Today I am 30 weeks pregnant. 3/4 of the way there, 10 weeks to go – how far I have come from this year last time when I was not even started with IVF #2. I love my growing belly (even though other parts of me are growing too which isn’t as fun) and over the last week or two have started to be able to actually watch my belly move and jump as the little guy in there moves around. Amazing. The baby seems to have had a bit of a growth spurt over the past two weeks too, because it really seems to me like there has been a lot of belly-growth over that time. I am still gaining about a pound a week, but it seems to be manifesting itself much more in an outward growth of the belly than it was before.
And just this week, I think the baby has a name – at least a first name. We aren’t sharing it, but I think we have decided what it is going to be. We have a couple ideas for middle names, but haven’t made any decisions yet. Our friends in NYC just had their baby this week, and we had been waiting to see what they named him before making a decision about the name for our litle guy. They chose names that weren’t on our list, so we were happy about that.
I really thought that once I was pregnant I would have no problem with pregnancy announcements, and it is really bothering me that that hasn’t proven to be the case. Yesterday one of my very best friends announced that she is pregnant with baby #2 and due in mid-September. While this is WAY less painful than it would have been a year ago, or even less than that, I still find myself feeling sorry for us that we are not in control of the size of our family like 90% of the population is. We might have another baby, we might not. I have always (or as an adult at least) wanted three kids, Mike has always wanted two – what happens if we are a family of 3 from here on out? This is where I remind myself how lucky I am that we will even be a family of 3 and not just the two of us from here to eternity. But, there will still be some major disappointment to come if it comes to pass that we aren’t going to be able to get pregnant again. (I think it is only going to be in the cards financially to pursue a few more rounds of IVF OR adoption – not do IVF first and then move to the very expensive option of adoption if that doesn’t work.) Only time will tell, and there’s no point worrying about it now, but it does still make me very sad. I don’t want to feel this way when my friends make pregnancy announcements – I am sure there are way more of those on the way over the next 10 years. I just hope that I am able to make my own too.
I have never been so great at looking at the positive – I tend to focus on what I don’t have and what is wrong with my life. Things are about as good for me right now as they have ever been, and still I am thinking that there is something wrong. Right now there isn’t, but certainly the possibility is out there that there might be down the line in a year or two. I wish I was able to let that go until the time comes to worry about it, and appreciate all the wonderful things that are going on in my life. Right now I have a flexible job that I like, a healthy marriage and an apparently healthy baby on the way (and I am healthy too, which hasn’t always been the case). And I am happy overall, and most of the time I do appreciate these things. But, somehow it is still hard for me to hear even my best friends’ announcements. (Though, like I said, WAY less hard than before – there were no tears, not even the threat of tears, no anger, no days-long depression as there have been in the last year or two.)
Ten weeks still seems like a ways away before meeting the baby, and fortunately it gives us time to clear out the nursery/guest bedroom and get the new furniture in there and get everything set up. Almost nothing has been done so far. Thirty weeks ago I was in the middle of a cycle that I was convinced wouldn’t work, it was summer, and I was really not a happy camper. How much can change in that amount of time. There is lots to be done in the next ten weeks, but I am hopeful that it will go by smoothly and quickly and before I know it my son will be here.
