familiar yet different

i have been trying to gather my thoughts for this post for the last couple of days. i am not sure if they are crystal clear, but i needed to get them out of my head.

so here we go.

i was unprepared for the emotional roller coaster than accompanies having a baby. when you couple those emotions with what we experienced over the last year, well you have the makings of an emotional train wreck. i know, hormones can bring on the tears like lake ontario can bring on the snow, that what i am feeling is normal. but it makes me feel like i am losing my mind.

i dont remember being this emotional with cooper. i was emotional, but i had a reason to be, my baby was facing open heart surgery. the bean is perfectly healthy. but yet i seem to cry for no real reason. dont get me wrong, i am over the moon about the bean. we are a family. i fall more in love with his sweet face, funny personality, little fingers and noises every day. but there are moments when my heart aches like it hasn't in a long time. there are times when i look at him, and all i see is cooper and i grieve for him all over again. or when i feel guilty for loving him as much as cooper, that somehow i am betraying my first born. oh, what a mother's heart can feel. i know that the bean is cooper's way of helping us heal and mend. that he knows how much i love him and that wont change. i also know that these emotions are part of my healing and journey. but it is harder than i imagined.

i remember being sore after my c-section with cooper, but not this slow to recover. then i remember that i have had my gut slashed open twice in the last 15 months, i should be sore.

i have come to the conclusion that i was in shock after cooper was born and functioned on adrenaline, therefore i don't remember emotions or pain. and that postpartum hormones really suck.

11 more days

in 4 weeks

it seems to me that this pregnancy has been the longest gestational period in the history of mankind. so it is a little strange to me that in 4 weeks, or maybe sooner, the bean will be here. that we will know what he looks like, who he looks like, be able to count his fingers and toes, see his personality in action and smell that intoxicating baby smell.

and while i am over the moon excited to meet the gremlin that has take over my body, i am anxious. there is a beauty in not knowing when you are going to go into labor, you have no control over the timing and you have to let the process unfold. it is spontaneity at its finest. you lose some of that when you have a planned c-section. and while it was my decision to have a repeat c-section, i am secretly hoping the bean comes early (i will still have a c- section). i think it will take some of the anxiety out of the process.

i know intellectually, that the anxiety is natural. our birth experience with cooper was not the norm and i have every reason to believe that the bean's birth will be the norm. but i know that the process will be intense, emotional and overwhelming. and that despite our joy, there will still be some sadness and grieving that takes place. how could there not be?

not knowing what those moments will be like when we are first together as a family unit seems to occupy my thoughts lately. i also know that until the bean lives longer than cooper, i will be very protective and guarded of our little family. we are blessed to have friends and family alike who are so excited about the bean and want to share in our joy. but in those first 3 weeks i don't want alot of visitors, with exception of immediate family and our closest friends. whether or not people understand this need makes me anxious and occupies my thoughts when i cant sleep at night.

i try not to dwell on my anxiety, but its hard, given all that we have been through. but i know that despite my anxiety and worry, things will unfold as they should and i will look back and wonder why i worried so.

and that in 4 weeks, we will be a family and the hole in my heart will not be as big as it is today.

musings on pregnancy

i am not one who "does" pregnancy well. don't get me wrong, i am thrilled about the bean and about being a parent. i am acutely aware of how fertile i am and the ease with which i can conceive. but i don't like being pregnant. i see it as a means to an end.

i have heard so many women say that they love being pregnant. to be honest, i don't get what all the fuss is about and quite frankly i think its all a load of shit, like they feel bad if they say they don't like being pregnant.

lets face it , besides the mere fact that we as a race can procreate, there is nothing really wonderful about being pregnant.

** you spend the first several months feeling like you are on a permanent hangover, except you cant have a drink to take the edge off. or you are hugging the toilet and puking your guts out. either way it is not a pretty sight.

**women rave about their hair during pregnancy. well i have news, if you are blessed with a thick head of hair, pregnancy makes it unbearable. i have the constant urge to cut it all off, fortunately, my hair dresser knows better than to go down that path. i guess that's why he gets paid the big bucks.

**lets talk fashion. yes, maternity clothes have come along way, but fashionable clothes come with a hefty price tag. and who wants to pay a small fortune on clothes that you wear for a few months. so, you splurge on a couple of outfits, and by the time the baby comes you are ready to burn them all because you cant stand the sight of yourself wearing them. seriously, i can not wait to get rid of maternity clothes.

**and tell me what is pleasant about having a small gremlin take over your body? it is not fun, pleasant or exciting to have someone punch your crotch all day long.

**or how about waking up in the middle of the night with a wet shirt because your boobs have leaked.

** or you cant bend over to put on your winter boots or tie your shoes without help.

** and don't even get me started on hormones and the effect they have on your body or emotional state. one minute you love your husband because of what you created together and the next minute you cant stand him for getting you knocked up and are telling him to look into getting snipped as soon as you deliver this baby. ahhh, hormones.

and women say they "love" being pregnant. really? thankfully, none of my friends share that sentiment and we can commiserate together. i am very excited about meeting the bean, but i think that i am equally as excited about his arrival marking the end of my pregnancy.

then comes the fun part, losing the baby weight......good times......

family history rewritten

me and my mom in the hospital.

it seems that one of the first questions people ask when a baby is born, is how much did the little bundle weigh? they don't ask if mother and baby are healthy, but want to know if it is a big baby? as if having a big baby is some sort of right of passage. and we wonder why we are a weight obsessed culture.

when i was pregnant with cooper, my mil was convinced i was going to have a huge baby. i am not really sure why she thought that. my precious husband and his brother were over 8 pounds. my nephew was also over 8 pounds and has been in the 95th percentile since he was a wee one, but my bil and sil are much taller than me, so the size of their child really had no bearing on the size of the child my precious husband and i would create. cooper, by the way was 7 pounds 4 ounces.

perhaps my mil also thought i would have a big baby because i was 10 pounds. before you gasp, you must know this, i was also a month late. my father was in medical school when i was born and despite my mother's begging to be induced, the doctors were unwilling to induce labor. it was harvey wall bangers and chili dogs that finally coaxed me out of the womb ( and for the record i cant stand hot dogs). i cant tell you how many times i have heard over the years about my weight at birth.

but while i was home i discovered a little bit of family history that needs to be rewritten. i was in my dad's office printing a recipe and out of the corner of my eye i saw a bunch of old photo albums. i immediately sat down to look at them, hidden in the stack was my baby book. i started looking through the pages and was suddenly dumb struck at the information i discovered. i was NOT a 10 pound baby, in fact i was far from it. i weighed 8 pounds and 4 ounces when i was born.

i share my discovery and clarified with my parents. my dad's reply "i knew you were 8 pounds 4 ounces when you were born." my mother's reply "well it felt like you were a 10 pound baby."

the way i see it, if i wasn't a month late, cooper and i would have more than likely had the same birth weight. and for the bean, well i guess we will find out in 8 weeks......

8 weeks to go

and less than that would be just fine with me.....

dear bean

dear bean.

you have a date with your dad and i in 10 weeks. a very important date. one that we have been anxiously and joyously awaiting.

yes, in 10 weeks we will finally get to meet you. although, i feel like i know you. i know that you are feisty, you let me know when you don't like something. i know you like it when i drink my starbucks tea in the am. you seem to be more of a night owl. although i do hope, you get your days and nights straightened out. i know that you are much more active than your brother. and that this pregnancy has been harder on my body, but that probably is not your fault.

but there a lots of things about you that i don't know and look forward to learning.

i cant wait to see your sweet face, count your toes and kiss your little nose. i wonder if you will have blond hair like your brother, will you have your daddy's chin or my hairline? will you look like your older brother?

you have already stolen our hearts. i know when we see you for the first time, all will be right with the world.

see you in 10 weeks, sweet bean.

love

mom

realization

this past week i have felt frustrated, tired, restless and a little grumpy. i am tired of wearing maternity clothes, i have aches and pains i didn't have with cooper and have a serious case of insomnia. my precious husband frequently hears me whine "i just want to sleep" at some point during the night. basically, i am over being pregnant and 13 more weeks feels like an eternity.

and then i had a two realizations..... i have been pregnant 15 out of the last 20 months! no wonder i feel the way i do.

and two, i have a completely different relationship with the bean in utero than i did with cooper. we interact during the day, i have a sense of his little personality, he makes me laugh and i cant wait to meet him, making being pregnant for so long worth it.

dont you just .....

love this jig onesie?

a blanket for the bean

i have never been a fan of garter stitch, so i was a little skeptical when i found this pattern on the purl bee. but i was in love with the yarn, specifically the colors. i carried alchemy yarns in the yarn shop for a short time and knew that their product was exceptional. i hemmed and hawed because the price was, well expensive for a baby blanket. but those colors kept calling to me. and the yarn is washable, a definite plus for a baby blanket. so i bit the bullet and placed my order.

anything for the bean, right?

i had no idea garter stitch could be so luxurious. its soft and squishy, has great stitch definition and those colors are even better in person. this pattern may be my new favorite baby blanket pattern. it looks great with the bedding that i picked out and cant wait till all the little creative details i have planned for the nursery come together.

i think that the bean will love his blanket.

the beans room

i have designed the beans room a million times in my head, if truth be told, before i even got pregnant i would imagine what i wanted it to look and feel like. i knew that i would be using the same furniture and the paint colors would stay the same ( my precious husband has painted almost every wall in this house in the last 2 years and i couldn't ask him to paint again!) the challenge was to create a new space with new energy.

it is starting to take shape and i like the direction it is going. no, i haven't started to put the room together, but i have started gathering things. yesterday the crib bedding came. and i have to admit i am in love

i have also acquired all the fabric for the quilt i am going to make for the bean. he is going to have a quilt and a knit blanket ( wait till you see the colors of his blanket). i am crazy about this fabric. now to figure out what pattern i am going to make up for his quilt. i have to get this to the quilter by mid-december.

i am looking forward to sharing my design ideas for the beans room, as it comes together.

stay tuned......

transition

in my heart i always knew that the nursery would be cooper's until there was another baby on the way. until this weekend, i called it cooper's room.

why the change you ask?

well, i finally put all of the clothes, blankets, crib bedding, mobile, toys and other random things of cooper's in a box and sent them on to those who need them more than i. i got alot of unsolicited advice about how to handle the nursery after cooper died. i would smile politely and nod, careful not to give away what the committee in my head wanted to say to those who offered advice. although it took me many months to go through cooper's things, slowly making piles of what i wanted to keep and wanted to give away, i am glad i did it on my timeline. i was totally at peace letting those boxes leave the house this weekend. it like a weight was lighted, like i could finally take a deep breath and it felt good knowing that those boxes will help families who need clothing for their wee ones. most importantly i know that cooper's room has transitioned into the bean's room. and that gives me hope, hope of joyous days to come.

whew

finally, i feel like we can finally breathe....

we just returned home from our fetal echo cardiogram AND the bean has a perfectly normal heart. i can not even begin to tell you how relieved we are. this was the big hurdle. i can now start to get excited about the bean's arrival in february.

we are going to have another fetal echo at 28 weeks, but that is just for peace of mind. the bean's heart is currently the size of your thumb nail, which is pretty darn small, so the cardiologist likes to take another look when the heart is a little bigger. if there was anything major wrong with the heart it would have shown up today.

thank you for all your well wishes and good thoughts today, its what got us through...

and now on to shopping, knitting and sewing for the bean!

anticipation

the details of coopers surgery and subsequent death are burned into my memory forever. i can tell you with great detail what people said, what they wore, what i wore, what i ate, the looks on peoples faces, the sights and smells of the hospital, and the moment during surgery when my heart started beating rapidly, which i am quite sure is when they decided that the repair was not enough and they needed to put a shunt in coopers heart. i remember every minute detail of those days.

in the days, weeks and even months after dec. 18th, those memories would invade my thoughts, the tapes were on continuous play, particularly in moments of still and quiet or when i was trying to sleep. i could not escape them. as i began to heal, the tapes stopped playing. i know they are still on the shelves of my brain, collecting dust and waiting for their moment of return.

they have remained on those shelves for some time, until this weekend that is and let me tell you, they have been playing nonstop. my precious husband and i have done our best to ignore them, he chopped wood yesterday (we have enough for a very long winter) and i ripped out a new knitting design i am working on 4 times. now, i am quite sure it is due to the anticipation of the fetal echo cardiogram we have this afternoon.

anticipation is the worst part......

photo op

the bean had a photo session today, his 20 week anatomical ultrasound, and he looked just perfect! he weighs 11 ounces, had a heart rate of 139 bmp, and was very active. his photos look very similar to those of his big brothers, i suppose that is to be expected.

we feel relieved and are glad to have that checked off our list. monday we have our fetal echo cardiogram, which is a 2 hour scan of the beans heart. we are anxious, but feel good after today's pics came back normal. i feel like i will be able to breathe after monday.

i couldn't resist sharing the picture of the bean's feet. aren't they cute?

booties for the bean

i cant even begin to tell you how many times i have made these booties for baby gifts for other people. i think they are so wonderful. they are little, soft, fuzzy and look delightful on newborn feet. and the angora yarn comes in delicious colors. for some strange reason, i did not make a pair for cooper. so i decided that i was going to make several pair for the bean. i have not knit much for him yet, but am very aware that i need to make different things for him, than i did for cooper. its all part of the journey.

so here are a perfect little grey pair of angora booties made with lots of love for the bean. i think they will look adorable with a jig onesie.

oh, and the pattern is from this book.

finished

i picked up the whimsy quilt from the quilter today and i am just smitten! i love it so. i think it turned out just perfect. and i cant wait to snuggle under it tonight! you may remember this post, well this quilt was what resulted from my little mind trick on myself. what i could not tell you months ago, but many of you suspected was that my mind game worked. i was finishing the quilt when i finally got the two lines on the pee stick, making this creative endeavor very meaningful. now, i need to pick out fabric for a baby quilt for the bean!

i will tell you

a number of people have asked me how i feel about the fact that we are having another boy....so figured i would oblige and tell you......

to be honest i am somewhat relieved it is a boy. i mean, i have all boy stuff and the thought that a girl would have to ride around in a blue and brown polka dot stroller made me feel a little bad for her. and believe me i would have been totally against a pink stroller. i had decided to get rid of most of cooper's clothes and crib bedding, knowing that buying clothes for this baby would give me something to look forward to, but all the other gear we decided to keep. alot of it is still in boxes, it just didn't make sense to get rid of it. so on some level, knowing this baby is a boy, makes things easier and much more economical.

but honestly, gender didn't really matter. everyone always says they just want a "healthy baby", which i am sure is true, but that phrase doesn't have merit until you have a baby that is not healthy. since the majority of babies born are healthy, its easy to say "i want a healthy baby, but i hope its a boy." when you have experienced what we have, those two little words take on a whole new meaning. all i care about is that this baby gets a clean bill of health.

i think people ask me that question because they wonder if it will be hard for us to have another boy? will this baby look like cooper? and will that be difficult? what emotions will that bring up? until this baby lives longer than cooper, its going to be hard. gender plays no role in that fact. this is a different baby, with a different personality and temperament. i am sure that he will look like cooper in some ways, but in the end he will be his own person.

and really, i am not sure if i could have handled having a girl who wanted to play princess and wear pink all the time.

2nd time around

my pregnancy with cooper was pretty uneventful; no morning sickness, no exhaustion, no massive weight gain, or weird cravings. i ate watermelon in the middle of the night and drank gallons of orange juice, but that was the extent of my cravings. i wore my regular jeans until 22 weeks and didn't have to buy maternity under wear or granny panties. it was pretty boring.

ok, i did start having contractions at 25 weeks and went to the hospital 3 different times, but once the doctors figured out there was no risk of preterm labor, my contractions were more of a hassle than anything else. there were some interesting characters in triage and i wish i was blogging back then, because some of the conversations i over heard were just too much.

but this time around, my pregnancy is a bit different. i had a week of morning sickness, well not even that, just felt like i had been binge drinking the night before and i couldn't even have a beer to take the edge off. i have had two cravings, pickles and mcdonalds. i have eaten a jar of pickles a week, but thankfully have only given in to the mcdonalds craving twice. i still drink gallons of orange juice and the fruit is not watermelon but grapes. i started wearing maternity clothes a few weeks ago. and there is no way that i can get my jeans to button. i had to breakdown and buy maternity undies, because mine were either rolling down or riding up. i tell you that was the BEST 40 dollars i have ever spent.

but the most dramatic change this time around is the anxiety. i guess its normal after all that we have been through, but enough already. the hardest thing is that i can articulate very clearly why i have anxiety. i can tell you that i am displacing my anxiety about the pregnancy onto whatever it is i am obsessing about and admit that my fear is irrational. but what i can not seem to be able to do is stop the obsessing and the anxiety it produces. i feel like i am losing my mind. for example, i have been flying on planes for 36 years and have never once thought twice about flying nor been afraid to get on a plane. last week i developed this intense fear of flying and was totally convinced that our plane was going to drop from the sky on wednesday. now, i know this was all connected to the fact that last week alone, i visited a good friend in the hospital almost every day, had to attend a funeral which stirred up all kinds of emotions and waswaiting for the results from the genetic testing which were taking forever. rather than thinking about the "what if's" regarding the bean ( what we are calling the baby, because in the last ultra sound he was a little mexican jumping bean), i chose to "what if "about our plane dropping from the sky. crazy right?

i am feeling better about flying wednesday and am much more rational in my thought process, thanks to a lot of self talk and poking fun of myself.

i can handle having to wear maternity underwear and my pickle cravings, but i can not handle anxiety that stops you in your tracks for the next 26 weeks. i will drive myself and everyone around me nuts! thankfully, i am going to see my obgyn tomorrow to see if she can me something healthy to obsess about!

breaking news

it took me taking 10 pregnancy tests for it to sink in that the clomid actually worked. it has been so hard keeping this from you all and i hope you forgive me if i lied to you about our news. i am so glad that i can finally share the news and write about this journey. let me tell you, it has been a ride, thus far.

so, here are the details. today, i officially enter the second trimester. we had genetic testing done and all cells are normal and there are no chromosome deletions. i had one week where i felt like i had a permanent hangover. other than that week i have felt good. my due date is february 27. i will have a c-section at 39 weeks. this makes the due date the week of februray 20th. we have a name picked out. but are not sharing at this point. don't worry we will. it has been much more emotional being pregnant than i thought it would be. it is a constant juggling of emotions. i have many posts written in my head. and cant wait to share them. my form of morning sickness is hunger. needless to say i have already gained 10 pounds. i gain the most weight in the first trimester. it was the same with cooper. we took a home gender prediction test. it was correct. we will have a fetal echo cardiogram of the heart at 22 weeks. so we will know exactly what the heart looks like. we are excited to be parents again. but are understandably nervous. thankfully i have a great doctor to help me through the next 26 weeks.
oh, we are having a boy!