one to go

by jenblossom on August 16, 2011

feeling very round today

“I think I might be pregnant.”

It seems like forever ago that I was somewhat nervously saying those words to Mike. And some days it feels like just yesterday. But here we are, with only one month to go until my due date, this incredible ride nearly behind us, and a whole new life just ahead.

This pregnancy has been pretty much the exact opposite of what I was expecting at the start. I hate to say that it has been easy because there have definitely been some challenges along the way, but by and large it has been calm, steady, uneventful… completely and utterly normal, which is everything I could have hoped for.

After years of living with this dysfunctional body, I was expecting to have a much harder time of things, particularly since I had no time to prepare it for the task of growing another human being. I was worried about my age, my health, about those holiday cocktails I indulged in before we even knew there might be a reason not to – I worried about everything, really. But instead of watching my fears become reality, as the months have unfolded and each successive prenatal visit continued to reveal a healthy, growing, thriving little being, I began to relax and enjoy, watching this little boy and the belly he’s inhabiting grow and grow.

I get why people call this whole process a miracle. And I can’t really express how incredibly lucky I feel.

But try as I might to avoid it, the fear and worry are creeping back, as our final countdown begins in earnest.

I wonder sometimes if the price for my easy pregnancy will be a difficult delivery, or complications, or worse.

(Why does there have to be a price? Because there always is, it seems. I’ve gotten so used to things going pear-shaped after anything good happens that I almost expect it now. And I hate that feeling.)

We weren’t at all prepared for this. In many ways, the timing could not have been more wrong.

But here we are. Joyful. Excited. As ready as we can possibly be.

I have gotten a bit better over these last eight months at living in the moment, at realizing that there are things that are just plain beyond my control, at taking a breath and saying “okay, X happened, we’re fine, now where do we go from here?” or “we’ll get through this; we always do.”

Because we always do.

I can accept and even embrace the fact that while I have an idea about how I’d like the birth of our son to play out (full-term, no drugs, non-surgical delivery, healthy baby, we all go home and live happily ever after), there are no guarantees, and you can’t ever truly expect that all will go according to your plans or hopes or wishes. Life doesn’t work that way.

I’m not afraid of pain. I’ve lived with it, daily, for the last 10+ years of my life. I’m not even particularly afraid of the unknown anymore – so much has happened that we didn’t see coming, good and bad, and Mike and I have gotten through it all together, with the love and support of so many friends and family.

But there is still this anxiety, this fear of something creeping into my psyche at night, keeping me awake and unsettled, pushing the calm away. Even as our son bobs around, stretching, rolling, turning toward his daddy’s voice or pushing back at the cats’ paws as they poke curiously at my belly, I worry.

I worry.

When we learned we were going to have a baby, I thought I’d write a lot more about the whole experience, record all my feelings and memories from this time. I have a little journal I bought for our boy that has just one entry in it, one short letter to him rather than the series of entries I had planned to write, telling him about this time in our lives. I’ve had so many words for him, but something has kept me from writing them down, or saying them aloud. It all feels so fragile, like speaking or writing about it all would somehow bring bad luck, like the slightest shift in the wind would burst this shiny bubble and make it all disappear.

I worry.

And as we count down the last weeks and days of this time, I don’t want to worry. I don’t want the end of this wonderful ride to be marred by frayed nerves and anxious thoughts.

I just want to remember the beauty of it all.

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Life’s Too Short

by jenblossom on August 10, 2011

My emotions have been all over the place this week.  It always seems to happen to me this time of year, as summer fades to fall and we approach September, a month of many anniversaries, a time filled with both memories and promise.

This time around the emotions are particularly strong.  Mike and I are now about five weeks away from welcoming our little boy into the world, and the fear and joy and anticipation are almost overwhelming.

On the flip side of that, there is sadness:  like so many of you we have come to know online and in “real life”, we have been stunned and saddened by a friend‘s unimaginable loss.  We have been reminded how quickly joy can turn to heartache, how plans and dreams can be crushed in an instant, and how we need to treasure every moment of this life and those we share it with.

My first husband once told me that he didn’t like to say “I love you.”  That if you said it too often, “it wouldn’t mean anything.”

In the ten years that have now passed since we parted, I’ve learned that he was just plain wrong.

In truth, you can’t possibly say it or show it enough.  Life is too short, and you never know if you’ll get the chance to take someone’s hand, to look into their eyes and tell them “I love you” again.

Say it.  Show it.  Mean it. Every chance you get.

And on Friday, think of Jennie and Mikey and their beautiful girls, and make some pie to share with the ones you love.

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11.5 weeks

February 27, 2011

Since I can’t seem to muster the energy or the brain power for a proper blog post, I give you a few brief thoughts on this whole pregnancy thing: • We’ll get the TMI bit out of the way first. As I alluded to over on that other blog, we were not trying to conceive [...]

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My name is Papa

January 18, 2011

My name is PAPA. My Animal ID # is A885900. I am a male black and white amer sh mix. The shelter thinks I am about 3 years old. I came in the shelter as a STRAY on 01/04/2011 from NY 11221, owner surrender reason stated was MOVE2PRIVA. Reason for New Hope: DISEAS-ILL. EUTH MEMO [...]

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Breathe

January 3, 2011

I’m not big on resolutions, but I’ve promised myself that I will do one thing this year: I will remember to breathe. You see, at some point, probably when I was living in NYC, I stopped breathing. Sounds silly, right? But some of you know what I’m talking about. You hold your breath to keep [...]

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Thanksgiving and Gratitude

September 18, 2010

I came home from work yesterday to find that a copy of the Fall issue of EdibleRhody had arrived in the mail, an issue which contains, in addition to Mike’s regular cocktail column, an article I wrote about our 100-mile Thanksgiving feast last year. You would think I’d be more excited to see my work [...]

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fighting darkness

August 29, 2010

I’ve been pretty open about the fact that I’ve struggled with depression for much of my life, and I’ve been fighting it hard of late. There’s been a lot of churn in both my personal and professional lives over the last couple of months, most of which I can’t discuss publicly, and it has gotten [...]

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The Next Move

April 22, 2010

I’ve been staring at this photo of our old apartment in Brooklyn, taken two years ago today, when we closed the door for the last time and made our way to Providence. Our first year here was hard, but we felt pretty confident we had made the right move. After the way our second year [...]

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time flies

November 8, 2009

7:30 a.m. I went from bleary-eyed to full-blown panic in a heartbeat as Mike started awake and asked “Where’s Kirby?” then raced to the window where the expanding flap on the air conditioner was gaping open. He pulled aside the curtain and there you were, sitting outside, on top of the air conditioner. The air [...]

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Cinnamon Girl

October 23, 2009

We took Kali to the vet yesterday, after a week in which she had about 4 “peeing outside of the box” incidents. She wasn’t her usual sassy self, and we noticed that she had lost some weight, but we had no idea how scary things were going to get at the vet’s office. Her abdomen [...]

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