Tick Tock

Yesterday morning, I started my day with a full-blown panic attack.

After what seemed to be a long but completely normal ultrasound on Tuesday morning to check baby's overall size and weight, we had been relieved at the time to hear his weight was in the normal range - 69th percentile. There had been some concern because I am measuring quite large for my gestation, so the ultrasound was just a quick check-in to make sure that he wasn't too big. She told us his weight, the percentile that fell into, and that he was head down with a full head of hair. All seemed perfectly well and on track.

Yesterday morning, we had our bi-weekly appointment with my OB to review the aforementioned ultrasound. Turns out the only normal-sized thing about him is his weight; the ultrasound tech deftly managed to avoid telling us any of his other percentile ranges. As it turns out, our kid's head and abdomen are enormous - 92nd and 96th percentiles, respectively. Also, I apparently have a borderline obscene amount of amniotic fluid; when they do fluid measurements in pregnancy, they total the four quadrants (I am unsure of the units used). The standard for my gestation is 11-12; I measured 19. So I am huge. He is huge. These are problems.

2 weeks from today, I have my final bi-weekly appointment with my OB before we go weekly. At that appointment she will be measuring me again, possibly checking my cervix, and sending me for another ultrasound. If his growth continues on the same trajectory and his head and abdomen are still in the 90-ish percentiles, she will very likely induce me shortly thereafter because letting him, and me, go to full term could be quite dangerous. Especially because at the moment, his abdomen is larger than his head.

So, in short: instead of having a minimum of 4 weeks and a max of 9 weeks left, we could be looking at 2 1/2 to 3 weeks left of this pregnancy, and I feel like I've had a rug yanked from underneath my feet.

Am I unbelievably excited to meet my son, the child I've been dreaming of my whole life and who I've torn my body apart and rebuilt again in order to be able to create? Absolutely. Am I ready?

No. I don't think I can ever be ready for this.

It has been nearly 8 years since we began our journey to try to become parents. One might think that after so many years of trying that I would be The Most Ready Mom Ever In The History Of Moms, but that just isn't the case. If anything, I feel less ready than your run-of-the-mill, no-struggles-to-get-pregnant mom because I just never actually thought this would happen and holy shit now it's happening.

It's so dizzying and kind of disconcerting to simultaneously feel as though this has been the longest pregnancy ever, but also feeling like I legitimately just saw the positive on the pregnancy test no more than a week ago. I just found out I was pregnant and now I am suddenly mere weeks away from having a brand new human being that I grew inside my body forcing his way out and being placed into my arms for my husband and I to take home and like, form into a beautiful, productive member of society. A person... a whole perfect, tiny, blank slate of a person that we are solely responsible for for the rest of our lives and who will take and carry all of my heart with him everywhere he goes, forever. How do we do this? How do I know I can handle such a massive responsibility, and do so with dignity and grace and pride? How do I know I won't collassally fuck this poor child up? And on the less profound side, we are just absolutely, utterly not ready on the logistic side of this having-a-baby thing. His nursery is literally an empty, albeit freshly painted, room with painter's tape on the wall and a bassinet shoved in the closet stuffed with miscellaneous little baby things that he can't use yet (i.e. toddler-sized hiking boots, two or three 6-9 month onsies, a carseat cover [even though we have no freakin' carseat yet], and my breast pump). Everyone tells me we'll never use the nursery anyway but considering how small our house is and the lack of comfortable seating within it, I am actually quite confident that I will be spending a *lot* of time in our nursery for nursing and changing, even if he's not sleeping in his crib right away. I also just wanted to have everything done before he showed up, even if that seems naive and ridiculous. I want to have things organized and washed and put away and everything DONE so that I don't have to worry about those things after he's here, and so we can just focus on him and soaking him up. And yet here we are, 2-3 weeks away from possibly having him out of my body, and we own no nursery furniture, no car seat, no stroller, nothing important - and for some ridiculous reason our tax return is taking FOREVER to come through so we can't even do anything about it yet, not to mention I keep being told to buy NOTHING until after our baby showers but one of them is actually AFTER his new possible arrival time. I am fully aware how silly it is to stress about material things, but there are so very few things I felt like I could control in this pregnancy and now some of the few that I felt as though I could are being taken away. I feel so out of control of everything and I hate that.

I know when all is said and done, all that matters is that he arrives safely and when is best for him (and for me), and that the best thing I can do is remain calm and go with the flow. But some things are just so much easier said than done.