mostly good

I am all right.  Mostly good, in fact. 

I know some of you have been a little concerned about me; maybe something I should have done awhile ago was to highlight the link to my Flickr photostream, because although I have lately been prone to go a month or more without posting here, I rarely go even a week without posting something new on Flickr.  There's been all kinds of news you'd have gleaned from Flickr (not all of it actually new) in the past month or so, while I've failed to post anything here, including: 1) Katie talks a lot; 2) the ultrasound went just fine (and I posted a scan of our ultrasound printout); 3) Katie really won't leave our cat Zellie alone; 4) Katie and I made homemade Christmas ornaments involving LOTS of glitter; 5) Katie knows how to flip her coat on all by herself, and is very proud; 6) my pregnancy is starting to show a little and I'm willing to take a picture of it (and our entryway mirror is really dirty); 7) we put up our tree, and Katie is very happy about it (also, she's experiencing a resurgence in her love of her tutu); 8) I cut several inches of Katie's hair off; 9) I cut a few inches of my hair off, too; 10) there's quite a bit of snow on the ground here in Chicago.  (I did put a little link over in the sidebar to my latest Flickr pictures, but I'll try to set up something better with thumbnail photos, since text is not the ideal way to link to a picture.  But at least there is a link there now.)

I am NOT going to do what I seem to have a never-ending need to do when I come back here after failing to post for a long time.  I'm not going to promise that I'm going to update more often, even if it's just little updates.  I'm not going to promise you that I'll post every day, or every week day, or every Wednesday.  I'm going to keep writing here, whether it's frequent or rare, for a long time, I will bet on that.  But beyond that, nope.  No promises here.  Just good intentions.  And we know what those pave.

So I'm here.  Work is kind of crazy.  One co-worker had a tumor in his spine this fall, had it removed, found it was benign, has been away for months and is now back part-time, going to physical therapy to learn how to use his left side fully again.  Another co-worker had a baby at the end of October and is on maternity leave until January.  Another co-worker's (this one is my friend Rebecca) father in law died last month, so she was gone awhile.  Another co-worker's mother passed away a few weeks ago.  We are all behind on work, and to top it off, although our company canceled its holiday party, it decided to give all of us in claims one "bonus day" for every week in the month of December.  This is in some ways nice, although as my friend Rebecca's husband pointed out, "Oh, that's just what your struggling department needs; mandatory time off!"  It's not actually mandatory, but I personally feel that since we're not getting bonuses or a holiday party or any other gifts from the company, that I will take these BONUS DAYS, by God. 

I took a bonus day yesterday, on Thursday, and Geoff and I did some Christmas shopping without having to deal with crowds.  We even braved and conquered Costco.  It was nice. 

I think of Stephanie often.  Probably every day.  My head still keeps trying to make plans to see her, and the other day when I told Geoff I thought something would be a nice Christmas gift for his sister, I had to stop and say, "I'm sorry you only have one sister." 

And then there's the pregnancy.  As far as I know, everything is ok.  In fact, the results we got back from the first trimester genetic screening were, in my OB's words, "excellent."  (The average risk of Downs when the mother is 37?  About 1/255.  My particular risk of this baby having Downs, as calculated by the screening?  About 1/3000.  I was especially impressed with this when I realized that the risk of Downs for a mother who is between the ages of 20 and 24 is about 1/1500.)  Every time I get a particular piece of good news, I get this feeling welling up inside me that I haven't really associated, so far, with this pregnancy.  I think it's something like joy.  A few days after the ultrasound or doctor's appointment (now with baby heartbeat), the joy leaves, and I'm back to this fatalistic sense that whatever is going to happen will happen, and there's nothing I can do about it.  My psyche's self-protection, I'm sure. 

Last night I thought, for a second, that I was feeling the baby move.  It's possible, though not likely, I guess.  I am 15 weeks pregnant now, which is early to feel movement, especially if you're carrying any extra weight around, which I am.  Still, I felt something, and I thought it might be the baby, and just the idea that it might be the baby gave me great joy, a huge uplifting of heart and spirit and mind, and a hope for the future of this pregnancy that I will feel more of this happiness as I feel more movement and begin to feel emotionally tied to this fetus in a way that I'm not so far. 

Every time the joy comes back, I think, ahhh.  This is what I felt, so much of the time, when I was pregnant with Katie.  I have missed it.  I miss it.  I want it back.

I remember how much I'd thought and written about the experience of being pregnant at this same point in my pregnancy with Katie, and I can't believe I've gotten this far this time with so little contemplation and expectation and planning.  But here I am.  And if there's a baby at the end of this road?  Well, then.  I will, I promise you, be filled with joy, as much joy (if not more) as I had with Katie. 

Katie, by the way, is a great kid (if I do say so myself).  I wrote this about her in my beloved PSV forum in a thread about our children's personalities:

Katie is super sensitive, like me. If she thinks you're actually mad at her? She'll burst into tears, and I can see the look on her face, and it's weird how I recognize it and KNOW that it is the exact way I used to feel when I was a kid and I was trying not to cry but ended up crying anyway.

She's also a talk talk talker, also from me, at least from me more than Geoff. She is more single-minded than I am, which I think she gets from Geoff. She and Geoff can be doing something and you can be YELLING their name, but if they're engaged enough in what they're doing? They won't even hear you.

I am just head over heels with her, really, so I'm another mother who is full of sap when I think about her and talk about her. Other than some brief sleep issues, she has been really easy from the time she was a newborn....  She was never a serious crier, never needed to be held all the time, was happy just to sit in a bouncy chair or swing or high chair and look around and watch us and "talk" with us. She is incredibly eager to please, which I think she also gets from me, and which I hope I can help her learn to deal with a little better than I've done. I see how desperate she is for approval sometimes, and it just kills me, how vulnerable that could make her when she's older (how vulnerable it occasionally makes her now). She is a total snuggler/ toucher/hugger. When we pick her up at daycare, she has to give hugs to all of her friends before she leaves, and she has a whole routine with us when she says goodbye or goes to bed (it's basically: hug, kiss, eskimo kiss, bump foreheads, hug, kiss).

She is also STUBBORN and clever (she is so good at figuring things out and remembering things and calling us on slip-ups) and interested in almost everything. Lately she is asking for the moon and everything else, literally, but she almost never makes these demands immediate - instead, she says, "Someday I could like to do..." or "I would like to have that sometime." The other day she said, "Someday I would like to go to the moon and eat it up. I think it tastes like chocolate chips."

Yesterday evening we changed the sheet on her mattress, and she insisted on coming over to help lift up the mattress (it's a toddler bed, so it's a crib mattress, not a full-sized twin) so that I could put the new sheet on.  She lifted one end up, all by herself, and looked at me.  "I'm strong," she said.  "I know you are," I said.  "I'm too strong," she said.  "I'm too strong for comfort."

She makes me laugh, and she amazes me, and she is everything I wanted to have when I wanted to have kids, and lots of things I didn't know I wanted.  I'm sure I don't have to justify this, but I'm going to say it anyway - I didn't want another baby because of any shortcoming in Katie; she made me want another baby, because of all of the blessings she's brought to my life.  Being her mom is hard, and the truth is that I'm a little freaked out about dealing with two kids, the stress that's going to create, the exhaustion that will be entailed.  But.  Being her mom is mostly good (mostly awesome, even), and even in my most tired and frustrated moments, it is not something I regret.

Comments

[ratphooey]

Subsequent pregnancies are very different from the first one, I think. With the first, you have more time to luxuriate in just being pregnant. More time to dream and ponder and be. With a second one, you've got an actual child to tend to, therefore less time. And the wonder and newness is gone. It's different.

[Shawna]

Yay! You're back! I was just this morning contemplating sending you an email to see how you're doing.

I'm 13 weeks tomorrow and still think it's very neat that we're due so close together.

I cannot entirely agree with ratphooey: yes, you have more time to luxuriate in just being pregnant the first time and you're busy already being a mom during subsequent pregnancies. And yes, some of the newness may be gone. But the wonder? I don't think so. And the loss of newness is, to me, made up for by the lower level of "what the heck is happening to me?" And I take comfort in the downs being recognizable, and the ups being greeted with the warm pleasure of recognition, the sensation of "hey, I remember this... and this is so cool."

[maryrwise]

I hope you have lots of joy in the months to come.

[Jess]

This, like everything you write, is beautiful. I'm glad you're back. I'm glad that your pregnancy seems to be going well.

Also, I think it's great that you are taking your bonus days. That's what they're there for, and the work will get done eventually.

[Jessamyn]

Thanks, everyone.

I am sure that later pregnancies are different from first pregnancies. But I also think that a lot of the reason why I feel about this pregnancy the way I do is because of the miscarriage in between. I know I felt a lot more joy in the brief pregnancy I had this spring than I've felt so far in this one. I am just assuming and hoping that as time goes on, I will have more of that.

[Anne L.]

Too strong for comfort!!! That will have me laughing for the rest of the night. Happy to hear about your joy!

[Joanne]

I had a baby who was one year old when I had my second pregnancy end in a miscarriage. Now I am at the end (well, 35 weeks, *close* to the end) of my third pregnancy. All this is to say I think I know what you mean and although I was *very* scared and nervous about the beginning of this pregnancy, it became more and more joyful and less and less worrisome. It's not easy to suffer a miscarriage and I feel it as a loss, just like any other. Anyway, I hope that it's true for you as it was for me that as time goes on you can focus more on the joy of the situation and less on the worry.

[TB]

You have such a gift for looking at and appreciating all of the beautiful things in your life. It's such a wonderful reminder for me to do the same.

Katie is a gorgeous girl, inside and out. I love, love the braids. That's the stuff I'll miss about having a daughter.