We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new daughter, Katie, but not TOO anxious!!!  I started having “pre-term labor” at 35 weeks.  37 weeks is considered “full-term” but of course closer to 40 weeks is considered more ideal because this is the time when the baby is building fat.  We are also planning a home birth, and 37 weeks is the soonest I would be able to give birth at home (instead of a hospital).  So…getting to 37 weeks was a really critical milestone, and I’m so excited that now I am at 38 weeks!  However, it has not been an uneventful time!  From 35 – 37 weeks, I was on bedrest because moving about seemed to bring on contractions.  Once I was past the 37 week mark (last week), Roger returned to his day job full time, and I increased my activity level by a great deal.  So far, there has been one incident, 3 days ago (37 1/2 weeks) when contractions were holding steady at 3 minutes apart for almost 2 hours.  At around the 2nd hour, I decided to stop timing them, and keep myself busy.  I completed some long overdue chores around the house, and spent some time playing with Julie.  I had already put our midwife on “high-alert”, and called Roger to come home.  It wasn’t long till the contractions fizzled out, and we went on with our day…  It hasn’t been totally quiet since that time, but there hasn’t been enough activity to warrant another call to the midwife.  At my last check-up, the midwife concluded that I will most likely progress to active labor “sooner rather than later”, meaning in the next few days or so.

A 3-D ultrasound is not something we would have done under ordinary circumstances.  Our midwife requested that I have an independent diagnostic ultrasound done (outside of the ones I’ve had at Kaiser).  We went to the person she recommended, and he surprised us by also showing us some 3-d images of Katie (I only requested a diagnostic ultrasound, which is the traditional 2-d black/white ultrasound).  I am very happy and pleased to report that at the time of the ultrasound, Katie was measuring at around 5 1/2 pounds (perfect size for her gestational age!).  Julie had IUGR because of a problem with the placenta, and doing these diagnostic ultrasounds is one way to determine if this problem is occuring again.

Seeing her face made this pregnancy seem very real to me, perhaps for the first time.  Yes, morning sickness was very real for the first 6 months, and so was the 15 pounds that I lost during that time.  I know it might sound crazy, but I’ve been so busy for the past 9 months with Julie, that I haven’t had time to focus on or even think about this pregnancy.  Of course, I’ve spent countless hours every single day worrying about how I’m going to manage two kids by myself while Roger is at work.  But beyond that, I haven’t had the luxury of day dreaming about motherhood like I did when I was pregnant with Julie.

So, all that being said, the countdown is on, and we should have a new baby girl soon! 

Today we bought an anatomically correct baby girl doll for Julie.  I plan to wrap the doll as a gift to Julie and let her open it after Katie’s birth.  This way, she’ll have a baby to take care of just like Mama!  These days, Julie has me and Roger putting diapers on ALL her little stuffed animals and dolls, and even other toys like balls, blocks, etc.  She’s also into pointing out things that are similar or the same.  For example, if she sees a picture of a chair, balloon, banana, etc. in a book, she’ll look around the room to find a similar object and point it out.  So I think she’ll enjoy seeing her sister, and then looking at her baby doll.  We’ll see though…she might not be interested at all in the doll, and only want to “care for” the real thing!

Today, Roger kept saying that this will probably be our “last weekend with Julie as an only child”.  I think he was a little sad in a bitter sweet way.  We are certainly very excited and looking forward to our new addition, but we also have the concern that we’ve heard from many other parents:  “how will we possibly love another the way we do this one?”  I am sure that our hearts will grow, and make room for another, and after a while, we probably won’t be able to imagine our life without them both! 

Several people have advised us to enjoy this time with Julie before the new baby comes.  But, how do you “enjoy this last bit of time with your only child”, when this is all you know?  It’s kinda like telling expectant parents to “rest up before the baby comes”.  That has to be the most ridiculous advise I’ve ever heard!  First of all, there’s absolutely no way for expectant parents to anticipate how extremely exhausted they will be when the new baby comes.  Not to mention…you can’t exactly store “the rest” in a bottle!  So how do we “enjoy this last time with Julie as an only child” when this is all we’ve known for almost 2 years!?