Snot and Gratitude

This is about all I can give you this week:

Baby Sister is coming this Monday, March 24, whether she's ready or not.  As for the rest of us, we have been effectively passing around some kind of bug for about a month now.  As a result, what should be a relaxing spring break before our surgery date has been filled with doctor's visits, pharmacy runs, and a lot of snot-wiping.  My biggest concern is getting Lucy to a non-gummy stage, both for her own comfort in this coming topsy-turvy week and so there won't be any issue with her meeting her baby sister on Monday afternoon.

Cartoons can really not convey just how huge I feel.  I've been told I carry small, that I don't look pregnant from the back, that I look great, but in reality it feels like I'm 85% baby and 15% vital organs.  Will's offered some verbal gems as I move around; as I struggled to get up off the couch, he vaguely asked, "do you need a hand?...a crane...?...jaws of life?"  And as I worked on turning over in bed: "Are you okay?  Only it sort of feels like the ISS docking."  I don't blame him for these comments; at least they make me laugh (a few seconds later, when what he's said has sunken in).

But we're ready.  I can't wait to meet our newest family member and bring her home and start this whole beautiful process over again.  I am thankful for an intensely supportive family and caring friends.  I am also thankful that we are merely buggy and not truly wanting for anything; I think of women across the world who are facing their pregnancies with so many more uncertainties and indignities than I am, and I know I am blessed beyond measure.

Who knows what or when my first post will be after next week.  Thanks for following along!

Whoops

We are three weeks out.  We are THREE WEEKS OUT.  In three weeks I will have a day-old infant.  Unless she comes early, which I have tried discussing with her, but she seems fairly comfortable where she is.  I've packed on three pounds in the last two weeks and have moved into rotating through the same three shirts since even my other pregnancy clothes are a tight fit.

On the first go-round, I was so much more intensely aware of my daily habits.  I ditched my trusty cancer-inducing Nalgene for a metal water bottle (which I hated), avoided all lunch meats and soft cheeses, ate zero raw batter while baking, and made sure I walked every day even when I wasn't catching the bus or going across campus.  This time, I can't think of a time I've baked that I haven't licked the spoon, and when Welly finally started whining at me when it was clear I wasn't getting ready to take him for a walk, I looked him in the eye and said, "it's cold."  

Ah well.  If Lucy ends up with a Nobel and Stormageddon ends up in a penitentiary, at least I know it was because of raw eggs and not society/video games/the government/climate change.  Or is that too many independent variables?  Grad school was a few years ago.