Week 20: Defining Moments. (aka, we really are doing this again.)

Happy April!  These are my best April Fool’s Day jokes. But today isn’t one. This day has been marked on my calendar for 8 weeks now. April 1st. 1:00. 13th floor. Maternal Fetal Medicine.

I can not believe we’ve made it this far. Half way? No issues at all? No bleeding, no spotting, no crazy weight gains, no preeclampsia? I mean – it could set in at any time. But still. I *have* to make myself look back and see the wonder of this 20 weeks of….normal. I feel like making it to this halfway point is a sort of defining moment for me. No matter what happens later today, I’m here now.

I love this baby dearly. But when your heart has been nearly stopped for your last child, and it’s pieces are just barely coming back together….there are scars that are still so painful. It’s so natural to want to protect it – keep anyone from ever touching it again.  This baby is starting to touch it.

I talked to my baby for the first time today.

But I guess the biggest defining moment to date will be later this afternoon. We have another ultrasound. These are so difficult for me. I wish I could drug myself up and sleep through the entire thing. After the last few days, I’m sure my family wishes they could have drugged me up and made me sleep through the entire thing. 🙂

This is it, folks. 2 different ultrasounds. It’ll probably be close to an hour. Of intense examination of every vital organ searching for anything that would alert us to something amiss. I’m terrified. I feel like ultrasounds are like a corrupt trial – where I assume my baby is going to die – unless it happens to be proven alive and healthy. Mustering the energy to hope is almost impossible at times.

Most women have these ultrasounds somewhere between 18-20 weeks. Most women look forward to them excitedly. Take videos of them. They call them the “gender ultrasound”. That’s not what this is. Most women don’t find out about their babies’ diagnoses until these ultrasounds. Not to be a downer – but just a realist. Every facebook post of “gender ultrasound today! What are your guesses? boy or girl?!” sends me into a ball of anxiety for that dear mom. Hoping against hope that this will in fact be all that’s exciting about her scan.

I don’t really care to know the gender. I don’t really care to figure out a name, decorate a nursery, buy clothes even. It’s not that I don’t want to know. It’s just that it’s as far from my mind as the next time I have to take trash to the curb.

Can’t I just have a healthy baby, then find out what the gender is after we’ve passed 18 hours or so? And the name thing? How long do I have for that? What can it possibly be like again to have a baby, and just move on to things like feeding problems or falling asleep and not making yourself stay awake for every possible moment because you only get a precious few of them? Is it ok to not take 1,500 photos in the first 18 hours? Because I really may get to take more at hour 19? No one is going to take the baby away?

These are seriously questions that just seem almost impossible to think about. The most telling one was from Kami, my youngest –

“Mom? We’ll get to go see the baby? And even hold it? And then you’ll bring it home?”

She’s never known that normal.

More defining moments.

But back to the gender. I don’t really care. I wanna see four heart chambers. And I want to see an esophagus attached to a stomach bubble. And functioning kidneys.

But my husband and my girls wanna know the gender. They are ganging up on me. And from what I’m gathering, no matter how hard I fight this one, no one is going to come to my rescue on it. 🙂 So we’ll find that out today. But only after I see that heart. And those kidneys. And that stomach bubble.

So this is it. I’m in my pj’s still. But the girls are dressed and ready. They can’t wait to see this baby. It’s their first ultrasound for this one.  They’re dressed and ready. And excited. I’m getting there.

Pray for us? Not for a perfect baby….God has already formed it from the beginning. But for our hearts. That no matter what, we’ll keep fighting for faith and joy. And that the peace we’ve grown so accustomed to knowing in these sorts of moments will continue to fill our hearts.

Thanks, friends.