This morning I woke up and just layed still in bed for 15 minutes, trying to convince myself to get up and take a shower. But before I finally did so I pushed gently on my belly. “Baby. Baby, move around in there.” I waited. Then… there. Little kicks at the bottom. I smiled and got up for my day.

The ultrasound was first thing in the morning, I picked Den up from work on the way in. We both rode in silence for the most part. Nerves and worries flickered through the air. Always the nerves, before an ultrasound. I knew the baby was alive, and that helped tremendously. But what if…? I really just didn’t let my mind go there.

The ultrasound itself was not at all the same as what I remember with Devin. With him I remember just feeling happy at the show. Oh, a leg, an arm! His face! This time I fretted through it all. Is the brain supposed to look like that? Why are they looking so long at the heart? After the ultrasound tech was done the doctor came in to take his own measurements. Again at the heart. Mine hammered away. He pushed in with the probe on my lower right side and then my lower left side, switching back and forth. My pubic bone was in the way, he couldn’t go any lower down. “Just trying to get one last picture,” he said. Until he said, “It all looks good. You’re all set, you can go.” I’ve decided I dislike ultrasounds.

Before the doctor had come in, the tech had moved on to other body parts. Femur, lower legs, feet. Lower legs were crossed when not kicking away. “Come on, baby,” she cajoled, “open your legs.” Back and forth across the lower body. My eyes searched for tell-tale signs. “Looks like a girl!” she said.

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It is really hard to put into words how I feel as I sit here, knowing that this little baby is a beautiful, apparently healthy little girl. Thrilled, of course. Excited. Content. Even a little bit smug, since I felt very strongly from the start that this was a girl.

But there is also sadness, such sadness.

When you are awaiting the arrival of a child you come to build all these expectations and images in your head. And when you know the sex of that baby a lot of them revolve around that. For Devin we had so many pictures of us as parents to a little boy. Whether or not they would ever come true didn’t matter – he may have grown up to hate sports. But that doesn’t matter when you are waiting, when all you have are those lovely little scenarios in your head. You envision yourself in them and it feels real.

When we lost Devin we lost everything at once: our future of becoming parents to a child, our roles as parents to a little boy, and we lost him, as an individual child. That last we will never get back, and it is a loss we will carry around forever. But life has been kind to us and given us this second chance at parenthood – here we are again, expecting, awaiting with hope and dreams for this new little child.

Today we learned that if all continues to go well we will be parenting a little girl. This brings with it all kinds of new hopes and dreams, a new image. But it also means we have to still leave at rest that picture of raising a little boy. Maybe not forever – maybe we will get another little boy someday, though that is by no means a given, seeing how difficult it is for us to get pregnant. For right now, for the foreseeable future, it means we will be leaving the little boy clothes packed away along with all those daydreams of raising a little boy.

For me, too, there is a heavy heart because this would have been perfect. A little boy, then a little girl, 2 years apart. Here is this gift, this perfect little family – but Devin is missing from the portrait. I mourn the empty space.

It is hard – and will remain hard – to honor both of them, to appreciate their similarities and differences, to feel joy even beside the sadness.

But here is this girl, this beautiful, living little girl, awake and active inside me. May she be healthy and joyful.

I feel like I’m walking in a fog. Granted, some of that is due to my sinus “thing” that I have and the muddy, cotton ball head I have going on. But in large part it just feels like I’m living in a dream.

I find myself staring at the ultrasound picture of my baby. I can see her spine, her belly, her lips and nose. I just look at her and think, oh my god, she is real! And when she kicks me at first I just smile reflexively, protectively, but then there is this moment of – wow, there’s a baby. 19 weeks – my mind spins to think that I am this far already.

Now it is fun to go back to all the early ultrasounds, to look and see. I look at 12 weeks, 10 weeks, 8 weeks, 7 weeks. A blip on the screen. A tiny beating heart. I flip back and forth, wondering how in the hell it got from there to here. It’s magic. I wish I could experience them again, knowing what I know now, what she would become. Without the fear. But that’s not the way it works, I know.

This time we are indulging. With Devin we bought furniture, clothes, a carseat and stroller. I bought a lot of “things.” This time we have it all waiting, so we are spending money on a 3D ultrasound. I have yet to schedule it, I’m still deciding what exactly to buy, and when, but I am getting very excited. Firstly because it won’t be a medical ultrasound, which means I won’t have to watch them inspect my baby for problems, I’ll just get to sit back and watch her. But also because we will get to see what she looks like. Plus we’ll have the video on DVD so that later, when I know it’s all okay and she’s here and healthy, I can go back to watch it in full appreciation, without the shadow of fear that yet hangs over me.