The Baby Bump

Long blog silence, loads of life happening.

Yesterday I was lying on an exam table with a glob of cold goo on my belly and I heard the thrum-thrum-thrum of my baby girl's heart beating, and that was the first time I believed that this might really be happening. I finally felt the strangle of fear loosen its grip for a moment and I let myself be confident that this little baby would stick. That we would get to meet her in five and a half months. That she will have a name, and that she will live in our house.

God willing.

When I was pregnant the first time, I tried to WILL myself into being excited, fearless, confident. It worked, until it didn't. I could not keep those babies in me by force of will. I learned again that my life is not something I can control. I learned it, and I immediately unlearned it.

We started the adoption process. I liked the thought of it being a Process. Even though every person we know who has adopted has told us that it was more like riding a roller coaster through a nightmare of bureaucracy, heart ache, and thwarted plans than it was a "process", it still sounded more control-y to me. Plus, there are support groups, and parenting classes, and staff people there to walk you through it. We had even chosen a specific Waiting Child to adopt. A goal. A timeline. A list of tasks. We were ON IT. Submitted our adoption paperwork and started our phone interviews in preparation for our home study. It was the first time in a REALLY long time (maybe ever) that Les and I were working together as an equally-invested team. He was excited. I was excited. Neither one of us was cajoling the other. Neither one was phoning it in. We were both on the ball.

And then, the day we submitted our supplementary documentation, I realized that maaaaayyyybbeeee I should take a pregnancy test. And it was positive.

You know, because we had decided NOT TO TRY to get pregnant in July, August, and September so we could focus on adoption and so I could be a bone marrow donor. So all of the charting and temperature taking and fluid checking and supplement swallowing and Yoga for Fertility stretching was on hiatus for three months. And so of course I got pregnant in July.

PlansPlansPlansPlansPlansPlansPlansPlans!!!!!

We're happy and excited and we still hope to adopt after the baby is born. I am letting myself be more and more excited every day. We know she is a girl because I opted to get the very new and very accurate (98% accurate, supposedly) first trimester chromosomal screen wherein they take 9 vials of my blood and then magically spin out the baby's DNA floating around in my blood and run a test on it to check for chromosomal issues like Down's Syndrome, Fragile X, and about 25 other common syndromes and genetic defects. I felt like I needed to know so that I could know which way to turn: to be excited, or to be cautiously optimistic and join a support group. The test came back "low risk" for all the things they test, and they could tell us the sex, so we said "Yes! We want to know". Girl. Good thing we found out, too, because it will take us at least the next 5.5 months to agree on a girl's name. We have two great boy names, and zero agreeable girls names.

Suggestions welcome.

So there you have it. That's what my body and I have been up to since July. Hanging out, making a person. Tune in next time for my existential guilt over creating a brand new human when there are so many kiddos without families in the world. Or not. I may have come to peace with that by then.