Emotionally, physically, geographically...
Well, Ok.
Nearly a year has passed since the last time I posted here. At the time of that last post, life had really become so overwhelming. We were still struggling with fertility, and I was beginning to think it would never happen again; Hank was growing up so, so quickly; my career was starting to feel at a real crossroads. Keeping up with the blog was just not a priority. Add in the fact that I wasn't really feeling like I could keep up with my original intention behind the blog: to keep a running record of our lives (because my head was so wrapped up in wanting to have another baby and my heart was so sad that we were having such continuing trouble getting pregnant -- it was a hard time).
A few days after that last post it was my birthday and we had everyone we knew, who was local, over to the house for a housewarming/birthday party. It was a really fun, lovely day, but what I remember most from that day was that Hank, who was approaching 2.5 years old at the time, fell fast asleep on my lap in the middle of the party. He had already pretty much dropped the nap, so this was pretty unusual, and it felt so warm and good. Someone offered to move him off me, but I refused, waved that person off, and said, "Let's just leave him -- I may never have a child fall asleep on me again."
A few days later I found out I was pregnant again. We didn't really believe it, but as the weeks went on, it seemed that I was, in fact pregnant. Ultrasounds showed that things were growing on track, revealed heartbeats, and as time went on we began to get comfortable -- maybe we were finally going to get to have another baby? But at 10.5 weeks I began bleeding, and I knew immediately the pregnancy was over. I had to have a D&C, and the fetus was analyzed, and two weeks later we learned that the baby had three sets of chromosomes -- it never stood a chance of survival. It was devastating news. We had no idea how to proceed. It was Mother's Day week, and we went to Big Sur that weekend, lost ourselves in the coast, listed to songs that made us sob, returned home and tried to decide what to do next.
A few months later the decision was taken out of our hands -- to my huge surprise, I was pregnant again. My first thought was "how am I going to get through this?" Emotionally, I didn't feel prepared at all to wait through the first trimester, to make it viability, to survive a pregnancy. I was still feeling somewhat shattered from the last miscarriage, and this pregnancy now followed two miscarriages, which had been separated by 1.5 years of infertility. Needless to say, I was not feeling like I was very good at pregnancy, and my track record for success was pretty bad.
But here I am now, 26 weeks pregnant, feeling pretty confident that, come May, we will be welcoming a new baby to our family.
I won't lie -- there has been a lot of anxiety accompanying all this, especially in the early weeks. And still, whenever anything feels even a little bit off, I call the advice nurse immediately, but so far, so good. So if anyone is actually reading this, if you can spare some good thoughts for us -- good thoughts for a healthy, continuing pregnancy -- I would be most grateful.
In the meantime, our little Hank has grown so much, and is becoming so mature and is getting so big. It has been an unbelievable privilege to watch him leave baby and toddlerhood behind, and enter his little boyhood. He still has some of the Hankisms that I listed in my last post -- the word "orange" is still pronounced "oiange", "regular" is pronounced "weguly", and "San Francisco" is still "Sampancisco"; but he recently corrected my pronunciation of "samama" -- he told me that it is actually called "salame." Sniff!
He's also so physical - -it is incredible to see what he is able to do. He's always been a monkey, so much of this isn't all that surprising, but still -- seeing him fly down the fire pole at the playground over and over, when other kids his age seem terrified to even try it, blows my mind. He climbs so well, and regularly jumps from heights that are higher than he is while exclaiming "to infinity and beyond!!!" We get compliments on his abilities, vocabulary, and politeness all the time. At the playground he helps other kids learn how to do things, like go down the fire pole, and he is good at interacting with other kids who want to play with him. He makes friends everywhere. It is really lovely.
We are trying to get him mentally prepared for having a baby in the house, and he seems to be OK, even excited at times, with the whole idea of it. He often tells me that the baby can sleep in his tent with him, and sometimes when he hugs me, he tells me that it was actually a hug for the baby. He's been a little concerned about my morning sickness (which lasted until about a week ago), and would rub my back when I was sick, and would call out to Henry, "Daddy! Mommy's doing something! Mommy's barfing!!" (and incidentally, when I tell Hank that he will always be my baby, he now tells me, "yeah, yeah, but I don't make you barf anymore." Except for that time you brought stomach flu home from daycare, thank you very much...).
I've been lucky enough to be home with Hank for the last few months. I felt my job in San Francisco in November, and we pulled Hank out of daycare while I took some time to get my own practice started. Now that things have gotten off the ground, we are looking for preschool.
I'm really happy these days. I feel like we have finally gotten through that horrible trying-to-get-pregnant time and I feel like I am finally in control of my professional destiny. My family is a joy to me and I love our house. Our ornamental plum tree exploded in lavender flowers, today, and the entire neighborhood smelled like heaven. We've been in our house for a little over a year, and we are finally feeling like we are getting to know people in our community, and it is a wonderful thing to feel like I am happy exactly where I am, because I think I was struggling a lot over the last couple of years.
But things are good, if not downright lovely these days, and I would have been remiss had I not stopped by here to write it all out.
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