I think that I finally get it

This pregnancy has been vastly different from my first with Son. With Son, I measured every day along I was, and there never was a question of where I was. With this one, as I've documented, I actually forgot and was over a week off!!

With this one, I've been struggling since the beginning to really understand that "hey stupid" you're pregnant. There's going to be a newborn in your house again. It just didn't seem to sink in. This fact strikes me as so strange. This baby is as wanted as Son was, but since it didn't entail the seemingly endless, desperate, highly emotional years of cycles, including ultrasound after ultrasound, and multiple, expensive trips to the pharmacy in Minneapolis, it just didn't seem real. The other part that makes my denial even more non-sensical is that the physical symptoms with this one have been more in the forefront. I was a lot more sick, and the nausea hung on until almost 14 weeks. While it still rears its ugly head when I get too hungry or tired, for the most part it is gone. The on-going insomnia, the relentless fatigue. While I had them with Son, neither were at the level that they have been with this one (gee, I really need to come up with a nickname here....).

Maybe its just the infertile in me saying that this shouldn't have happened so easy this time, that I didn't suffer enough. Or maybe its just that I have so much more going on in my life that I just don't have the time to be as introspective and observant as I was with Son. So, being a good Catholic, I tend to feel guilty that I'm not giving this baby his/her due. Like I'm not as engaged.

However, lately things seem to have changed a little. I'm feeling a lot better (wow, never thought that I would get to that point even a few weeks ago) so maybe I have some more emotional resources to bring to bear on this. I'm sleeping again, although Black Dog has been banished out to the garage in his crate at night. I hate to do it, but everyone in the Chronicle household has been sleeping better because of it. The other piece is that I'm finally feeling pregnant. My maternity pants fit. I've got some of the familiar aches and pains. I'm hungry again (hooray! or uh-oh...). I think that I felt movement a couple of days ago. Oh, and well, things are popping out everywhere. I don't have a bump, this is a full blown belly (mostly still jelly, but the dimensions look right). I've outgrown my biggest bras. Yep, there's something going on in there.

So, here I sit, with the realization that we have another baby coming. I'm actually getting antsy for our level II that is in less than two weeks. I'm even looking forward to September. Maybe I'm finally getting it.