Child Incubation

Since it’s Tuesday (Wow! I know the day of the week, please be impressed.) and because it’s 5:40 and I’ve been awake since 5, I thought I’d write to give you an update on this ‘ere child incubation I been doin’.

1. Thought about it? Ever thought about child incubation, like really? Like I have very small human being enclosed inside my own body, yet he/she is his/her own person and moves around like a little independent alien? Yeah…. it’s all very strange if you think about it for very long. Beautiful and strange. Did U2 write a song by that title? Ha!

2. 2.5. I have about two and a half weeks to go if this baby decides to be born around his/her due date. Yikes! (As if anyone can ever really predict the arrival of a baby.) The baby itself seems to be growing increasingly discontent with the size of his/her quarters. I’ve had lil’ feeties up in my ribs for the first time this week.

3. Insomina. Obviously (hello 5am), I have reached the stage where sleep is fleeting. I can walk around exhausted all day and lay down at night and just laaaaaaay there for hours. I can have on my eye mask and have my ear plugs in and Mikey can be rubbing my back (he’s a good man, eh?) and I can still lay there forever and not sleep. Ugh. I am comfortable when I lay down, however, which I realize isn’t always the case with nine month pregnant women, so for that I am thankful (see number 5).  Aaaaanyway, once I’m asleep it’s great, until I wake up. But once I wake up for any sort of  reason… it’s really hard to get BACK to sleep. I wonder why it gets so hard when we (speaking out for pregnant women around the world) need it most?

4. The Growling Bear. Even if I eat a good sized proteiny snack just before I (attempt) to lay down to sleep (along with a big chug of my heartburn medicine, which tastes like a delicious vanilla shake, delightfully enough), I almost always wake up at 4 or 5 with a growling bear in my stomach, as well as the child in my womb! It’s a party in here, lemmetellya.  I wake up soooooooooo hungry my stomach sounds like a monster. And the midwife says if I’m hungry then the baby is hungry, so I better eat, right? Right. I’ve taken to putting another proteiny snack by the side of the bed in hopes I can shove it in my mouth in the middle of the night, quiet the bear and go back to sleep. Obviously this morning, the second part of that failed, and here I am blogging before 6am.

5. PPF. My friend taught me the term ‘Pregnancy Pillow Fortress’. Oh yes, I can relate. My PPF has been four pillows for a very long time. This week it’s grown to five. Two under my head (elevated to attempt to alleviate previously mentioned heartburn), two on my left side and one on my right.  It’s working. I can get quite comfortable, aside from the occasional Restless Legs Syndrome.  Think I’ll make it to a PPF of six before we meet this baby?

6. Names. The kids have ideas for names for this child. Some of their most notable(?) are Baby-in-the-Belly, Dora, Buzz Lightyear and “Plincess” (Princess). And those were submitted even BEFORE we entered the land of marketing and television.  Oh my word. The one name of theirs that has stuck around for the entire pregnancy is “Scooter”.  I think my daughter actually thinks that is what we are naming the baby, which she is 150 percent convinced, by the way, is  ‘dirl’ (girl) baby. If only Mike and I could be as decisive about names as the kids are…

7. Did I ever tell you that this baby’s gender is a surprise? Um, you probably figured it out by now. I meant to blog about it, but I meant to do lots of things like give birth in Africa and continue to run a preschool and those things never panned out, so just add that post about our baby’s surprise gender to the list of lost dreams (sounds so depressing, but I suppose it’s true). But yes… we have a boy and a girl already and I like to try new things, so I thought it’d be fun to know what it’s like to be surprised by the gender.  So here we are, nine months pregnant, not knowing if baby is gonna wear the little pink outfit I bought or the little blue one! 

8. I got asked this week if I’m carrying triplets. Really guy?! I am not THAT big!

9. Costco. I might or might not have gone to Costco with my Mom and stood in the main aisle eating samples while I sent her running up and down the side aisles looking for things. Okay, I did it, I admit!!! She’s wonderful. Can I just say that that store is big to begin with. It’s about twelve times BIGGER when you’re nine months pregnant.  Soon we’ll attempt IKEA. Wish us (her?!) luck, ha!

In other general life news, ummmmm… things are pretty much madness. My parents came out from Ohio which is amazing! And we have a long-term home, which is also amazing. We are doing some improvements to it, however, so it’s not ready to move into until the weekend probably. My head is full of paint colors and fabric choices and closet door options(?) and other house details I didn’t expect t be making at this point. Normally I would love it, but at this stage it can be a bit overwhelming. Mom and Dad are such a big help and we could never do it as quickly as it ‘needs’ to be done without them. Never. In the meantime we are house-sitting down the hall from our new apartment, which is a PERFECT arrangement that I am forever thankful for.

So, life is cluttered and crazy and I am more disorganized than maybe ever and my brain is majority mush and sometimes I am only holding on by an emotional thread.  Have I not even been out of Africa for a month? In some ways I don’t like how quickly the change has had to come and in some ways it’s probably good that it’s not going to drag out for months and months and months cause the ‘in-between’ can be the hardest and we certainly didn’t have much room for ‘in-between’ time this go-around. It’s just that we’ve had so little time to process what has become our of our lives in the past four weeks because we had to become immediately so focused on the future, you know? The whole thing is just so strange.

In any case, if I can back up and get a bigger picture, I certainly know it’s all going to be fine in the end. I might be welcoming my baby home amongst paintbrushes and unpacked boxes and not knowing where in the world I put that one thing I need, but it’ll be fine. We’re healthy and so blessed and soon I’ll have a delicious baby in my arms. And perseverance through challenges builds character. And really, I suppose I want that more than the perfect birth/easy life scenario in the end. It doesn’t usually feel like it and I might not be acting like it, but I suppose it’s true…

So there you have it. My child incubation/life update. Take it or leave it.

And good morning.