I think that 33 weeks was about my magic mark, me starting to hit that wall. Oh I haven’t hit it yet, but I can tell I’m getting closer. The whole past week I’ve been feeling increasingly pregnant: my lower back, and the exhaustion.

I slowed down. It’s obvious my ligaments are really loosening up, as my lower back keeps popping back into place. Last week it was every once in a while; this week it’s every time I stand up at work. Sometimes I have to squeeze my butt muscles and lean back a little to get it to audibly pop back. I even went to the chiropractor after 2 weeks (instead of my routine 4) in the hopes that would fix it. Days when I sit too long at a stretch, like during longer drives, I start getting an achy tingle down my left leg – definitely something pressing on a nerve. Well it helped, but it didn’t fix it. Things are just shifting and I’m going to have to stay on top of it. I’m going to have to start doing some pelvic rocks and other gentle stretches to make sure everything stays in alignment.

And the exhaustion… well, there’s two reasons for that. One is that I’m pregnant, working, and then coming home to help Den with the small house fix-ups we are trying to get done. All I do is hold things steady for him, get the screwdriver, sweep up the mess… but I feel like I just lifted everything myself. I was sitting down on the floor to watch him and every time I’d have to stand up again felt like I was lifting a bowling ball. Which, okay, is close to the truth – I’m carrying an extra 24lbs on my body and it’s not exactly evenly distributed. It’s not like I get stuck on the floor or anything, but it’s taking some extra effort to push myself up, if you know what I mean.

The other reason is the crappy-ass sleep I’ve been getting the last few nights. And it’s not because I’m sore or uncomfortable – after adjusting the position/type/number of pillows around me I’ve stopped getting that hip pain at night. But instead I’m suffering from plentiful, restless dreams, frequent night-wakings, and insomnia. The combination really sucks. It’s like I’m just not sinking deep enough into sleep anymore, I wake up all the time and then I can’t fall back asleep. Why I’m not tired at 3am is really a puzzle to me because I am exhausted during the day! I really wish I could curl up and take a nap, but unfortunately I have to work. I know this sleep thing is a very common problem and I’m lucky to have been having no problems up until this point.

Beyond that there’s really not many complaints I can make. I feel like at this point with Devin I was more uncomfortable – I remember crying one day because my legs ached so bad. I keep thinking about reading my journal to see, but I still haven’t done so. Especially that last week before we found out he died, it hurts me to read it, knowing what comes next. And right now I really don’t want to dwell on the loss – I’ll get myself too freaked out about this pregnancy. It’s one of those things that was fine with before, and I’ll deal with again later, but right now I just really need to block it out. In conversation Den and I both kind of slide around the topic of Devin’s death out of some unspoken understanding between us. We talk a lot about his pregnancy, we make comparisons, we remember fondly… but the moment something comes up about how he died, why he died, what it was like when he died… we both fall silent, memories rushing back, and I put my hand on my belly to reassure myself that all is okay this time.

There are many reasons I look forward to the next month. Up until now my experience of pregnancy stopped at 35 weeks 5 days. I was days away from being able to say, “4 weeks left!” I never got to find out what it was like to count down to the end, to really get miserable, to actually reach the end. My pregnancy just got… cut off. I wasn’t done yet. So now… now I eagerly look forward. This is a gift, a second chance. And even though it means I’m going to get very sore, very tired, and possibly very miserable… I look forward to every day of it.

I’m exhausted. I think I’m getting to the point of, “Okay, when are we done working on the house?” I’m tired. Den’s tired. We’re both very snappish with each other as we’re fighting with doorknobs and paint and things-that-never-are-as-easy-as-they-look. We put all the repainted doors up – and found that two of them wouldn’t close. So we had to move one hinge, plane some off the top of the other one. Then the doorknobs, we replaced those too – and of course, even though they all fit into the same holes, they wouldn’t latch. So we had to move the strike plates. It’s all little stupid things, but after the tenth time you think you are done and something gets stuck or won’t work or whatever you just want to throw down the tools and yell Oh for fuck’s sake! I love my house. I hate my house. I love my house.

I sat on the floor in Kate’s room and watched as Den put the last screw in the doorknob and tested the door. It clicked shut. Before he could even say a word I was reaching for the box that held the bouncer and said, “You know what that means!!” I gleefully opened the box (well… eventually – those suckers are hard to open) and started putting together the bouncer. “You don’t waste any time,” Den commented wryly. Hell no. I’ve been itching to assemble it ever since it arrived, we just needed to be able to close that door to keep the cats off of it. (Which was a wise decision – I hadn’t turned my back for two seconds, we were IN the room, and when I turned around there was a cat laying on it!) Then when that was done I pulled out the little travel swing that we had for Devin, put that together too. So exciting! So cute! So… sore. Oomph. It’s hard to bend over while sitting on the floor.

::

Today was my very first NST. I was confused as to where to go at first, but eventually was found and directed into a little evaluation room, completely with a Machine That Goes Ping! Kate’s heartbeat was heard soon as she put the monitor on me – though I didn’t recognize it at first, the sound quality was a bit weird. She brought me some juice and I got to just lay back and do nothing but keep craning my head to look at the heartrate on the monitor. She was all over the place – literally and figuratively. She’d kick the probes, which made a big whomp! sound. Her foot was pushing around my ribs. She’d squirm. Her heartrate was obviously reactive (which is what they want to see – heartrate going up with activity). The other probe on my belly was the contraction monitor. And I could see on the strip the other line, kept showing little blips upward. I didn’t even feel all of them, though some were the obvious ones (which resulted in more than a “blip”).

After leaving me to my own devices for around 20 minutes the nurse came in to check on me, she barely glanced at the heartrate strip before declaring it beautiful. But she frowned at the second one. “Are you feeling these? You’re only 34 weeks…” Hahaha. Yeah. The contractions. I told her I’d talked to my Midwife about them. She wanted someone to double-check, so she got the Midwife on call to come take a peek. I explained what the Midwife had said on Saturday night, and how I’ve been contracting on and off for a few days now. “How are these compared to that night?” she asked me. “Oh, these are nothing, I barely feel them.” “Okay then! I’m good with that.” And off she went, lol!

I was supposed to have an appointment with my Midwife when the NST was done, but I had gotten started a little late and then had to wait for a while for that Midwife on call to show up, so I was really running behind. Next thing I know my Midwife popped into my little room and cheerfully announced that she was doing my appointment there today, tee hee. (It’s rather nice that their office is literally across the hall!) I’m measuring perfectly at 34 weeks, obviously the baby’s heartrate was fine, she knows about the contractions. I explained to her that for some reason I get them worse at night than during the day, and half the time I only know when I’m having a contraction because I have to pee. She told me having a full bladder can actually bring them on worse, so just make sure I keep peeing. (As if I had a choice!)

And then she looked over all the appointments the Midwife had gotten booked for me last time. Yeah. So not right. I did get booked for an NST every week – that’s what it should be. But then I was supposed to get a Midwife appointment next at 36 weeks and weekly until 40; a growth ultrasound every 4 weeks like I have been getting all along; and there was some question as to whether I was supposed to have BPPs (bio-physical profiles) in there somewhere. what I ended up with was a NST, Midwife appointment, and BPP every week from now until my due date, and no growth ultrasounds – with the BPPs booked on fridays, which isn’t even a day that I can do. So yeah, umm. Today we (my fav Midwife and I) both looked at the sheet and said, “Errrr, that doesn’t look right, does that look right to you?” She said she’ll fix it. *sigh* And the truly irritating part is that, because of schedules and what was available, I have to see that other Midwife for the next three appointments. Ugh. This would all be SO much easier if I didn’t have to juggle three different things! I have half a mind to just cancel all of it and tell them I want to see Midwife ___, screw the rest.

I need some damn sleep… I was wide awake last night for no reason. Then the sun comes up and all I want to do is sleep. *sigh* I think I have maybe 2 weeks of energy left before I start just curling up in my recliner and waiting for the baby to come. Just need to make sure things get done.

Kate’s room has a door back up! Yay! We took it down to paint all the trim and we just today got all the doors painted and back up – which was, of course, not without its frustrations. Now that there’s an actual door we can start setting up her furniture and toys – we didn’t want to until the door was up because the cats think all her things are awesome. (I even found a cat inside her dresser one day… that rather startled me when I opened the drawer.)

I admit it: I keep opening her dresser and taking out some clothes, opening them up, then re-folding them and putting them back. It’s kind of silly and is certainly unnecessary, but oh, oh, how I love those clothes… just the mere fact that they are there, in a dresser in my baby’s room, waiting for her to arrive. I stand in her room and look around and think, holy cow, this is real. We could actually be bringing home a baby. I am still not really wrapping my brain around that. I’m not certain it’s even possible.

I am excited. Tempered excitement, yes. But excited nonetheless.

Kate is doing well in there. She has some pretty consistent patterns and she’s still really active every day. I still have my moments, when she is quiet – when I realize she’s been quiet. I keep my mouth shut and my mind turned off and just start poking around my belly and jiggling her a little until I get a kick. I feel a little bad for doing it, at least I do after she kicks me, but… some times I just need it.

Tomorrow is my very first NST (non-stress test) and I’m expecting it to be boring and uneventful. It’s at 11am, which could go either way – she could be sleeping, or she could be very awake.

I can’t believe I’m at 34 weeks. This morning I happened to glance up at Devin’s shelf and said, “Oh!!” as I ran over. I picked up the picture of me pregnant with Devin, my favorite picture I have of the entire pregnancy, and showed it to Den. “This! This is from 34 weeks!” I later looked up all my belly pics to confirm, and yep it was from 34 weeks. Holy shit! All pregnancy I’ve been staring at that picture, reminiscing about when I was REALLY pregnant with a big belly and really looking forward to getting there again… and suddenly here I am.

Only 6 weeks left to go; it really feels like I’m hitting the home stretch… especially with these contractions. Which have really calmed down, at least. I am still getting them here and there but they aren’t coming regularly like they were. And since I know now it’s braxton-hicks I’ve decided to just ignore them unless they get stronger. Right now they still feel like just a tingle… and me having to pee really bad. If this is how it’s going to be for the last 6 weeks, then fine. I’m just going to go on about my day and ignore them. When I really stopped to think about them and the possibility of going into labor it didn’t seem quite so scary. I mean, yeah, it’s early and I’m nervous about it, but the baby is doing great and even a 34 weeker is not a very scary thing. She’d be alive and here. So if I do end up in labor I’ll deal with it fine – though I really don’t think I will anytime soon.

Hopefully sometime this week Den will paint the trim in the bedroom and then we will set up the cosleeper; I’m not going to push it up to the bed yet, but it’ll be in the room and ready to go. The carseat is in my car, though it’s not actually installed yet – I’m going to make an appointment to have that done. I need to wash all her clothes, and then prep all the diapers. Very soon I will pack my hospital bag. We’re not quite ready yet, but give us just a few weeks.

So now I have a complication: contractions. They are apparently Braxton-Hicks contractions, but they made for a very nerve-wracking night last night.

The night before last I remember getting up an awful lot to pee. I muttered something in the morning about Kate moving around in weird positions and pressing on my bladder. I know I had a few contractions during the day, but thought nothing much of it. It was 9pm when we laid down in bed that I started really noticing them. I thought to myself, jeez, either she’s really pressing her butt and back out or I’m having some frequent Braxton-Hicks. I tried checking my belly to see if there were hard spots. The sides seemed kind of soft. After Den fell asleep and I reclined with my laptop I started checking the clock. Every fifteen minutes or so. Well shit. Somehow I’m thinking Kate wouldn’t be doing something that predictable. I started feeling a little panicky… I am not ready to have this baby, as excited as I am to meet her she still needs to wait at least another 3 weeks until she’s full term. Please. I just want a full term baby.

My Midwives say to call if you get more than four an hour, but I know their standard advice: drink a bunch of water, lay down, call back in an hour if they haven’t gone away. So I drank a bunch of water and laid back down. That didn’t stop them, except now I had to pee really bad every time one hit. Fun times.

I was going to call the Midwife… but I fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later thinking, yeah! Okay, they went away! …. And then another one hit. Crap. Pulled out my cell phone and started timing them… every 10 minutes. #%@#@%$ So I got up and called the Midwife on call. Turned out it was my regular Midwife who was on! So I told her I was having contractions every 10 minutes. At first she thought I was full term, but when I corrected her that I was 33 weeks, she said, Ooohhhh. So here were the facts: If they weren’t increasing in length or intensity or frequency then they were probably Braxton-Hicks, not actual labor. I have had no problems with pre-term labor in either pregnancy. I’m days away from 34 weeks, and at 34 weeks they wouldn’t even do much, if anything, to try to stop labor if it did occur. If I went in to L&D they’d give me a NST to check for fetal heartrate reactivity to make sure she’s doing okay, they’d check my cervix to see if I was dilating at all, and maybe they’d do a fFN test. So she said it was up to me, I could go in if I wanted reassurance, or I could just try to sleep and see if it got worse or not.

Now at that point I wasn’t worried about Kate at all, she was plenty active all night – in fact I think the contractions were keeping her awake and pissing her off, she’d kick like mad when one ended, as if to tell me to cut it out. My worry was that I would dilate without me knowing it. I kept thinking about my labor with Devin, and how I honestly thought that the contractions weren’t real contractions until they told me I was 4cm – up to that point it was just so easy. But I kept thinking, so if I go in and tell me I’m dilated but won’t do anything about it, what does that really gain me? I’d just as well stay home and to see what the contractions did. So that’s what I told her, and that’s what I did. I crawled into bed and pretty quickly fell asleep.

When I woke up this morning I still got a few contractions, but not nearly like they were overnight, not 10 minutes apart. So that confirmed that it wasn’t real labor, just really annoying BH. (How irritating that the entire diagnosis of BH contractions is a retrospective one – you can only know for sure after the fact.)

Kate was very active again, reassuring me that all was well with her – a huge relief. I’ve realized that one of my fears revolves around going into labor. The last time I was pregnant I started getting the feeling that I was going to go into labor soon – I could feel something was different. That was the day I found out he’d passed away; my body was indeed getting ready to go into labor, because he had died. So yes, I get nervous when something changes, nervous that it means something bad. I am very happy Kate has continued to be active for me, letting me know that all is well with her.

I went on about my day, and happily the BH are either too light to notice while I’m up and active or mostly go away during the day. They seem to get worse when I lay down… though I admit that could be simply because I am more tuned in to what’s going on when I’m laying down and still. But other than that they don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason. I have no idea why they suddenly started happening so frequently, it just seems so random: yesterday was not an overactive day for me, I took a nap, ate dinner, watched TV and went to bed. Nothing unusual, and in fact I was far less active than I was a week ago.

I’m still getting them on and off this evening. They have not increased in intensity or length, and the frequency of them seems kind of random. I really hope this is not how it’s going to be for the next six weeks, as it does make sleeping difficult – not because the contractions themselves are painful (they’re not, they just kind of tingle a little bit), but because it squeezes my bladder and I have to keep running to the bathroom!

I’m telling my body just to give me another three weeks. After that, fine, I’ll just be waiting for labor to start – not that this false labor teasing would be very polite then, either, but at least I wouldn’t be worried about a baby in the NICU.

I am so not a fan of this. I want to go back to when I only had a couple a day.

In February my sister-in-law – the same one whom had a baby 3 months after Devin was born, the one who was pregnant alongside me the first time – announced she was pregnant again. It hit me like a ton of bricks. In retrospect I suppose I should have expected it, but every time I spoke to her she would say that they weren’t sure they were going to have any more children. It wasn’t out of the question, but they were happy with how it was, too. I admit I was relieved by that. When my first trimester and most of my second passed without any news I unwound a little and stopped giving it much thought. Until that night, when I felt like I got hit over the head with a two-by-four.

I held it together in public. Denis shot me a covert, concerned glance as the happy couple announced their joyous news to the family, and I simply fell quiet and sipped my water. I made small contributions to conversation, but let others carry the bulk. Outwardly composed, inwardly in turmoil. I lasted an hour or two before deciding that we needed to leave for the night. We walked silently to the car. As we sat there in the parking lot he asked me in a quiet voice how I was. And I fell apart, sobbing. One thought eclipsed all others: last time we were pregnant together she came home with a baby… I didn’t. Suddenly I saw the past repeating itself – pregnant again, a few months apart. I felt irrationally terrified for our little girl, that this meant we were going to lose her, too.

I know I couldn’t do it again. Last time I was determined. I went to my sister-in-law’s baby shower, after Devin had died. I visited her and the baby in the hospital. I stopped by after work once a week. I was determined to forge a good relationship with my niece, and to maintain a close friendship with my sister-in-law. It was hard – beyond hard. There were many days when I cried. But 2 years later I do have a positive relationship with my niece, I do still have a good relationship with my sister-in-law. There are still moments when the sadness and grief hits me, but overall I am in a place of peace about it. It just took a long time, and a lot of effort, to get here. And I know that I do not have it in me to do it again. If anything happens this time, I know I am done, the chasm too wide to ever repair.

The other piece of the bombshell dropped that evening hit the other grieving side of me: not only are they pregnant, but they are expecting twins. Two babies. My head reeled. I’ve never even wanted twins, so it wasn’t jealousy, exactly. But it still seemed that life was making an extra exclamation point on how hard it was for us to conceive, and how easy for so many others.

And lastly I cried, looking at my husband through wet eyelashes, and said, “With two of them, chances are at least one of them is a boy.” And I really wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

::

Today was her ultrasound. They are having two boys. And I was right: I’m not ready for it.

We have come to a place where we are so happy to be having a little girl. The dresses, the pink, the whole prospect of raising a girl-child… it has become our new little world and we are happy to be here. But there is still that large shadow looming overhead that we can’t quite get away from. I still get quiet in the store when I pass by the little boys outfits. I still get choked up seeing baby boys. Girl is our new world; boy is what could have been, should have been. Boy is what slipped through our fingers, got packed away in our basement.

And now we face the prospect of dealing with the reminders not just in a peripheral way, but daily, weekly. The thought scares me. I do not feel ready to confront this grief yet. I am already exhausted, knowing that when this baby is born alive we will have to re-face all our grief again as we stare directly into the looking glass at what should have been our life the first time around.

It would be so much easier if they were girls.

::

All of this is made even harder by the fact that we are in fact very close to them. I am good friends with my sister-in-law. Den is close to his brother. We all have a good relationship and they have been so very supportive of us throughout. They absolutely deserve their own happiness, their own joy, their own celebrations. But we are stuck, unable to be fully present. We are mired down in our own grief, our own issues. It would be easier, I think, if this all happened with family that we weren’t close to – people we could just walk away from, separate ourselves from. But we can’t do that – no, we don’t want to do that. I want Katherine to grow up close to her cousins. I want to maintain our friendship with brother-in-law and sister-in-law. I want to enjoy family gatherings. But in order to do all of that we now need to work through this.

I wish everything didn’t have to be such a struggle. I wish the idea of babies could be joyful and not so wrapped up in pain and fear and sadness. Maybe someday it will be – but I have my doubts. I think there will always be a bitterness, no matter how many years pass, no matter how many healthy, living children we have.

For right now I focus on getting Kate here safely, and hope that once that happens it won’t be quite so hard to get through the arrival of her two newest cousins.

I have started waking up multiple times a night – but it’s not to pee. (Though half the time once I’m awake I figured what the hell, better pee while I’m awake.)

Well first of all the damn german shepherd has decided that, since I take up less room on the bed than daddy, he should crowd onto my side to make use of all that wasted space. This makes me sweat, and I wake up pinned under my sheets, unable to roll over, and overheating. I have been kicking him off the bed about 4 times a night. (Literally – I start shoving him with my foot saying, “Off! Wake up and get off, damnit!” and he groans at me as if to say, “Lady, you are freaking annoying, cut it out.” On about the fourth boot to his butt he finally slides off the bed. I’m pretty sure he just waits for me to fall back asleep, then crawls back up and falls back asleep.) As spring sprung I have downgraded our blankets to the summer sheets and one of the microfiber winter sheets as the blanket. This is just the right balance for right now – as long as I am not within a foot of any external source of heat, such as my husband or the big furry dog.

The other reason is that last week my left hip started aching at night. I’d wake up in the morning with it all stiff and sore, which frustrated me because it still feels so early for that – I remember it last time at 35 weeks, not 32. And I’ve been sleeping with a body pillow from the start, which has been very comfortable – until last week. So… I downgraded. I moved the body pillow to my other side, so now I’m not sleeping with any pillow when I’m laying on my left. And what do you know, the hip stopped hurting! I guess it was just the angle on that particular hip… who knows. I might have another few weeks that I can sleep comfortably, and I’m trying to milk it. I actually think I’m sleeping more comfortably this time than last pregnancy… weird.

And finally the main reason I’ve been waking up frequently… my mind is wide awake and racing. I’ve mentioned the nesting I’m doing – major organizing and cleaning, including twitching every time something in this house is out of place. I’ve been annoying Denis by putting things back before he’s done with them, walking behind him throwing things out, asking him, “Is this yours? Where do you want it? You can’t leave it on the table!” And apparently this extends into my night time, too. So I’ve been waking up at, say, 4am, thinking about more things to do… baby items to buy, paperwork to get sorted, people I need to train at work to take over while I’m gone. My brain is just in this whirlwind and I really have to convince myself that it’s better on everyone if I fall back asleep and get the 8 hours of sleep I had intended on. I thought I was supposed to be getting more fatigued… what’s with this energy and perkiness? It is so not like me, it’s a little weird.

::

I just finished a fabulous book: Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife. It is a story, not an informational type book, and obviously is geared towards more of the crunchy audience, being about a midwife’s experiences. But it was good. Humorous, interesting, and very poignant. I would recommend it to anyone who feels even slightly enchanted by the birthing process and is looking for some light reading. The chapters/stories are short so I was easily able to read while at work (when I’m always getting interrupted by, you know, work.)

The book did not have all happy ending stories, just to be warned – there were a couple of stillbirths/losses mentioned. I actually found that to be more satisfying than if they were all happy endings – it seemed more real. If it was entirely a happy glossy book I think I’d have been a little irritated.

But for me I think the thing that I enjoyed the most was the stories of all the different kinds of labors. Long, short, loud, quiet, hospital, homebirth, early, late. It was so reassuring to me that even if my labor takes on a life of its own, even if it is nothing like my first one, that I will still be able to manage it. I admit, I’ve been thinking a lot about my last labor and how ideal it was (in all ways but the main one), then worrying that this next one will be much longer and harder. Yes, I’ve been questioning my ability to handle it, especially now having expectations and comparisons.

I really wish I could see and hear more lovely birth stories instead of the scary ones. I wish there were more uplifting books and TV shows.

This is the year for car repairs. Why? Because are shortly going to be paying off both car loans, that’s why. I had this icky, tingly spider-sense feeling that it was going to mean bad things. And sure enough…

First, in December, it was the batteries. My car had been acting up for a couple of months and we (okay, some kid at AutoZone) discovered a ton of corrosion and eaten-through wires. Got the whole thing replaced. A few weeks later the SUV wouldn’t start at all after accidentally leaving the lights on – would barely jumpstart, too. Yep, battery shit the bed and is leaking everywhere. Replaced that.

Now it’s the brakes. Both seemed to be having some little issues, you know? Just something doesn’t feel right. Oh boy did we get fun surprizes. The SUV went very suddenly from “probably need new brakes” to “grinding screeching horrible sound”. And that equals a thousand dollars worth of repairs, front and back, brakes, rotors, and new calipers to replace those that had seized up (causing that horrible screeching sound). Today was the car’s turn – just brake, pads, right? Ahahaha, no. Rotors were all rotted, had to replace everything, front and back. Less than the SUV – but not significantly.

Then there are the issues that have been getting steadily worse. The SUV has a fanbelt causing bad noises that needs to get fixed and has recently started a disconcerting vibrating noise. And the car, well for the past few weeks it’s been stalling out every time it rains heavily – water’s definitely getting in somewhere. I know both vehicles need these things looked at and fixed. But I tell you people, I am scared. At least one of those two things is going to be expensive. Maybe both. (And the car’s tires are getting almost to the point they need to be replaced. Not absolutely necessary yet, thank the light, but it’s in the future.)

The good news is that we have enough in savings to cover this all – barely. The bad news is that we will no longer be getting the new dining set or area rug or sofa that we had planned to finish up the renovations. Bye bye money. I’m very sad to see you go – especially without all the fun things I thought I’d be getting when you left. Getting rid of a payment, my ass. It’s going to take years to recoup our savings from this. and it’s just in time for me to be quitting my job so we have no extra income to put towards savings. Brilliant.

Well, at least we both have working vehicles. Or we better have. If anything else breaks I’m going to start kicking tires and threatening to drive them off a cliff. Effing cars.

April 5th is almost over. That was his due date, 2 years ago. It’s a funny thing, that due date… he probably would not have been born on that particular day, but it’s a day etched in our calendar forever. It was the alternative – the fork that led to the light. Instead he was born a month early, silent. He should not have been a dead March baby; he should have been a live April one.

But like many other days, this one passed simply, with barely a whisper between Denis and I as we remembered. It was acknowledged. That was enough.

Looming overhead are the next 3 weeks. 3 weeks, I chant, 3 more weeks. Until I hit 36 weeks, until I pass that gestation when he died. It’s strange, this mental space I live in. It’s not fear, not exactly. It’s not buzzing with energy. It’s just this very quiet in-between, a place of held breaths and whispered words. Every day I feel Kate squirm and kick in my belly I smile and pat her gently, saying ever so quietly to myself, Still alive. That’s good. It seems so ridiculous, but yet there it is. She’s alive, so it’s a good day.

Kate’s room is getting close to completion. We still have to paint the border stripe on the walls (I am in charge of taping the straight line; DH will paint it) and then we are done with the painting. We have moved a few things into the room even without that one thing done: a bookcase, an area rug (newly purchased), and just yesterday Denis put together the dresser that was delivered. We started with a really fugly old room with dark paneling. I really couldn’t picture a child even being in there. Now it’s completely different – it’s so light and bright and girly. I told Den that I like to just go in there and sit or stand in the middle of the room. He admitted that he does the same thing.

We are still continuing to move things back into the house little bits at a time, with the agreement that we’re going to sort through things first and find an actual place for everything. Our house looks a lot cleaner, a lot less cluttered. (Our garage and breezeway, not so much.) Today Den said, “We still have all those baby things in the garage, you know.” The pile of Devin’s baby gear: the mattress, the cosleeper, the carseat, the pack’n’play. All the things we got at his shower and never got around to even pulling out of the boxes. We had lots of time left. We didn’t have his room done. So it sat in boxes… until he died. Then it all got moved to the corner of the garage and waited.

With the room mostly done we can finally start bringing those things in. Today Den rummaged around out there and came in with the car seat. We opened the box and pulled it out, then we both stood and stared at it for a moment. “I’d feel better if this time we actually got everything ready,” he said quietly. I fully agreed. I felt so guilty when Devin died that we hadn’t been ready for him, and so horribly sad that so much of his I never got to experience in joyful anticipation, only sadness – things like putting the carseat in, like setting up his crib. So today, today we took that car seat outside and said, “This is hers now.” And we put it in my car. Today I got to look at it with joyful anticipation, the way I should have two years ago. It feels so damn good.

So, yes, nesting. It is what I am doing right now in a very big way. I think in large part the whole house renovation has compounded the hormones and turned me into a neat freak – which I normally am not. I also do not have that third trimester exhaustion yet, so I putter around cleaning and tidying and stacking things just so. (And given that I have a husband and some cats, I tend to re-stack and re-tidy things roughly a million times a day. That’s just an estimate, though.)

I have also noticed I have gotten fastidious about being clean – specifically my hands. This is somewhat of a problem considering that I work as a bank teller. Have you ever noticed how dirty money is? It’s disgusting. My fingers quickly turn greyish from whatever grossness comes off the bills while I’m counting, not to mention the ink. Then I feel like running in circles holding my hands up saying, “Eeewwwww!!!” until I can reach a sink or wipe. As a side-effect of the frequent hand-cleaning they are also getting extremely dry, so I’m constantly putting on lotion. Did I mention that this goes on all day long? And no, this did not start when I got pregnant, so it’s not a mental “don’t want to get germies” thing… this is a physical reaction to dirty hands like I used to get as a child when I’d attempt to play in dirt. (I said “attempt.”)

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My uterus has apparently reached my ribs. One week it was all, “It’s getting close, I feel kicks in my ribs sometimes” and then the next week it was “Holy hell I have a bowling ball pushing against my ribs. And it’s not her feet all the time. I think it’s just the ute, pushing upwards like a good, expanding ute does. I can feel my ribs flaring. And the belly is starting to really push upwards towards my boobs. Oh I didn’t like this part last time. Uncomfortable! And forget bending over. Every time I even reach forward to change the radio station in my car I get out of breath and sore (not to mention kicked in the ribs half the time).