We finished work at Christmas time and have been living at the in-laws to save money. Before we left our flat in Herne Bay, we sold all the furniture and packed everything we weren't taking with us to Canada in large plastic boxes which are stored in the garage. We leave for Canada in one month and we're very excited. Aside from being a fantastic celebration of our love, the wedding feels partly like a farewell party.

So in two years we have made it pretty far, from being packed up and ready to fly on our wedding day, to living across the other side of the world and travelling the vast continent that is North America, to being back in New Zealand and living in Queenstown with a baby on the way.

What has this little exercise in reminiscing taught me? My husband and I are both Aries, and although I'm not a huge subscriber to astrology, I believe there is a common element to our personalities that might be due to our shared star sign. We are restless when it comes to progress and often feel dissatisfied with our lot, no matter how pleasant it may seem from the outside. On the positive side, this means we make changes to our lives and hopefully progress them towards some kind of ideal. But it also means we are possibly too quick to move on when things are taking time to develop.

In terms of reaching our ideal lifestyle, I think we're getting there, and patience is perhaps something we will learn with parenthood. Happy anniversary us!

The perks of pregnancy

Living on the Kelvin Peninsula, about a fifteen minute drive from town, I probably only go into central Queenstown about once a week, but whenever I do, I am sure to make a stop at the sweet shop. I can't help myself. Every day can be made a little better with a taste of fudge.

I think the guy in there knows me now. In fact, I'm sure he does. The other day he asked, "when is that baby coming anyway?" in a slightly accusatory tone. But despite the fact that my taste-testing never seems to lead to purchasing (I think I've sampled every flavour now, but I should probably go back and make sure), there is something I've noticed: While the average shopper (or freeloader) is offered just a small slice of their chosen flavour to taste, the sweet staff tend to make my slivers more like chunks. Some for me, some for my baby. And he does like to kick after we visit, so I think he's already as much of a fan as I am.

I managed to make it out on New Year's Eve for a few hours to see the fireworks downtown and watch my friends get drunk. I was home by 1.30, tired but kinda proud that I made it past midnight.

At one of the bars I suffered through (a loud bar minus booze equals boredom) there was an ungainly long line of drunk girls waiting for the bathroom. I wasn't desperate, in fact the decision to take a bathroom break was brought on more by the need to leave the table where my friends were discussing some apparently ingenious plan to install touch-sensitive urinal games in bathrooms (copyrighted, by the way) than it was out of necessity. Saying that, a pregnant girl pretty much always needs to pee.

Anyway, I walked up to join the end of the queue, and just like that, it parted like the Red Sea and I was ushered to the front by many friendly female faces who all coaxed in turn that I just must go ahead of them. Was my need greater? No. Did I take the opportunity to skip the line? Yes.

Does this kind of preferential treatment continue after the birth of a baby? I know parents with kids are given priority on airplanes, but it seems like that is more an issue of getting them organised quickly so they don't hold up the rest of the punters. Do the mothers out there feel as though they get the raw end of the deal once their kids are born, or does the world accommodate little ones pretty well? I would be interested to find out.

One thing I do know: Post-baby, I'm probably going to be making a wide berth of the sweet store in order to avoid a tanty. And that will probably be a good thing for both of us.

From Montreal to Queenstown

I made a pact with my husband that we would have a baby by the time I was 30. It's amazing that we followed through on that. After all, we were on a working holiday, living in Montreal for the summer and looking forward to another ski season in Revelstoke, BC when we decided to make this happen. I wasn't pushing for it, but I had alluded to the fact that 30 was approaching fast. I think he was ready too.

Now we're back in New Zealand and living in Queenstown, despite the fact that both our families are in Auckland. For us this was a compromise between the will to stay in Canada and ski the Rockies again and the will to be close our friends and families and to bring up a child back home. Queenstown has the mountains and it's a lot closer than Canada. I think we made the right decision, although so far the employment factor hasn't exactly come to the party. We'll get there.

My baby dreams started a long time before the age of 30 loomed, a long time, even, before I met my husband. In fact, I used to have a bit of an obsession with the idea of having a baby of my own, even when I was not far from being a child myself. As a teenager, the thought would pass through my head that if only I would be one of those people who accidentally became pregnant. The reality of the experience was not something I considered seriously, it was just a fantasy, something to do with being important and different from everybody else, with having someone relying on me.

As a young child, I used to actively look for abandoned babies on doorsteps and in parks, swaddled in blankets and tucked into baskets, the fairytale variety. I think that fantasy had more to do with my overactive imagination than a will to have a real child to look after, or perhaps it was a symptom of being the youngest of four, with a fairly large gap in ages between me and my siblings. Maybe I was lonely.

When I think of teenage girls experiencing what I am going through now, the complete mindf##k that being pregnant can be, I can't imagine how they deal with it. They must grow up incredibly fast. Or is it that I am at an age where the concept of having a baby growing inside me feels deeper and more complex than it would at 16. Maybe the 16-year-old just takes it as it comes and doesn't become terrified, as I did in the first trimester, of all the complications that could arise, of the possibility of miscarriage, and most importantly, of the fact that once it's done, there is no going back.

There is a stage in labour called transition, where the woman reaches an emotional brick wall, where the pain must increase in order to decrease, where she must push through to get it done. This is how I felt in the early weeks of pregnancy too. There was a sense of being trapped, of having physically sealed the door behind me - once it's in there, it can only grow bigger - this, despite the fact that I really wanted the baby. How must a teenager feel when the baby is a mistake but she can't go through with an abortion? You can't get much more trapped than that. If you're reading this and you've gone through it, post a comment and let me know how you dealt with it.

The weeks of uncertainty and panic that followed the appearance of those blue lines on the little stick in that bathroom in Montreal vanished with the end of the first trimester. Hormones stopped racing around quite so vigorously and everything became more manageable, almost overnight. Now that we're heading towards the finish line, my life seems rosy. I have a lot of time on my hands and I take pleasure in spending time in the baby's room, in folding his little things away and in dreaming about what he will look like.

I am careful to adjust my fantasies, to keep an eye on the reality of having a baby with me 24/7, because I know it's going to be hard. I've heard so many mothers say 'no one told me it would be so hard!' to the point where that sentence is cliche. People tell me all the time how hard it's going to be, I have no qualms about that. But, I also know it's going to be beautiful and amazing and worth  the pain and sleepless nights and worry and lack of free time and everything else, because once I see him, I will love him even more than I do now.

These seven weeks are hurtling by and I bet when they're over I will wish I had them back, but for now, all I can do is encourage them to rush by, because I can't wait.

It's 2011!

It's 2011! What does this mean? Aside from a new number to remember when I write down the date, the turn of the year has never had a huge impact on me. For a day or so it may feel as though the slate has been wiped clean, as if the options are now open and endless, but this feeling generally passes as the days continue on much like the ones that preceded the day we call January 1st.

This year is different though. This year is momentous (really). Not only does 2011 mark the second year of my marriage, but it also marks my thirtieth year on this here Earth. And wait, there is more...

Something gigantic is going on within me, something truly life-changing and enormously consuming. My body is creating a new being. Our son is to be born in approximately 7 weeks. 

I am aware that I will never be the same again, that I may even become completely incomprehensible following the birth of this little baby, so this blog is to act as a record of everything I was BB (Before Baby) as well as a place to express my thoughts, feelings and observations in the final stages of the pregnancy and into the early days of motherhood.

I will try to write daily in the weeks leading up to the birth, partly as a way to inspire myself into doing some other writing (which I will also record details of here). Post-baby, I'm not making any promises, but I'm sure I will have a lot of thoughts to share, when I get the time.

For the record, at 33 weeks in, I am starting to feel pretty excited about the actual baby who will present himself following the hurdle of the birth, which is a much more common theme in my thoughts that the little boy himself. It is difficult to grasp the concept of the baby when there is such a big event to face before it happens. 

There was a similar feeling preceding our wedding. How would being married feel? Who knew, until after the wedding. Turns out that being married felt and continues to feel like being a part of a conversation that has no end and often requires no language, and like residing in the most comfortable and secure home, but with secret passageways, no matter where in the world we are. 

Little baby in my belly, you are about to become a part of that. More tomorrow...