A bigger tshirt (and a timeline of pregnancy photos)

I finally broke down yesterday and bought an XL tshirt from Target. I was trying to hold out and not spend money on maternity clothes--my strategy is to wear borrowed maternity clothes or the maternity dresses my mom has sewn for me (yes, I'm spoiled in that way) or carefully-chosen normal clothes from my closet (yes, just practically bust out of them...it's attractive).  Even Mitch's tshirts are now too tight on my belly so it was time. Hopefully this baby girl is getting bigger...I definitely am.

I haven't taken many photos during this pregnancy. As I've mentioned, I avoid photos in general now because I don't like to see myself frozen in time; somehow that makes the pain worse because it makes it so that I see the pain as well as feeling it. It's just impossible for me to look at a photo of myself and not think, "Miles should be there with me." Still, I do have a few prego photos to put in baby girl's baby book (mostly I've just had to crop other people out of the few random photos I have). I bought a special baby book just for her. It's big; it's notebook-sized so that it's identical to the one I had to take to the bookbinder for our encyclopedia-of-Miles. I don't want her to feel like mommy skimped on her baby book!

Anyway, I'll have to handle my issue with taking photos, I promise myself, once baby girl is here. Just like Miles was able to do, she'll turn her daddy and me into photographers, I know.

In the meantime, here's my timeline of pregnancy photos right up to today's shot in my new Target tshirt.

34 weeks to go (yes, we're dressed for golfing)...

24 weeks to go (my pregnancy was still top secret)...

17 weeks to go...

10 weeks to go (I used to think scarves hid my baby bump)...

6 weeks to go...

Bigger and bigger. Bigger on the outside and bigger on the inside...making room in my heart for another little love of my life. Yes, I love this little one so much. I'm looking forward to her joining our family--Mitch, me, Miles, and baby girl.

Top Ten "New" Rules of Pregnancy for Me

For the record, I know that the cause of Miles' congenital heart defect is unknown.  It's nothing I did, they say.
I know that. Yet somehow I can't help thinking of every little simply scary thing in life that could possibly in any tiny way have impacted Miles and now could impact our second child...and if it possibly could be bad (even if that's just in my mind) then I don't do it.

In short, I'm psycho...but I hide it fairly well, I like to think. Constantly I worry that I am responsible for doing every little thing right--all while feeling helpless as I lack true control over actually ensuring the health of our baby girl. There's nothing I can do, yet I obsess over every little thing and am SO careful.

The complete list feels endless I'm afraid, but I'll share a sampling of things that I've done differently during this pregnancy for the baby's health (and my own sanity).

Top Ten "New" Rules of Pregnancy for Me

10. No heart rate higher than 140 bpm. Therefore, no running...just walking on an incline on the treadmill.
9. Move to another part of the gym when the cleaning man comes close to my machine. Leave the gym if I still feel I am in the range of chemicals.
8. Avoid bathroom cleaning products for the first trimester.  Yes, this reveals how long our bathroom went without being cleaned.
7. No clorox bathroom cleaning products ever again. I've switched over to "green" ones with only a few chemicals on the labels.  I wear gloves and clean the least often as possible (just for guests and un-ignorable grime).
6. No Ipod hooked onto the waistband of my shirts (only permissible to hook it on the top of my tshirt)
5. Give up coffee.
4. Give up chocolate soy milk.
3. Refuse to ever put computer on my lap.
2. No pedicures.
1. No microwave. It sat unplugged on the floor for months until Mitch asked if we were ever going to use it again.  When I said no, he got rid of it.

And of course there's the "appropriately react to all potentially harmful situations" rule. Thus the time I had an anxiety attack after I broke a high efficiency lightbulb and read the label that there is mercury in the damn things...Mitch put a mask on me, I evacuated the apartment, he cleaned up the mess, and we spent the night at my parents' house.

The truth is that these things, just like all the other things that I'm not admitting to doing/not doing this time around, are totally fine for pregnant women (according to more reliable sources of medical information than I am) so please don't think I'm judging. I'm just not a typical pregnant woman any more--a psycho pregnant woman would be one way to put it now, but, in all fairness, I feel it's fairly reasonable to be so in my case.

With this pregnancy, my number one goal is for the baby to be healthy. And after that goal, if possible, it would be nice to be a sane person as well.

One day at a time

One day at a time.  That's how I got to be 30 weeks pregnant.

More specifically, at the end of each day, I take my prenatal vitamin...

And then I take a deep breath and think to myself, "That's one more day." And, yes, I use a pill keeper; when Miles was in the hospital, it was honestly just too difficult to remember whether or not I had taken my vitamin every night (and it would make me crazy because I wanted to be sure to be getting all the right nutrients for the breast milk I was pumping and freezing every day).  As little a thing as it was, it was too much for me to handle--which helps me to remember how normal we looked yet how barely-hanging-on we actually were. Now, it seems, I still need the pill keeper for my memory and sanity and to get me day to day.

So with every vitamin at the end of the day, that's one more day. And then every Monday I refill for the week. And that means one more week has passed. And that's how I got to be 30 weeks pregnant.

All that to simply say it's hard to look ahead too much. I go day by day. It took so much courage and hope to get pregnant with our second child. That I know. And I know too much about medicine and life now to believe that this baby's health and well-being is a given...to believe that everything will just work out. I am very hopeful and occasionally allow myself brief glimpses of my wildest day dreams--imagining that this baby will leave the hospital (just the exact moment of carrying her out of the door of the hospital brings a level of joy to my heart that I don't have to think beyond that) or imagining this baby at my sister's wedding in September. I smile when I think of how unbelievably wonderful that will be if that can happen for the baby girl and for us. But I'll never go back to being the pregnant woman who just believes that of course that will happen. That's sad, I know; but it's real.

Each day is its own wave of emotion. It boils down to two things: 1. grief over losing Miles, and now having a growing family that includes him but not in the way we want and dreamed of and 2. concern over this baby's health. The second part is very real and mostly results in me being (I would argue reasonably) neurotic, concerned, so happy that the 20-week ultrasound showed no heart problems (yet still knowing that only time will tell that she is completely healthy), and under the impression that this pregnancy has been the longest pregnancy imaginable. The first part--the missing Miles part--is the more significant one of course; it's the one that takes on different forms but that will be part of our lives forever. But we do our best to balance the joy and pain; because if we had waited until we were done grieving Miles' death, we would never have any more children. There is room in our hearts and our lives for both. One child does not replace the other; it gives me the rage when people give the impression that the arrival of this baby will be so wonderful that we'll no longer be in pain over losing Miles. They just don't know.  We are joyful, and we will be joyful when this baby girl arrives.  And we'll miss Miles.  We'll wish that we were introducing Miles to her, wish that we had both of our children with us.

10 weeks to go.  And I'll take it day by day.  It's emotional.  It all is now. And I know that it's worth it.