I believe that I mentioned that Baby Girl is scheduled to make an appearance any day now. Actually she is scheduled to make an appearance in 12 days, however she has been moving and grooving and Mama has been contracting and aching...so we are ready for the party to start at any given moment. Adding this little girl to our family brings me tremendous joy. Joy that I cannot express in blog words. Joy that makes me randomly smile in the middle of the night even while I am getting up to pee for the twentienth time. And it also has hollowed me out and left me so exhausted and defeated some days that it is a total miracle that we have reached the end of this pregnancy (mostly) intact.
We called Baby Boy our stealth baby. Or sneaky ninja baby. Or some variation of that. Because we didn't even know he was there for 15 weeks. And once we did, he was still nice and easy. No morning sickness, no aches and pains...I was pretty much the pregnant lady everyone hates. I loved being pregnant. Baby Girl....has no stealth. She is in-your-face (or your ribcage or bladder or pretty much anywhere else she wants to be) all the time. I knew she was there before a test could tell me so. She moved early and often and has basically been running an underground disco club in my uterus for the last two months. She is so determined that we acknowledge her presence that at least three times a day she attempts to escape. Think of a giant fish tank with a shark swimming around throwing itself into all the walls looking for the weak point to break out. That is Baby Girl. I wouldn't even blink if I looked down after a well aimed kick and found five little toes protruding from my belly button.
All this dance partying and shark behavior has made me the most exhausted version of myself ever. And I know exhausted. Baby Boy still doesnt' sleep through the night. I am the most unproductive, uninspiring, unappealing version of myself that I have been in many, many moons. With days to go, I feel totally bottomed out - I have no more to give. Not to my husband, or our kids, or our families, or the random people at Meijer, or the very unlucky person that calls our home phone and makes me haul my huge self off the couch to answer just to be a totally worthless phone call. I have nothing to give ANY of you. There is only a finite amount of me. And every minute that ticks down to Baby Girl's birth, she takes one more little piece of me. As this countdown continues, I feel like I am more and more drawn inward...totally focused on Baby Girl and the awesome responsibility of delivering her safely into this world in the very near future. I have no extra energy for pleasantries or chores or patience or hair brushing. All of my energy and focus is being sucked into my uterus where I am making game plans with my daughter. I feel bad about this...a little...when I realize I have not actually made a real dinner in a week or done dishes in two...or when Baby Boy grabs my hand for the 200th time to try and drag me to the kitchen gate so he can play with dog food and I have to tell him no and he cries. It is discouraging to me to not be able to be productive or efficient or even mobile some nights when I push too hard. I just try and remember that this is precious time, this last little bit of pregnancy, these last few days of feeling this baby kick and dance inside me. Precious time that I won't be able to come back to once it's gone. So I do my best to feel the win in a day where I look decent enough to be in public or the day I feel good enough to take the kids to the pool or the afternoon where I make a dent in the laundry pile. I do my best to ignore the looks of annoyance from anyone that shoots one my way and remind myself that this is very much an individual journey that cannot be truly explained to someone else. And I hunker down and close my eyes and feel my daughter move...and know that this is all so worth it. But in the meantime....don't call my house, or ask me to volunteer for anything, or expect actual conversation. I have nothing left for you.
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