Letter: 15 Weeks Pregnant

OK, so I kind of cheated on the title's dating (but only by a day!).

November 23, 2010

Dear Fake Baby,

As I sit here typing this at 3:54 in the morning, I am fourteen weeks and six days pregnant (I was going to write in my weekly update that I was consistently able to sleep through the night again, but apparently that is still fiction.  Awesome.).  It has been four weeks and four days since I last wrote you – which basically means I’ve missed recording about a bajillion crucial developmental milestones.  For example, at ten weeks you were barely over an inch long and were still technically considered an embryo.  Now, however, you’re definitely a fetus, somewhere around the size of a beefsteak tomato, and are doing all kinds of crazy things like sensing light and pressure from outside the womb, and practicing your breathing by taking in amniotic fluid (yum!).  I have a sneaky feeling that this is how your childhood will go: one moment you’ll be the little alien baby we bring home from the hospital (sorry, but you know what I mean), and the next moment – BAM – you’re walking and talking and asking us for a cell phone that has unlimited texting.  Eep.

A couple of weeks ago we saw you via ultrasound, and oh my goodness, lovey – you are a little person!  As soon as the Doppler hit my (gradually-expanding) belly, this image of a BABY appeared.  Not a blob, but a no-getting-around-it baby.  With flailing arms and kicking legs and a nice strong heartbeat (and a low chance of genetic disorders – hurrah!).  You squiggled and squirmed during the whole ultrasound, and I fell in love with you a little (or a lot) bit more.  Your father and I sat there just staring at you – soaking in every part of you, laughing at your crazy gymnastics, and generally trying to wrap our heads around the fact that OH MY GOD we made a tiny human.  How is that even possible (hopefully by the time you/your significant other – your Dad maintains that a boy would never want to read these letters – reads this you’ll know how that’s possible…)?  Seeing you was both incredibly comforting (you’re really in there!) and terrifically surreal (DUDE.  There is a person inside of me.  That makes me say 'dude.').

As soon as we got home we showed your puppy sisters the pictures of you, and their responses were pretty much what we expect them to do when we bring you home (sidebar: oh my gosh, one day we get to bring you home!): Callie put her tail in between her legs and looked nervous, while Ness shook her tail so hard her whole butt started swaying as she sniffed the pictures that your Dad held up in front of her.  After I spread all of the photos out on my desk (where they stayed for several days so that I could ogle you every time I walked by), I emailed one of them to your grandparents (all of whom were SO excited – seriously, you are one lucky grandchild), and since then we have told more and more people that you are coming.  Everyone has been tremendously supportive, and I find that everyone else’s excitement is positively contagious.  Yesterday at the library I told a graduate student with whom I worked over the summer that I was pregnant with you and her whole face lit up before she gave me a big hug.  Being able to tell people about you is both an enormous relief and simply a joy.  We still haven’t told many people at work – I’m rarely on campus to see colleagues, and Preston (understandably) feels awkward saying, “So, hey, friends, I’ve knocked up Mary Frances.”  And I’m still in that awkward stage of looking a little bit pregnant OR like I’ve eaten too many cookies – it really could go either way.

This week is Thanksgiving, and your Dad and I are spending it alone for the first time ever – and, now that I think about it, the last time ever (!).  It’s so hard to believe that this time next year you’ll be with us for real.  Although I can’t wait to meet you, I’m (finally) trying to savor this pregnancy, and not wish it away.  No, I don’t like being pregnant, but when I look past my unbuttoned jeans and the acne, the back pain and the crazy hormones – when I think about the babies that I lost and when I look at those ultrasound pictures and see how you are already a little person – oh my gosh.  I am so, so glad and grateful to be here.

And with that, little one, I am thankful for you – for growing inside me like a champion, for making it this far, for lifting me outside of myself, and for already bringing us such joy, even at the size of a tomato.  You are awesome, in every possible sense of the word.  Thank you for being mine. 

I love you,

Mama