Dinner went well, everything got done thanks to my absolutely fabulous husband who did practically everything while I was at work. I walked in the door prepared to really dig in and get cleaning and cooking, only to find that not only had he followed the list, he’d pretty much done everything. He is awesome. The day passed quietly, peacefully, with just the right amount of remembrance and respect. We had a couple of family members mention that they’ve bought something for baby girl, but they didn’t bring it tonight because they felt it was Devin’s day, not hers. But mostly it was just a gathering to eat and chit-chat and just come together as a family. As it should be.

It appears that I have a tradition of getting a photo of myself, Sheepie, and the gift I buy for Devin every year on his birthday. It just feels right to do.

Today is Devin’s second birthday.

I’ve been obsessing – again – over baby names, and getting progressively more upset about it. I write down names on scraps of paper, I hold them up to ultrasound pictures, I whisper them under my breath to my belly. I still mostly like both of our name choices (but with some reservations/dislikes about each). If I mess around and combine the two names I can find something that makes me excited. But Denis refuses to venture beyond those two names, they are set in stone to him and he is just. so. done. listening to me. “I don’t know what you want me to say!” he says in exasperation after I’ve reiterated the same thing for the tenth time. Yesterday I was sitting at work feeling anxious and frustrated – overwhelmed, really. It wasn’t until I was driving home that I started thinking that maybe there was more to this than being indecisive about a name.

I’ve been planning the party: making the dinner list, making the invite list, buying the ingredients, planning out my prep and cleaning time. I had everything under control until yesterday we were out all day so I got nothing accomplished, then today I came home to get started and Denis wasn’t home yet. I completely melted down, sobbing. And while my head was screaming about cleaning and food preparation, my heart was just simply crying. All of it just bubbled up, turning into a small frustration into a big emotional deal. Not 5 minutes later Den walked in the door and found me like that, face red and eyes glittering with tears.

I am sure that the party tomorrow night we be just fine, I just need to give myself the time and space to grieve and feel sad. I’ve been so wrapped up in this baby I am carrying that I haven’t been thinking of Devin much – he’s always present in our lives, our conversations, but I just don’t think too hard about what we are missing. Not that I feel guilty about that at all, right now she’s who I need to focus on, and I am so glad we have something happy to spend our time and energy on. But apparently if I don’t make the time, it will come bubbling out sooner or later, piled on top of whatever else I am struggling with.

Happy birthday, baby boy. We miss you every day – it’s hard to believe it’s been 2 years. I still picture you as my sweet little newborn, perfect and innocent in my arms. Even though time passes, you will never grow up in our hearts. We love you more than you ever knew, and we carry that around with us, forever.

Devin’s birthday present, engraved:
“Always in our hearts
For Devin, 2 years”

I am annoyed because I have several things in my head that I really want to write about, but I have had NO time the past few days to do so. Like now, it is after 10pm already and I have just gotten a chance to open my computer. So every night I have a choice: do some of the things that I intended to do (clean, read, write), or sleep. One night I made the mistake of reading until midnight. I nearly fell asleep at work the next day, so apparently cheating yourself out of sleep is not an option when pregnant, even if you really want to.

So I’ll postpone the thoughtful stuff and just post that the baby’s bedding set arrived today! It is SO adorable, I hugged it and wanted to take it to bed with me. (And before you say “You should have!”, it was the copious amounts of fur in my house that had me tucking it back into the plastic bag.) I bought Zoey by Cocalo. Ever since I first got pregnant I would look through all the different options and kept coming back to this one, so I knew it was the one I wanted. However I wasn’t going to buy it because we don’t intend to actually use a bumper in the crib… but I showed my mom, and she insisted she buy it for the baby, and I’m so glad!! I’m going to hang the quilt on the wall in the baby’s room, it’s just perfect. I’ll try to get some pictures of it.

Oh, and as for the room itself? We decided to do a two-toned wall, pink on the bottom and beige on the top, with a white chair-rail (or painted stripe) in the middle. I picked out the pink very quickly and Denis has put that color up. But the beige color is being more difficult – all the samples I tried had some kind of strange undertone that I didn’t like. I’m hoping that now that I have the bedding that I’ll be able to find the right shade soon so we can get that all done! Sadly the room will still not be set up until after we get all the hardwood refinished (we’re getting it all professionally completely sanded down and everything, the floors in this house are in terrible shape), and who knows when that will happen.

Two and a half months to get everything finished. Spring had better come soon or we’re going to run out of time!

And for those wondering, I do have belly pictures from the past several weeks, but I have not had time to edit/resize/upload them. I will get to them this weekend!

Tonight I started asking Den about names again, re-hashing the same things. I said, “I’m naming a PERSON! I have to make sure it’s RIGHT!” Finally I just put my head down on my arms and moaned, “Being a parent is so hard.”

Den sighed in exasperation and replied, “Honey, I think being a parent is going to be ridiculously easy compared to deciding on a name!”

::

Today was indeed my 28 week appointment, complete with ultrasound. The ultrasound was first, and I was quickly seen to. Baby girl was kicking me, so not much anxiety presented itself. She measured the few things, telling me what she was doing as we went along. I craned my head to see the numbers pop up on the screen – everything looked pretty average. Heart rate was a good solid 158bpm. The abdomen measurement was a little behind, but she tried 4 times to get a good measurement and told me baby just wasn’t in a good position to get a good angle. When done she got me a few pictures of baby girl’s sweet little face profile. There was actually fluid in front of her face today, instead of being completely mashed up against my placenta (she looked like maybe her head was a little lower, below the bulk of the placenta?), but alas still a 3d shot was not forthcoming – her nose was getting cut off, making her look very strange indeed. And she is indeed head-down, as I’ve been saying.

The ultrasound tech sat at her desk for a few minutes calculating and printing it all off, said baby’s weight is estimated to be 2lb 6oz, perfectly average. Then she went to show everything to a doctor before releasing me – which they do every single ultrasound. But of course she didn’t come right back in. I sat there and swung my feet. I patted my belly. I looked at the screen over and over again – only that belly measurement was a little “off,” and even so it was still within the normal range. But you know how it is… the longer I sat there, the more nervous I got, straining my ears to hear her footsteps coming back in. I work really hard in moments such as those to just breathe and not over-think anything, to just tell myself that it’s all fine, all normal, nothing to worry about. Finally she comes back in, chuckling (apparently at something the doctor had said, I can only assume) and said, “He thinks everything looks great, you can go!” Breath exhaled.

From there it was off to see my midwife. I’m officially up 18lbs at 28 weeks, which is more than I would prefer (because I put on roughly 5lbs while on vacation, whoops), but right on track for a normal weight gain. My blood pressure was read at 127/69, which is high for me, but no one said anything. (Not too surprizing, given the fact that I’d just been getting anxious waiting for the ultrasound results!) I also got to do the lovely sugar drink for the gestational diabetes test, yuck. It made me feel rather gaggy this time.

I got to see my favorite midwife today and chit-chat for a little bit. I’m third trimester, holy cow. Now they’re starting to ask things like how many contractions I’ve been having. I asked some questions about kick counting and hospital policies, nothing major. She said their standard procedure for monitoring during labor is a 30-minute strip when admitted, then a 1-2 minute strip every half an hour thereafter. In between they take the monitor off and you’re free to labor however you want to, which is nice. (Of course if you get an epidural they do want the monitor on, but you’re stuck in bed anyways at that point!)

The midwife did look at my belly for a few minutes. I was just mentioning to Den yesterday how around my belly button looks red and marbled and kind of odd-looking. The midwife confirmed that it is definitely not stretchmarks, but it’s not a rash either. She peered at it for a few moments, sweeping her fingers over the area a couple times. She said it’s probably just my very fair skin. Which makes a lot of sense, I know the back of my hands get red and marbled looking when I come in from the cold or when I’ve been exercising – probably from the increased blood flow. And my belly most certainly has increased blood flow. Plus my skin is getting stretched tighter (and thinner) and it’s the middle of winter. My poor see-through skin, ha.

My next appointment – just for the midwife, no ultrasound or anything – is in 2 weeks. Yikes.

Saturday I was at work, sitting at my desk trying to catch up on the mounds of paperwork I had been greeted with upon return from my vacation. I was hunched forward a little bit, leaning into my computer screen as I typed something in. And then… pain! My right ribs. I felt like there was something stabbing me, I couldn’t breathe, I gasped a little bit and clutched at my ribs as it ebbed. It left me wondering…. Shit, what was that? Was that the baby? It didn’t happen again.

Today as I sat on my left side, legs drawn up on my right, I could feel baby girl kicking my right side. I felt around a little bit and realized she was kicking just below my ribs. The past week she’s been kicking higher and higher – she was very rarely above my belly button, and suddenly it feels like she’s expanded upwards. It now bothers me to slouch, my belly presses upwards and my boobs fall downwards and it just creates a very uncomfortable meeting in the middle.

If that wasn’t her kicking my ribs on Saturday, it most certainly will be soon enough. This child makes me nervous – she kicks hard. She is going to hurt me.

Dear baby,
There is still 3 months of growing left to do. I love that you are so active in there, it does my heart a lot of good. But I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t make me too black and blue in there. Try to aim for the front and sides where there are no bones or organs to hit.
Love, mama.

::

She remains a very active baby. I start kick counts tomorrow, at 28 weeks, and it will probably be a very quick evening chore – though I do need to ask the Midwife how I count “drumming,” the boomboomboom as she kicks me nonstop.

This will also be the start of me seeing the midwives every two weeks from here on out. Time is moving along. I’m really happy to see things move forward at a good pace.

::

In the meantime, this week I’m planning the dinner for Devin’s second birthday. We’re inviting “just immediate family” but with Den’s family that still adds up to quite a few people. So I’m planning the menu and trying to get ready for that. I don’t feel sad about it, not really. I’m sure I’ll have my moments, but for right now I’m in a good place with this baby on the way and am mostly just in shock that it’s been 2 years already. What a long two years it has been, in some ways – it feels like a lifespan all of its own – but on the other hand I’m still not really sure how I got here.

But for now my only question is…. do I buy a cake pan in the shape of a dinosaur, or no? Questions, questions.

Even when have grieved, when you’ve moved on to living and assimilated the loss of your child into your life, become your “new normal,” there’s so many little ways in which you recognize that you are different. Your normal is not THE normal. Never again. There are just some sights, some sounds, some words, that will never mean the same thing again.

Today I’m putting together some of baby girl’s ultrasound pictures into a cute little collage that I can get printed as a photo to give to family members. The collage itself is finished but I just needed a cute little quote or something to put on there to finish it off. So I looked around online for ideas.

I ran across this one: “Little girls are just angels who haven’t yet spread their wings.” It just made me shudder, like little girls are just waiting to die. Now that is not an image I want. Any mention of wings or angels just does not sit well with me anymore, not in anything to do with my still-living child. It is no longer just a cute metaphor.

I found a quote that seemed at first glance to be appropriate, not too cutesie-over-the-top-rainbows, and even was specific to the time of pregancy, before the baby is born. But then after I put it on the image I sat back and realized that it sat really wrong with me. It reads: “Before you were born… we loved you.” It’s the past-tense thing. Loved. I had also put the date of the ultrasound on the card in small print, like I would a scrapbook page, and the whole effect was rather disturbing to me, a little too close to a memorial.

So all text was erased. Maybe we’ll do without a little quote.

To be honest, I am so annoyed that I don’t have a clear idea on which name to use for this baby. Denis too is frustrated by my indecision, but has remained neutral, saying he loves both names (though he’s clear on which one he’d choose) and it’s up to me. He knows how I make decisions using my emotional brain, that I am waiting to feel it, to know it. But he also knows how deadlocked I can become.

This is not something anyone can help me with. I have gone up and down the list of pros and cons (in my head) of each name, of why it may or may not suit her, of problems we may or may not run into, of which full name I like better, which nickname I like better, what people will end up calling her, what peoples’ reactions will be, and what she will eventually think of her name. I tried a suggestion where I call out each name in my living room; it was supposed to clarify which name suits our family, which name fits in our home, but instead I realized they both equally failed as I still simply cannot picture a child in this house. I am paralyzed with indecision and anxiety. I want not just a good name, but the perfect. I fear regret.

Obviously I am far, far over-thinking this.

I never expected to be this person, the one with the nameless baby. Especially not after Devin, who was Devin from 18 weeks forward, whose very identity and name brought me so much comfort (and yet so much pain). For him there was only one possible name, the perfect name, and it was so easy. Knowing who he was ahead of time seemed so precious to me. I want that again. I don’t want to go into the labor room not knowing who she is. I don’t want to be panicking at the last minute.

This baby has been problematic from the start. She never had a nickname and now she doesn’t have a real name, either.

Baby girl and I are very patriotic!

Monday night we went to bed shortly before midnight, and talked and giggled a little like usual (we are like children when we go to bed, tickling, telling funny stories, and laughing at each other). Then I we rolled over and layed there in the dark, silent, drifting off to sleep. I waited until I felt a kick before saying anything. “I think it’s after midnight. You know what today is?” 27 weeks. Third trimester.

I feel so big compared to what I was a month or two ago, and yet I look in the mirror and realize I’m pretty tiny. If I wear empire waist maternity outfits sometimes it just camouflages the belly. I prefer tight shirts that emphasize the fact that I’m pregnant. Look out, people in airport, preggo lady needs bathroom! Move it, move it!

I feel remarkably good, given how sore I was in the first trimester. My hips have stopped aching for the most part, my boobs haven’t hurt in a long while, my back has been doing well despite flights and a lot of walking. My wrists still give me the odd moment of discomfort, but being off work (and away from the repetitive motions) for a couple of weeks have done them good. I do still have near daily heartburn, but it is a very light burning, more an irritation than anything else.

The little monster-in-my-belly is getting very big, and very strong. I keep thinking she’s a tiny little thing floating around in there, like she was, but then I get a butt pushing out above my belly button while something kicks me on the other side and I realize she’s a lot bigger than I think. She’s still so very active – not every day, not all day, but frequently. Yesterday on the plane she kicked and squirmed for quite some time, but was largely quiet throughout the travels. But as soon as we got in bed she woke up. Kicking, punching, tap-tap-tapping, she kept me awake for a good part of the night. She doesn’t like it when I lay on my left side, but my right side gives me more heartburn and is much less comfortable overall. I like sleeping on my left, it gives me the best, deepest sleep. She apparently felt crowded by the angle. (I am still perfectly comfortable sleeping somewhat tilted onto the front of my hip, rather than on my side.)

The squirmy monster on top of the time change and long day of travel has resulted in me being very, very tired today – not to mention the shitty slushy snowstorm and my car stuck in the muddy slush on the side of the driveway and power being out at both home and work. It was a great first day home (snort). I took a long nap and now I’m just trying to stay up until bedtime, so I can sleep all night and hopefully get back on track.

I just loaded in the DVD of the ultrasound to watch to myself, and I started giggling and smiling. I think one of my favorite parts of the video isn’t even the 3D section, but getting to have a permanent record of a 2D ultrasound in video! I just love watching them scan through her body, watching her wiggle and kick and move. I can read 2D better than 3D anyways, I think. Don’t get me wrong, I do love having the 3D pictures! But to me the snapshots in 3D would have been enough, but I could sit and watch her in black and white all day long. It is amazing.

I think during the actual ultrasound I was still wound pretty tight and didn’t really get to relax and enjoy it as much as I would have liked. In a way it’s like watching a race in the olympics; I find I enjoy it more the second time after I know what the result was, the first time I’m too anxious about what is going to happen. So to me this is really cool. I wonder if Den will think the same.

::

I was asked about names – I’m surprized no one has asked before this. :) The thing is, we have two perfect girls names picked out. We love them both and if we have another girl someday we will use the second one. We had only one boy name picked out, so if this had turned out to be a boy it was set in stone. Alas with a girl it is not so certain. The girls names are Katherine Elizabeth and Cailet Amber. We love both for different reasons. We are leaning more towards Katherine, and even started calling her that, but then as this girl’s personality comes out I started feeling a lot of anxiety and wondering if maybe it’s not the right name – she seems so spunky. So I’m frozen. I’m waiting for something to jump out at me and make one feel completely right, but unfortunately that may not happen until she’s born. So until I figure it out she’s just baby girl. It’s driving me crazy, too. I hate not having a name.

::

I carefully put together a sig today – a small scrapbook-style graphic to be used on one of my forums. In it I used my favorite of baby girl’s 3D pictures and I also put Devin’s in there, too, since he is always included in some way. After I finished, when I stopped looking at it in terms of color matching and balanced design, when I really looked at it and took it in, I realized: baby girl looks so much like Devin. Same nose. I’ve thought about what she will look like – hell, I’ve thought about what he would look like. And suddenly there she is, her fuzzy little 3D womb picture, pointing out in startling clarity how much my children look alike, at least from their first photo.

I can’t wait to meet her on the outside, to take real pictures, to take in her eyes and nose and mouth… and to get a glimpse of what my little boy might have looked like alive.