So many things to write about in babyness and otherwise. At some point I’d like to write some baby gear reviews, my experience with cloth diapers (largely good!), how maternity leave has been, how far we’ve come and how much has changed in so little time. It’s truly mind blowing. I remember worrying if I’d be good at this, the whole Mom thing, since I’d never really been ‘maternal’, never one to get all gooey over other peoples’ babies. With my own it’s, as I’d imagined, completely different. And I’m doing okay is this Mom thing, JP even admitted that before she was born, he worried about how I’d be with a baby but he thinks I’m doing an amazing job, way better than he’d imagined. And I tend to agree with him.

Right now, she sleeps. We’re on day 5 of sleep training, our second attempt. The first was months ago, in the fall I think, it was terrible. First I tried the ‘no-cry’ sleep solution which, unfortunately, involved alot of crying (on both our parts!), then we tried ‘Sleep Sense’ and ‘Health sleep habits, happy child’ – Weissbluth’s methods. When we both got sick all efforts went out the window. This week hasn’t been so bad – I’ve been doing a mix of sleep sense and Weissbluth. Maybe she wasn’t ready before, maybe I wasn’t consistent enough. There’s tears at naptime still, but not too many, and as all the books promised (but didn’t happen before!) it’s gotten better each day. Though I miss the naptime cuddles it’s quite liberating not to have to spend 2-4 hours lying in bed with her and it’ll help teach her to sleep on her own. Not to mention all the chores I can get done while she sleeps, leaving more time for me to actually play with her when she’s awake. Everyone wins!

We’re off to the beach when she wakes so I have to start getting everything together. Just wanted to write a quick post, I’ve missed this space and I’ve missed writing. It’s been a crazy year, so much change and things have been hard and really challenging at times but they’ve also been heart-explodingly good at times too. So glad to have a healthy, happy baby finally (though I still worry all the time about her weight, she’s dropped percentiles and is small now….another posted entirely!) and we’re already thinking about ttc#2 (another post too!), then there’s the 2011 recap, and, and, and…better get packed before my girl wakes up.

Hard to believe it’s been so long since my last post.  All is well.  Our baby girl arrived safe and sound, if  a bit late.  Some day I hope to write about the labour and delivery but in short, it went nothing like we’d hoped.  I did 13 hours of undmedicated labour before I took the gas.  The epidural followed about  5 hours later when things didn’t progress and I ended up with a c-section.  All worth it for such a beautiful, amazing little girl.  We named her after my Mom.

The first week as parents was crazy, breast feeding was so hard at the beginning (but all good now) and it’s been such a big change and transition in good and bad/hard ways.  Wouldn’t trade it for anything though.  Hard to believe it’s only a few months before I’m back at work again, I don’t even want to think about it.

Must get back to work, I’m doing some from home each night right now, but wanted to put something here until I have time for more.  We are busy, we are well, we are blessed and still in awe of how much we love that little girl.

But.

We’re organized enough to have made space for baby’s things.  We’ve bought a car seat, a few new clothing items, some wipes and some diapers.  We’ve been given a bassinet, clothes and a carrier.  I’ve washed, folded and organized everything and put it in baby’s temporary ‘room’ (he/she will sleep in our room to start and we’re far too superstitious to make a nursery!).  I’ve had a week ‘off’ work in which I haven’t worked much and have really enjoyed just doing things around the house.  JP and I have enjoyed several dinners out and time with friends.  I’ve gone out with just girlfriends too.  It’s been relaxing.  I feel like I’ve had down time before the craziness to come.

In the last month we had a crazy week of snow all now followed by the early signs of spring.  The cherry blossoms are finally blooming, crocuses have popped their heads out of the ground and the daffodils have quicky followed.  I heard my first lawn mower and smelled fresh cut grass for the first time in who knows how long.  Spring is coming and it seems fitting to bring new life into the world when things are getting ready to grow and bloom after months of sitting idle.  Kind of like me.   I feel good, I feel excited.  But I still of course feel scared too.  I know that things can still go wrong.  I try to focus on all that has gone right and the fact that I’ve no reason to believe that the birth won’t go well too.  It may not be exactly as I envision but I’m going in expecting that.  I can be flexible, I can be adaptable, whatever gets baby out healthy and happy.

I’ve imagined a number of posts over the last month that I haven’t written.  I had imagined something about looking back on the last 10 years with JP and reflecting on them prior to the big changes to come.  To do some lamenting over the things we’ll lose by becoming 3.  But I suspect we’ll gain as much, if not more, than what will be ‘lost’.  I see baby as joining our life, rather than completly changing our life to fit baby.  Sure, things will be different.  We won’t be able to travel the way we have, things will take longer, we’ll need to be more conscientous with money etc. but I really like to think we’ll just modify the WAY we do things rather than stop doing them (or at least not all of them!).  We’ll lose a lot of the freedome we’ve enjoyed as a double-income-no-kids couple.  But I can’t wait to see JP as a father to a living child.  To see how both of us will grow as parents.  Even if it does mean that I’ll no longer be the person who comes first to JP.   We’ve had some difficult times these past few years, life changing events that have been the hardest I’ve ever endured, first losing Mom and then losing our first baby. I know becoming a family will be another life changing event but I’m so glad this one is a generally ‘happy’ change (assuming all goes well of course – the glass-half-empty part of me has to qualify that statement, can’t help it!).  We’re due some happy change.

I’d also imagined a post about looking back on the pregnancy, and hopefully I’ll actually write that.  I’ve not really written much about how it’s gone, the different ways baby moves or how I’ve felt as I’ve grown bigger and bigger.  All in all it’s been pretty good and I can’t complain about much.  I’m just happy to be this pregnant, to have made it this far and to have gotten to know baby this well.

Or a post about being grateful.  We’ve had a rough go the past few years sure but I am still so grateful for the amazing husband I have, the beautiful neighbourhood we live in, the roof over our heads, the good friends and supportive family.  Sure there’s still drama, things are by no means perfect and I would give absolutely anything to have my Mom back even for a second.  Still, I am thankful.

Or a post about my Mom.  How it feels to be a motherless daughter going into this next phase of life, hopefully this time as a Mother of a living child.  I miss her.  I think of her everyday, I dream about her.  Sometimes I wake up crying.  I feel her absence acutely at times and persistently as a dull ache.  As Greg Laswell sings ‘it comes and goes in waves’.  She was an amazing Mom and I try to focus on the lessons I’ve learned from her, not all that I’ve lost with her untimely death.  I try to trust that I have the strength that she instilled in me to do this motherhood thing though I’m plagued with doubt and wish she were here to reassure me.

Perhaps at some point I’ll expand on these mini-posts.  Or maybe I’ll have baby before I have time, it could be any day now.   For now I’ll just enjoy watching the signs of spring springing and hope that I’ll be one of them soon!

Monday we had the hospital tour which was great but I had underestimated how difficult it would be to be in that ward again.  When we stepped off the elevator and walked in I nearly lost it.  We hung back from the group but I couldn’t help but cry.  The smells, the sounds, all so familiar and so very sad to think of when we had been there last.  One of the Mom’s asked if I was okay, thankfully our tour guide didn’t single me out.  I imagine they all thought that I was just freaked out about being in the hospital and/or labour.  If they only knew.  I made it through the rest of the tour okay though it was hard to walk by ‘our’ room, the room designated for pregnancies like ours.  The door was closed and JP and I sent positive, healing thoughts to whoever might be in there.

Tuesday was also tough, but good too.  Being in the waiting room was ok.  This time I wasn’t the only one so early on in my pregnancy, I looked like the other Moms.  But we were put in the same room where we found out that our little girl’s heart had stopped.   As soon as we walked in there I started to cry.  JP explained.  Once I calmed down the scan began and it went well. We were able to ask as many questions as we liked and she showed us everything. All is well, we have some beautiful pictures, some that even show the face that no longer looks like skeletor.  The non-stress test went well too and we listened to baby’s strong heart beat for 20 minutes.  Baby’s heart is doing what it should and we were told that the results are as good as it gets.

Funny that I didn’t feel huge relief after wards.  My first thought was, ‘it would be just my luck, that baby is fine right now but doesn’t make it for some unknown reason’.  Terrible, I know.  I should focus on the positive, there will ALWAYS be something to worry about.  So I’m trying.  Trying just to feel good knowing that things are ok and that baby is doing well and my body is doing a good job supporting him/her.

My breast scan was uneventful and I was told that it wasn’t cancer.  They were pretty blase about it though, big change from the baby scans where they are very reassuring and tell you everything.  It’s another worry I can put out of my head.  JP came for that one too even though I told him I’d be okay.  He has been so wonderful and supportive, I feel so grateful and lucky to have him as a partner.

So all news is good news and I am trying to focus on getting my work done so I can spend my last few weeks organizing and relaxing and not worrying about work.  There’s big changes ahead and I’m actually starting to believe we’ll get a baby out of this.  Finally.

But the dream is still with me and I feel exhausted and ‘off’.  Often the dreams bring things up to the surface, how I regret some of the choices I made near the end of Mom’s life.  How I so badly wished I had stayed at home with her and not gone away back to work.  I think it’s that JP was going through papers this weekend.  He found the paper where he’d written down notes he’d taken when he spoke to Mom’s Dr., when I dissolved into tears, about how the end of Mom’s life was likely to happen, and how quickly.  I know that I had no way of knowing it would happen so fast but I still just wish so badly that I had just stayed.  Part of me feels guilty for not being there, for not insisting.   Part of me feels guilty for feeling glad that I didn’t have to watch her be so sick when I went back to work.  Part of me wonders that if I HAD been there to see how sick she was that I might have somehow been able to help her more, to make her go to more Dr’s appointments so that she wouldn’t have died so quickly, so that we might have had more warning, more time to say everything, or anything, or at least goodbye.  I know these thoughts aren’t productive, I try not to think about this stuff most of the time.  I try to focus on Mom’s life, on remembering her, holding on to the good parts.  I can’t change the last few months of her life and it was such a short part of who she is.

But still.

It’s hard.  Losing her was hard.  Missing her is hard.  And I know that there will be many, many more times where I will miss her terribly.   Each milestone that we will *hopefully* have with our little one I will wish she was here to share it with.  There will be countless more times when I will wish I could call her.  When I will wish that everything was like it was when she was alive.

Somehow I will make it through the days and the years without her.  But on days like today it’s just really, really hard.   And it doesn’t help that  we’ll be going on our hospital tour tonight, visiting the ward where I had and lost our first baby. And tomorrow, we’ll be getting an ultrasound (just to make sure all is well) in the room where we learned our first baby’s heart had stopped.  Which will be followed  by getting a breast ultrasound (I found a lump in my armpit), just like my Mom had to find out she had breast cancer.  A tough couple of days ahead.  I will at least try to feel good about having the opportunity to see our little one again and I know that it is unlikely the lump is anything but normal breast tissue changes from pregnancy and will try not to worry unless told otherwise.  Easier said than done of course.

But the fear it still remains.  As my hope expands it gets pushed down but the fear, it’s still there.  As I’ve seen sales on baby items that we need come up I’ve been tempted to start making purchases but I can’t.  It’s tempting fate and the $100 or so we’d save isn’t worth the anxiety it will cause to get things ‘too early’.  And by ‘too early’ I mean that I can’t get a full refund if I need to return it 6 weeks from now.  If you came to our house you’d never know we were expecting save for the pregnancy books (all from the library!).  Any baby stuff we’ve been given (despite our protests!) is tucked away in closets.  It seems silly at times, to be this ill-prepared, but it’s the way we need to do things.

Even with the fear and all the worries though, I’m still grateful to be here – 34 weeks tomorrow!, and to just enjoy getting to know our little one even if only from the outside in.

I don’t know if it’s the stupid accident, the building up of worries, the lack of sleep, the increasing aches and pains or what but I’m just feeling really, really down.    As in can’t think, can’t work, periodically bursting into tears without trigger, feeling down.  I hope it’s just today. Poor JP when he returned from his surf yesterday found me in a right state.  And I didn’t want to be mad at him but I DO find it hard when he goes off surfing for the day and I spend my day doing jobs around the house.  I want him to surf, I know he needs it so I encourage it.  But I also need his help.  As we get closer I get increasingly worried about our lack of space and I can’t be the one to organize his sports gear.  I’m doing my best to take care of my stuff but I just can’t do it all.  But I feel badly nagging him as I know he works long, hard hours and he does do most of the cooking and at times he really does try and really does help.  I digress.

As we get closer we are also getting to the point where we have to deal with organizing our family visits.  This is where living far away is hard.  It would be great to have the support of our families for a few hours here and there, spread out over a long time.  But given our geographical situation that’s just not possible.  When family is here they are here all the time for a short time.  It’s just how it is.  But I’m terribly nervous about having my MIL here for an extended period.  She’s lovely and means well but she’s very in-your-face.  I really need my space at the best of times and I know that I will be feeling really raw, sensitive and insecure after the baby is born (look at me not using the word ‘if’!).  So I don’t know how I’ll feel having my MIL around all the time then.  And I’m scared I’ll find it all too much and there will be nothing I can do it about it.  We also haven’t sorted out how we’ll manage things space-wise.  If it’s just my MIL and not FIL then she would stay here.  But we’d still need the ‘spare/baby’s’ room for baby stuff.  So we’d have to make sure we have most stuff out of there so we wouldn’t interrupt her.  Insert worry about not having enough space in our house here (again).  I’m not so worried about my family.  It’s always easier with your own family.  It’s also different b/c I don’t have my Mom (and the feelings I have about that deserve multiple motherless-mother posts of their own) .  My Dad and Sis can only help so much.  But it’s also easier for me to tell them what I need, I don’t need to worry about hurt feelings etc. as much.  My MIL (as with most Mom’s – will I be like this too??) can really take things personally.  And my MIL is already worried about our not-yet-made baby purchases and the safety of how things are done here in NA versus the UK (UK is always superior!).  And then who comes first?  My family or JP’s?  Worry, worry, worry.

Today and yesterday have just been tough days.  Baby has been active and I worry that he/she can feel my negative energy, that he/she can somehow sense that I’m sad.  I hope I’m not making the baby sad too.  I will go for a walk today and try to enjoy the fleeting sunshine, watch the waves crashing and focus less on the crashes in my own life.

It makes me feel good, to be moving on from the hand-me-downs and the ‘university-look’ mis-mash of furniture I’ve always had, and to be making purchases together, getting furniture that is ‘ours’ rather than just ‘mine’.  To be buying things that go together and fit the house that we bought.  To be making the space more functional, creating more room to grow, creating a home.  Seeing as JP and I have been together for 10 years we’re sort of late to the game in making these changes!

But oh how wonderful  it was to sleep in our new bed with the soft new mattress and new sheets from my Mom, one of the last gifts she ever bought us.  Our double bed was feeling crowded with my extra girth and body pillow and the queen feels just right.  Unfortunately I was still up several times and my hips still ached, was hoping the new bed might cure that, but the pain, at any rate, was less.  And with the ‘bowling ball technology’ I didn’t end up waking JP up as much.

Can’t wait to go to bed tonight.

But the worrying!  I worry about if I’ll be a good Mom, if I can handle taking care of a baby, the breastfeeding, the sleep deprivation, what this will do to my marriage, how it will impact our finances, how we’ll keep the house clean and be organized when we can’t even do that with just the two of us!, how will we make decisions – we’re both so indecisive about EVERYTHING, have I  read enough?, why can’t I focus and read more?, can I balance a baby and work eventually, will I be able to handle the commute?, can I even DO my new job?, why if I’m not maternal enough?  and on and on…..I feel more emotional lately, sometimes I feel like  I need to cry just to cry.  And I did the other day, albeit briefly. I just don’t know how we’ll be able to manage parenthood, but at the same time I have every confidence that we will.

With all these worries comes excitement too.  I’m just starting to have more freak outs b/c I haven’t let myself start to believe that we might actually get a living child from this pregnancy, until lately that is.  So I’m still worrying and freaking out, just more so about different things.

I’m still here, still quiet, still thankfully pregnant and of course, still worried.  This time of year is always hard for me, it was one of Mom’s favourite seasons, I’d guess her most favourite season.  She always got so into Christmas and decorated the house beautifully and made absolutely wonderful Christmas meals.  I can’t help but miss her all the more.  Her absence makes me bah humbug, it makes me angry at the ‘season’  just like I’ve been a bit angry at spring/summer because she died then.

It’s a reflective time of year too, the start of a New Year always makes me look back at the one gone past, how far I’ve come (or not), how far I’ve fallen.  I had a strange moment during acupuncture this week when she put a needle in me and all of a sudden I was overcome with the sadness of all that we’ve endured the past few years.  The loss of my Mom, my struggles in dealing with it, in living with the grief and the changes in family dynamics as my Dad has brought a new woman into his life, all compounded by the loss of our first baby.  I nearly started sobbing.  We’ve been through so, so much.    Though really, none of that happened in 2010, but because we lost our baby near the end of 2009 much of the grieving and struggling with her loss happened at the beginning of that year.

Up until Mom died all of my Christmases were pretty much the same and it didn’t bother me that they were.  I always loved the traditions that Mom made with our family and though I wished that I could see my friends during the holidays, part of me didn’t mind staying home too.  My biggest regret was my Mom’s last Christmas – it was the first in my life that I didn’t spend at home.  JP and I were in Chile and it made sense that we stayed through the holidays.  It wasn’t much of a Christmas there, I felt sad to be away from the usual Christmas traditions. I wasn’t to know then that it would be my Mom’s last but I still regret not being there so very much.

2008, 1st after Mom died – we spent it trying to re-create Mom’s Christmas.  Sis did the house up like Mom always did and JP and I did our best to do all the baking/cooking we’d always done.  We did a pretty good job especially considering with a snow-covered Canada I didn’t arrive till Christmas Eve.  That Christmas was bound to be hard, and it was.  Ironically it would’ve been the 2nd we’d spent in South America if Mom had been alive.  JP and I were to start our 3 month honeymoon, JP joining me once again in Chile where I already was for work.  Instead, I came back from Chile early, bailing on a planned solo trip to the Atacama.  I should never have gone in the first place, I was too raw, too broken to be trying to work at such a capacity.

2009, 2nd – JP and I didn’t want to leave BC so my family came here (Dad’s girlfriend and all).  We did a ski holiday and, all things considered, it went pretty well.  It was good to have an activity to do.  It helped get my mind off the fact that I was able to snowboard at all, I should’ve been nearly 6 months pregnant.  I was devastated that I wasn’t.  Broken for yet another Christmas but for a totally different reason.  It too was hard, missing Mom all the more because of Christmas and because of the baby.

2010, 3rd – JP and I aren’t going anywhere and I am so glad for that.  Since my folks place only felt like ‘home’ because of Mom (and I never grew up there), ‘home’ is where JP and I live finally.  I am grateful that we don’t have to travel and worry about flights and snow etc.  I am sad not to be with my Dad and Sis but glad to not be faced with the awkwardness that goes with making Dad’s girlfriend a part of the ‘new’ Christmas traditions. I am happy to be spending Christmas where we live for the first time and enjoying all that we miss when we go away.  Tomorrow will mark the beginning of the third trimester, the best Christmas present ever.

Hopefully in 2011 I’ll be able to start counting the Christmases by the number our little one has been alive for, rather than the number my Mom has been gone for.  I am hopeful, still cautiously of course, but hopeful all the same.