Internet Grapes

A Birth Story

Written on 5/30/08 (four days after our daughter Annabel was born.  8 lb, 14 oz, 21 inches long.  She looks a lot like her big sister.

Ok, so I'll see how much I can type right now, two-handed, with Annabel in a sling, while it's just Annabel and me at home.

Sunday morning (May 25th) we went to church, and all of Geoff's choir from the 9:00 a.m. service was there - normally there are two services, at 9 and 11, but in the summer it switches to one 10 a.m. service, and this particular Sunday was the first of those. The only reason I mention this is that all of these folks in the early choir (who I don't know very well, but who know Geoff, so I'm sure they feel like they know me) kept coming up to me and annoying me. I can't tell you how many of them said, "Are you ready? You look ready!" I was thinking that "looking ready" was equivalent to looking really freaking tired and irritable - oh, and huge, of course. One woman also reached out and rubbed my belly when people were "passing the peace." And there was a LOT of "Oh, so Thursday is the big day!" as if my due date was some sort of guarantee. Also, see 9 months pregnant: I was definitely more irritable than they deserved.

After church, Katie and Geoff and I went for lunch, then came home and took naps. After we got up, Katie and I made chocolate chip cookie dough, and we started doing some more cleaning/straightening around the house. I was sweeping the rest of the living room (I'd started the day before), wearing one of my many Target maternity dresses, at about 6:30 or 6:45 in the evening, when suddenly I felt warm liquid running down my legs, and I knew that was it. I pointed out to Geoff that my water had broken.  He was pretty calm about it.  I went to get some dry underwear and a towel.

We spent the next couple of hours packing my suitcase for the hospital (I had at least made a list of essentials the week before, so I didn't have to really focus), Geoff called my parents and his parents, we took quite a few family portraits, me sitting on the couch on top of a towel. (I wouldn't have cared if we had actually done this, at that point, but I'd been talking about wanting to do it for weeks, so when Geoff set up the tripod and said we should go ahead, we did.)  I kept leaking fluid, which Katie was mildly grossed out by ("I don't like the fluit!"), and which the dog kept licking up if Geoff didn't get to it first (which I was a little grosssed out by, myself). Geoff made some calls to find someone who could come stay with Katie until my mom made it up here from her house, which is about 4 hours away. (Our friend Rebecca, who was our first choice, was out of town for Memorial Day weekend.)  I soaked a couple more pairs of underwear before I decided not to put any new ones on. I soaked a few towels. Eventually Geoff heard back from our old neighbors and friends Heather & Arek, who said they'd come get Katie at the hospital and bring her back to our place to wait for my mom.  (Thank you, Heather & Arek!)  We left for the hospital around 7:45 or so, I think, and got there around 8.

Katie had been born on a Sunday, and my current OB, Dr. Thorpe, had been on call that day, so we wondered if she'd be there this time.  It turned out she WAS the doctor on call from 8 a.m. Sunday through 8 a.m. Monday. So we were glad about that. We checked in, and I wasn't really haven't any major contractions.  Not a whole lot of fluid was leaking anymore compared to when we were at home. They immediately hooked me up to monitors and took my blood pressure, which was SCARY high at first. Scary to me, anyway - at first it was 157 or something over 95, and then it was 162 over 107. It's never been high like that, so they didn't panic too much, but were concerned enough to take some blood and run some tests and have the doctor come by sooner rather than later. The next time they took it, though, it was 135 over 84 or something, and the rest of the time it ranged between that and down to 113 over 62 or so, so it became a complete non-issue.

They checked my cervix, said the baby wasn't dropped all the way, that I was about 3 cm dilated, about 60% effaced. They hooked me up to monitors, which annoyed me, because I wanted to walk around, which we told them - they said as long as the doctor said it was ok, I could, but because my BP had been so high, I needed to stay put for now. The fetal heartbeat was great the whole time, galloping away in our hospital room.  Katie pointed out on her own that it sounded like a horse galloping.  I was SO uncomfortable in the stupid hospital bed - I know I wasn't really having much in the way of contractions, because the fact that my lumbar region was unsupported was bothering me much more than anything else. Somewhere in there, they put in an IV, in part for antibiotics.

At some point in there, our friends called Geoff's cell to say they were downstairs to get Katie, so he took her to them. She was pretty worried and scared and was trying to be brave - before she left, she kept giving me hugs and trying not to cry, but crying anyway. She wanted to stay with me, but at the same time was really worried that I might "make loud noises" and "there would be blood" (both things I had told her before just to give her information, not to scare her...oops).   After a few minutes of that, though, Geoff took her to them and came back, and then I got the ok to walk around, so we walked up and down the floor a little, but still nothing was really happening, contraction-wise.

It was some point after this that my OB came back and said we might want to consider pitocin.  The biggest downside she saw to pitocin was if I wanted to manage without pain relief, because the pitocin would make that really difficult to do. We said we'd think about it. I haven't talked about it here, but my hope was that I could manage without pain relief this time. Last time, with Katie, I had gone for about 16 hours without anything, and then finally, in desperation, crying, thinking I was not going to have the strength to give birth at all, I asked for an epidural. So this time I'd been hoping to handle things differently - do more walking around, letting gravity help, etc. But since my body wasn't doing anything, and we were already at the hospital - and since my water had broken, I wasn't going anywhere - I just decided. I said yes to the pitocin and decided we'd see how it went. They started the pitocin around midnight. For at least a couple of hours, still, not much was going on with contractions. Not regular, not very strong. I was getting really sleepy but didn't really want to sleep - I just wanted to get the show on the road.

Sometime around 2:30 the contractions started getting stronger, and around 3 I decided that I was ready to get an epidural. I didn't feel desperate. I didn't feel like I couldn't do it. I just suddenly felt like, All right, then. This is apparently what my body does - my water breaks, the uterus futzes around for a long time to get through the early stage of labor, and the last stage is pretty quick. And since this is where I am, and these are the tools I have, and since this time I no longer feel like I have to prove anything, I feel totally ok with getting an epidural. I kind of mused on it for awhile, testing to see if I was going to be disappointed in myself (I had been, a little bit, with Katie), and decided I wasn't going to be. So the next time the nurse came back I said I wanted the epidural.

It was almost 4 a.m. by the time they gave me the epidural. At that point the contractions were pretty strong. And I have to say, I HATE that stupid blood pressure cuff that goes off every 15 minutes while you are getting pitocin (and every 3 minutes when they are putting in the epidural).  Of course it was worse because the cuff had bad timing - it would go off during the strongest contractions, and was going off during a contraction AND when the anesthesiologist was about to put in the epidural. I told him it was the trifecta, and he laughed and said he'd wait until at least the cuff had stopped. The numbing shot hurt WAY more than I remembered it hurting with the epidural I got with Katie, and I started to cry a little. But other than that, it was fine. It gave me a lot of relief, and even the uncomfortable bed stopped bothering me. I could still feel all of the contractions, though, which again, was different than with Katie. Right before or after the epidural they checked me again and said I was 4-5 cm dilated, and about 80-90% effaced, and that the baby's head was "right there." So I at least felt like I had made some progress before getting the epidural. (I'd been thinking "open...open...open" to myself every time I had a contraction, and it was weird how much that helped me - I could really feel like I was dilating instead of tightening up.)

After the epidural, it was pretty quiet for awhile. I could feel the contractions, but barely, until an hour or so later, when they started getting STRONG again. Geoff came over and sat next to me and kept offering me his hand and telling me to "grip it and rip it" (which I also heard him saying to Annabel on the balcony in the sunshine yesterday, the weirdo), which made me laugh until the contractions got really strong again. I was feeling kind of down at this point, because I was thinking I was in for a long labor like with Katie, who wasn't born until 2:45 pm after getting to the hospital around 8 or 9 pm the night before. I was worried that the contractions felt so strong already, even with the epidural, so we had the anesthesiologist come back and adjust the epidural to give me some more relief - that was around 6:30, I think. Maybe 7.  I kept laboring, and the contractions were still REALLY strong to me - way more than I felt any of the contractions after getting my epidural with Katie - and around 8 my doctor came back and smiled and said she wished she could stay for the birth, but her own kids hadn't seen her in a little too long, and that Dr. Brennan would be there soon, etc. Then they checked my cervix, and the nurse looked at her, and Dr. Thorpe said, "she's complete?" And she said yes, maybe just a tiny lip of cervix in the way, but she's 10 cm and the baby's head is right there.

That's when I felt like crying more than at any other point, because I was so relieved, thinking that I was actually going to do this, that it was going to be soon, that this was mostly over, everything was going to be ok, and we were going to get a real baby out of this. I did cry some, and felt kind of hysterical. Dr. Thorpe told the nurse to call the OB on the way and tell her to go back home, because Dr. Thorpe would stay, since we were ready now. They asked me if I was feeling the urge to push, and I said not yet, but about 5 or 10 minutes later, I was feeling it (another thing that I did not feel at all with Katie), and told them so. They got everything ready, Dr. Thorpe asked me if I remembered from four whole years ago how to push, and I said I thought so, and they took me off of various monitors, helped push back my legs, told me to tell them when I was having a contraction.

During the first pushing contraction, the doctor said, "This baby is rocketing towards me!" And the nurse said, "Wow, she's a good pusher!" I felt very proud, which makes me laugh a little, but it's true. I pushed again during a second contraction, and this time after the contraction was over I could feel the baby's head down there even after I'd stopped pushing.

On the third contraction I pushed and pushed as hard as I could, and this whole entire tiny human being slipped out onto the bed in front of me, and she wasn't even very messy. It was 8:31 a.m.  She started crying almost immediately. They wiped her off a tiny bit, let Geoff cut the cord (there had been meconium in Katie's fluid, so he didn't get to cut hers), handed her to me to hold, and I just looked at her and cried a little and overall felt really happy. After a little while, they cleaned her up a little more, took her blood sugar (which was a little low the first time, but fine every time after that), weighed her (8 lb 14 oz, one oz heavier than Katie), measured her, and then gave her back to me to nurse her. I hardly felt when the placenta came out. Dr. Thorpe said I had two tiny tears - at first she only saw one - and put one stitch in each. It was all pretty quiet and serene - only 2 nurses, my OB, and me and Geoff. (With Katie there were a lot more people, maybe since it was the afternoon? It's a teaching hospital.) She latched on within a half an hour of being born, probably. She is, in general so far, sweet and calm and completely helpless, and I can't believe that it was only a few days ago that she was still inside me.  She looks a lot like her big sister did when she was born.

And there you go. The end of one thing, and the beginning of something even better.

Continuing pictures of Annabel & family are being posted here.

I can't wait

It's 1:50 in the morning, and I can't sleep.  My head is stuffed up, my right shoulder (which for some reason is the only side I can easily fall asleep on - even though once I've gone to sleep I can sleep on either side) is stiff and sore, my eyes are bleary.  Helloooooooo, last few weeks of pregnancy!

And hello out there to anybody who's still reading!  Since I'm up, I thought I'd let you know that I'm ok, I'm still pregnant, and the pregnancy is still going fine (very well, actually).  My due date is still May 29th (30th if you ask my doctor, but in my limited experience, they can't handle compensating for leap day, so they're a day off).  I've been feeling really good. Mobile, fairly well-rested, not too uncomfortable, not too bloated.  And then we hit the 38th week.  And now I'm getting really swollen.  I'm not sleeping well.  During a large portion of each day, I'm uncomfortable no matter how or where I sit.  I remember this from being pregnant with Katie - I guess the good part is that with Katie, I am pretty sure this started at least a few weeks earlier.  (Let's just hope I don't go a few weeks overdue this time.)  Also, the mysterious and incredibly painful RIPPING sensation that developed in my shin (and then shins) when I was about 6 months pregnant with Katie has recently recurred.  This means that getting around is even more awkward than it would be just with the huge belly, since kneeling causes me pretty severe pain. 

All of this said, don't be fooled into thinking I'm unhappy.  I'm actually not unhappy, not at all.  I'm irritable, I'm uncomfortable, and I'm exhausted.  I'm basically miserable.   But not unhappy!  A week and a half ago Geoff and I went on the half hour tour of the birth center at the hospital where this baby will be born (and where Katie was also born).  First of all, let me just say how strange it was to realize that I had very little memory of the actual details of the place; despite the fact that my time there was overall a few of the most memorable days of my life, I had no idea which room Katie had been born in, or where we stayed the next two nights.  A lot of this was because I hardly ever left either room, while we were there (Geoff remembered much more), but also it's possible that during the time I was there I was somewhat distracted by something more important.  Possible.

We went on the tour because it was short, and it's free, and to see if anything had changed in the four years since we were last there.  Not much appeared to have changed.  While we were there, we passed some people waiting to be admitted (the woman looking pretty huge and tired), and then a brand new mother being wheeled from labor & delivery to the "mother-baby unit" for the rest of her stay, and then, later, a woman and her brand new baby, in a wheelchair, waiting for her husband or partner or whoever was with her to pull the car around so that she could go home.  And when I looked at them - and when I think of them now - I got tears in my eyes, at how this happens.  It takes so long to get there (for some of us longer than others), and yet the actual transition from pregnant woman to mother & child is so short and amazing and monumental. 

It has taken us a long time to get to where we are.  We started trying to get pregnant in January 2006, almost 2.5 years ago now, and it's only in the past couple of months that I've started really believing (95% of the time, anyway) that we're going to come out the other side of all of this with a real live baby.  A baby!  I've wanted another baby so much for so long now.  Over the months (years) I've made myself miserable with the wanting, the hoping, the disappointment, the anxiety. I've felt like a failure and a cursed person, and I've felt guilty for feeling that way when I am as lucky as I am to have my sweet loving husband and my most amazing wonderful daughter.  I've tried to come to terms with the idea of only having one child, and I do know in my heart that if that's how things had happened, we would have been just fine.  But wow, did I ever want this baby.  Wow, do I still.  Do I ever. 

I haven't written any letters to the new baby the way I did to Katie, and my feelings about the new baby are wrapped up in a little bit of anxiety about how Katie will handle it.  I have faith that I will love this new baby just as much as I love Katie, but right now, with Katie on the outside and the baby in there?  I can't actually comprehend how that will happen.  On the other hand, I think that meeting and taking care of this newborn will be easier and more rewarding, in a lot of ways, than it was to first meet and take care of Katie, because I know firsthand what's in store.  That first year of Katie's life?  That was one of the best years of my life. 

And so, second child of mine, if you are reading this someday, I want you to know how much you were wanted.  How many tears I shed about the idea that I might not ever meet you.  How overwhelmed I am at the thought that I will meet you soon.  How happy your whole family is going to be to see your beautiful face for the first time.  How much I'm looking forward to being your mother, this DESPITE the fact that this time, I know what I'm in for (well, sort of - more than I did with Katie, anyway).  How certain I am that you are going to be my one of my very favorite people in the world, and how often looking at you is going to make my heart feel like bursting with how much I love you.  I do love you already, the same way I did Katie - but this time I know how much bigger this love will be when you're born than it is now.  This time I know that the best parts, by far, are yet to come. 

I plan to be on leave from work for the entire months of June and July, and part of August.  Geoff is finishing his doctorate and graduating in June, and then will only be working his part time job as music minister at a church (which only has one service in the summer, and only one night of choir practice each week).  We are taking Katie out of daycare a couple of weeks after the baby is born - in the fall, she will start half-day preschool.  The next few months are going to be a real family summer vacation for our brand new family of four, and I should tell you: I can't wait. 

pregnant (April 6th)
Originally uploaded by jessamyn.n.

I had thought it would be easier to take a photo each day once the weather got nicer, and I guess it probably would be if not for the fact that the long-awaited arrival of spring has coincided with the last two months of my pregnancy. We've gone for a lot of long walks the past few weeks, and normally I would bring my camera along, but since it's about all I can do to haul my own self (and that other self wriggling around inside me) around, I've been leaving behind everything else. No purse, no camera, no nothing. Geoff brings his wallet and our keys. On Saturday we walked over a mile to Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park, and then after we ate, we walked back. It was a beautiful, gorgeous day, and a lovely walk, but I don't have any pictures from it. (Or from the whole day, or from the day before.)

Yesterday after I got home from a quick trip to Target during Katie's nap, I left the garage door open so that I could walk down the alley to this tulip tree that's in full bud. Its blooms will be showing long before this baby is born, I assume. I wouldn't be surprised, even, if the blooms are already long gone by that time. Still, it won't be long.

Weekend update

Katie is having quiet time in her room right now (which perhaps may become a nap), and Geoff is taking a nap, and I am eating root beer float ice cream.  It is DELICIOUS.  This is the second gallon I've plowed through on my own...TODAY!  Ok, kidding, no.  In the past two or three weeks.  I am pretty sure I'm the only one eating it, though, and the second gallon is almost gone.  As I was just dipping myself this cup of ice cream next to me, I was thinking, "WHY didn't I just buy two gallons the last I was at the store?  That would have been so smart!"  But alas.

(I don't really have the energy or focus or skill set at this time to write an entry here that is polished and related to a single topic.  I'm just going to babble for a little while.)

I am reaching the end stage of pregnancy now, as far as how I feel.  Bending over is still not so bad, because I tend to squat instead of bending straight over, but getting up from a prone position has a tendency to make me feel like a turtle on its back.  And OH, my aching back, if I walk for any length of time, especially at the end of a long day.  Geoff and Katie have started walking to her daycare almost every weekday, now, and on Wednesdays, when I work from home, I've walked with them.  It's a little over a mile away (even longer since we usually try to stay away from the busiest streets, which would be the shortest rout).  For Katie, this means if she walks there and back, she's walking two miles in a day, which we figure is a lot for a four year old; perhaps not surprisingly, she has been accepting bedtime and sleeping through the night so much better the past couple of weeks.  But for Geoff - and for me, if I come along - this is over four miles in a day.  On Wednesday I was a little tired on our way home in the morning, but by evening, I was HURTING.  And yesterday I walked to the el in the morning, which is around three quarters of a mile, and that was fine.  But walking home from the station at the end of the day damn near felt like it was going to make me collapse.  When I got home, I walked up the stairs one step at a time; I just didn't have the energy to climb them any faster.  Today we walked to Ihop (and back) for brunch, and by the time we climbed the stairs at home, I was just about as tired, practically limping up the stairs. 

We had a nice Easter.  When I thought about Easter this year, I thought often about what I wrote here, back in 2001, about how often we live in a Good Friday kind of world, where dreams are crushed, and where despair triumphs over hope - where the worst possible outcome is the most common kind of outcome, and where hard work and a good heart don't seem to get you much of anywhere.  The past year or so has been that kind of year, and it put me in that frame of mind.  For awhile, I've been a pessimist, or at least much more than I ever was before.  But this year, as Easter rolled around, I realized how much better I have been feeling lately.  I am feeling good again, feeling once again like my future still holds promise, feeling both that I am blessed to live in this world and that the world is blessed to have me in it.  The pregnancy has helped with that, of course, and even though I'm still aware that huge things could still go wrong with that, I'm willing to bank on things going right. 

If you haven't, I wish you could meet my daughter, because she is seriously awesome.  She's smart and funny and imaginative and sweet.  She tells me out of nowhere that I am beautiful or "simply lovely."  She tells us stories and wants to play pretend with us.  She has started requesting a napkin at the start of dinner, if we've forgotten to give her one, instead of wiping her mouth on her sleeve.  She has stopped fighting bedtime lately - when I tuck her in and leave her room at night, she is often smiling at me.  She is really excited about being a big sister, although she does seem mildly concerned about what exactly is going to happen that will get the baby into our lives.  I've explained to her where the baby will emerge, but she keeps worrying that my belly is just going to burst open at some point. 

I sure hope not, but there have been some days lately when I've been a little worried about that myself.  This baby kicks and wriggles harder and more often than Katie did at this point in the pregnancy; Katie's movements, while frequent, never actually hurt me.  I can't say the same for this time around. 

So, overall.  A good week.  A good month, even.  I'm happy.

10 weekends until my due date. And counting.

To sum up the past almost three months: this pregnancy is kicking my ass. 

It's not that anything unusual or incredibly difficult is going on physically.  In fact, the past month or so has been really great in that respect; I'm no longer having daily headaches, feeling continous nausea, or suffering from extreme fatigue no matter how much sleep I get, and I'm not (quite) yet big enough that I have to have a debate with myself about whether or not it's worth it to try to pick something off the floor.  The cold and cough that lasted for over a month have been gone for at least a month by now.  And the baby in there kicks and punches and twists and turns many, many times each day, so often that even my newly cynical mind doesn't consider, morbidly, on a daily basis, whether or not she's possibly died in there.  (I was thinking that routinely for awhile, not because I expected it, but just because my frame of mind was very much along the lines of "anything bad can happen.) 

But I've been an emotional basketcase.  I think I've been better during the last week (although I probably shouldn't say that for fear of jinxing myself), but before that, wow.  Look out.  I don't have any way to test whether or not I'm more emotional and sensitive than I was when I was pregnant with Katie, but I know that I've been crying more often, feeling hopeless more often, wanting to throw things against the wall more often.  I blame, in large part, the awesome child I live with, who is just doing her part toward growing up - she's testing her boundaries.  Constantly.  I remember being weepy and sensitive when I was pregnant with Katie, but I don't remember feeling, over and over, like I was on the verge of a tantrum.  It's probably not a coincidence that when I was pregnant with her, nobody ever woke me up in the middle of the night.  There was nobody to stop me from going to bed as early as I wanted, or from falling asleep on the couch before dinner.  I didn't have to put anybody else to bed (negotiating with me every freaking step of the way) when all I wanted to do was to collapse in a chair in front of the tv.   

The two major issues we've been facing with Katie have been sleeping through the night - and going to bed on time - and pooping in the toilet.  The way things have shaken out, these end up in direct conflict with each other, because most days she will hold her poop all day, until after bedtime, and then she'll poop in her overnight diaper.  Sometimes it takes her 45 minutes or an hour to do that, and by then it's almost my bedtime. 

Work has also been incredibly frustrating lately.  I won't write much about that here, but I will say that the job itself, even on the best days, is full of possibilities for getting frustrated, since no one ever submits a claim unless and until something has gone wrong.  So by the time I talk to someone, they're usually already angry, and I am often the first person they can take it out on.  When you also take into account the suckage of the real estate industry these days, it means I'm doing spending more time doing more work which is more difficult for people who appreciate it less.  Despite that, we aren't getting any raises this year, and the corporate office adds new requirements on a near-weekly basis.  And this winter has been full of snow and ice and snow and ice and gray, dreary days with no sunshine.  Today it has already snowed at least 6 inches.

And on top of all of the other hard stuff, I find myself thinking often, lately, about my sister in law Stephanie, who in August 2002, three months before Geoff and I got married, asked me when we were going to make her an aunt.  Who came to visit more than once while I was pregnant with Katie, and who took me out to get manicures and pedicures about two months before my due date.  Who apparently bragged about Katie to everyone she knew, and who knew how much we wanted another baby.  Who told me often about how much she looked forward to having her own children.  I know she would have been excited for us, with this new baby on the way.  If she were alive, I bet she would be visiting sometime soon, to take me for a pedicure, to stock our freezer full of ice cream, and to offer to babysit for Katie while Geoff and I went out to a movie or dinner.  There aren't that many people who put their hands against my stomach and felt Katie kicking from the other side, over four years ago, but Stephanie was one of them, and facing the birth of this new daughter makes me think about her.  I miss her. 

And although I don't really grieve my miscarriage in an emotional way anymore, it has been on my mind lately, too.  It hasn't been quite a full year since I found out I was pregnant, but it seems like it, since I had my first positive pregnancy test that time on Good Friday 2007.  I found out that the fetus had died on May 31, 2007; this baby is due to be born on May 29, 2008, almost exactly a year later.  I certainly don't feel like the baby is cursed because of this; in fact, lately, when I think about it, it comforts me for some reason, as if this is all part of an intricate cylical plan. 

This is not how I planned this post to go.  This is where my head has been, a lot of the time, over the past few months.  But there have been plenty of good things, too.

We had a second trimester ultrasound, where we were told that the doctor was "98% sure" that we're having a girl. 

Katie started drawing pictures of our family holding hands.

And writing her own name.  (She can write all the letters of the alphabet now, nearly perfectly.)

My niece turned one.

Katie started participating in a new "liturgical dance troupe" at the church.  She's in a group with 2 or 3 other 4 year olds and one 5 year old.  She loves it.

As for that "other four year olds" part?  Katie turned four at the beginning of this month.  She is everything I was hoping I'd get when I wanted a child, and when I found out I was having a daughter - and lots more bonus things besides, and I told her so. 

Oh, and I've gotten a bunch of cute maternity clothes online from Target. 

At the beginning of the year, I decided to try to post one picture per day on Flickr.  I'm not exactly meeting my goal - I think I've missed 7 days already.  But it's still been satisfying - a tangible record of the past few months that pleases me to look back at, and reminds me in a very literal way that this year has not all been difficult and crazy-making.  Some of it has been downright wonderful. 

(Click on that photo to read the story behind it, because it's pretty awesome.)

It's just a little over two months before my due date, and we don't have a place for the baby to sleep.  (The old crib is broken and has pretty much had it.)  In order to create a place for the baby's bed to go in our room, we need to move the Ikea wardrobe in our bedroom out to the back porch.  But in order to move it to the back porch, we need to move lots of stuff back there down to the basement.  And it's possible that things in the basement will have to be moved around to find a place for what's coming down from the back porch.  Counting this weekend, we have 10 weekends until my due date, and I think we need to make them count.  Geoff also needs to complete his doctoral requirements no later than June (according to the school), and no later than we have a NEWBORN IN THE HOUSE (according to me).  I think it will be a busy spring.

But I also think it will be a good spring, and an even better summer.  The cynicism that's been surrounding me for the last four or five months seems to be lifting, and I feel like I am going back to my old self, able to see and appreciate my blessings even on bad days. 

I just wanted to let you know.