31 weeks

as i sit here watching my sweet boy avoid sleep on our new (and totally rad) video monitor, i feel like i need to blog for my little girl. i've been a bad, bad blogger, and part of it has been lack of inspiration to write and part of it has been sheer exhaustion. being pregnant with a toddler is harder than i imagined it would be, and there are so many other things to do that blogging has taken a permanent back seat. for that i feel guilty. :/

i'm not good at noah's baby book. i'm not a scrapbooker. i'm not good at journaling (and clearly not at blogging). and i have a horrendous memory, so i fear that by not putting my thoughts and memories in writing, they will be lost. i was trying to remember when noah started crawling the other day, and unless it's somewhere in here, i fear i'll never know... but alas, this is life. life is hectic, and i have a moment before i'll go get the tired boy who it does not appear will nap today....

***

my little girl baby will be here in no more than nine weeks from today (since i've told the OB i have no desire to go passed my due date, and this outweighs my desire to have a VBAC). we are far less prepared for a baby at this point than we were at this point with noah. i suppose we are prepared in that we have something of an expectation for what it will be like to have a newborn, but in the coming weeks we have noah's 3rd birthday and his birthday party next weekend, a baby celebration the first weekend in november, and the goal between now and then of moving noah into his big boy room. the room is still very cluttered, but mostly our junk is boxed and needs to be removed from the room, his furniture put together, and his things moved in. i told ben that for my sanity, this needs to be done by the end of october. i need the baby's room ready shortly after the baby party so that i will feel "ready" for her arrival.

and then there's the name thing. ben and i discussed boy names days before noah was born, and agreed upon noah once we found out i was having a c-section. there is a name that is sticking out to me, and a middle name i might need to sell ben on, but it almost feels funny that i already have a possible name in my head. we didn't know noah as noah until a mere hour before his birth. i guess i hesitate with choosing a name just yet because, despite seeing her face on ultrasound and feeling her have hiccups and do calisthenics in my belly every waking moment, it strangely still doesn't feel real.

i am so in love with this baby. i feel like life has gotten in the way of my ability (or energy) to properly express this. i think constantly of what she'll look like, what her personality will be, what her favorite toys and shows will be. it occurred to me the other day that, while my first meeting with my daughter will be full of emotion and pride, i am almost more looking forward to seeing noah after she is born, and having them meet for the first time. i guarantee, there will be some ugly cry pictures in that bunch...

i am so proud of the journey that we had to take to conceive our children. i didn't choose the path we took, but it has made me the mom that i am. i am so grateful for my two precious miracles, and i try to remember every day not to take them for granted. i am trying (despite pain and exhaustion) to remember to savor my pregnancy, as it will almost certainly be my last.

i will be sad when i am no longer pregnant. it is something people who don't have fertility challenges certainly take for granted. when i wasn't pregnant with noah, i hated all pregnant people, but once i was pregnant with him, i thought about the infertiles who saw and hated me. i realized you can't judge because you don't know. before i was pregnant with sissy (noah's nickname for baby girl), i was jealous when those who had kids around the time i had noah were getting pregnant again. and even since i've been pregnant with sissy and fertiles have announced their pregnancies, or thoughts of future babies, i get jealous. why? because i know they decided to have a baby and got pregnant, or can think about having three or four or ten kids, and will. i wonder if this part of infertility ever goes away?

i just know that in my heart i wanted these babies more than anything in life, and no one can take them away from me. i know that i wanted noah to have a sibling so that he would always have someone to share his life with, even when i'm gone. it would have crushed me if i couldn't have given that to him. we think he understand the idea of the baby growing in mommy's tummy and that it is his sister and it will come out soon to live with us.

i am nervous to be the mom of a little girl. i've got the boy thing down pat. i know the names of the Cars characters, the types of train cars and construction vehices. i've got the dirt-under-the-fingernails-cleaning and building-downtown-wheaton-out-of-blocks down pat. but despite BEING a girl, the pigtail, princess, dress thing is kind of intimidating.

i am ready though. our 3d ultrasound showed us the most beautiful little girl, with big eyes and round cheeks, just like her big brother. and she's a fiesty one, no doubt, with all she's put me through with this pregnancy and all her moving and shaking. she will keep us on our toes. i love her so much. it's unreal how a mother can love her unborn child. pregnancy will never cease to amaze me. the fact that my babies were put into me as clusters of cells and developed into little people inside of me... holy crap that's cool.