This is I think one of the weirdest months of this pregnancy… just mentally. The first trimester was terrifying for good reason. The second was exciting and fabulous for good reason. Even the last month has been really good to me – I feel good, I look good, the baby’s moving good.

It was right around when I hit 30 weeks that the little mental calendar flipped over and started looking at the last stretch. The end is coming, and I feel conflicted about that – especially when you take into account that I haven’t yet reached Devin’s loss point. I can feel myself winding a little bit tight in anticipation.

I want this month to be over. My mental goal is 36 weeks – a marker I never reached with Devin (he was stillborn at 35w5d). Hitting 36 weeks will do some important things for me: it will put me past his loss date, and it will also put me 4 weeks away from my due date, looking at that last month that I have never experienced before. I’m eager for that. Right now, at 32 weeks… I’ve been here before. I remember this type of baby movement, I remember this aching hip. And the closer I get to the loss point, the clearer it all seems. I can’t look back at my pregnancy with Devin and tell you how I felt at 28 weeks – but I can tell you exactly how I felt at 35. That was the end, the wall – the vision of pregnancy that is burned into my brain. I want to open the door. I want to step through. I want to see what’s on the other side.

At the same time I feel really guilty about wanting to fast forward anything at all. My hands rest on my belly possessively, knowing I’ll have to give this up to move on to bring home a baby. I so desperately want to bring home a baby – but I can’t picture it. This is all I know. This, to me, is the ultimate joy I have ever experienced. I know that the baby in my arms will probably be far and beyond this joy, this love. But still, I am scared to let go of this. I want to treasure it as fully as possible.

Then once in a while I get this image in my head of us actually holding our daughter in our arms, of getting to meet her, SEE her, hold her… to really see what she looks like, how she moves, how she cries. My chest gets tight just thinking about it. Part out of hope, part out of fear. Mostly hope, though.

Physically I’m finally starting to feel it. I still feel pretty darn good but just this week my hip started aching during the day – just my left hip. A very dull throb, like I need to shake it out or something. And I know it’s because I was sleeping on the joint. I’ve had to modify my pillow situation – I was sleeping wrapped around a body pillow, but it felt like that just had me laying square on that hip, no matter how I stretched out. I took the pillow away and I’m at least sleeping a little better… but the achiness all day today doesn’t exactly tell me it was very successful.

I can tell that Kate’s still expanding upwards into my ribs, because it’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable to sit. I admit it, I’m a sloucher. I hunch over my laptop – typically sitting indian-style. Now all that accomplishes is several good whacks to the ribs and a very unpleasant feeling of a bulldozer under my chest. Even sitting in my recliner watching TV I find myself fidgeting, trying to stretch out (while baby girl does more than fidget).

And tis insomnia thing I’ve been having is pissing me off. I’m tired during the day at work, but then get a huge burst of nervous, nesting energy soon as I get home in the evening. I don’t feel like I’m full unwound when I go to bed, so I am wide awake at 3am with more of that nervous energy floating around my head. I’m all for getting things done in the evenings, but I like sleep. I’d like to get more of it. Plus, every time I wake up I have to go pee. And no, it’s not the having to pee that wakes me up – it’s the nervous energy or the cold sweats, then I have to get up, which makes it even harder to fall back asleep!

It will be very interesting to me to see how these next 8 weeks go.