29 Weeks, 3 Days

I'm looking at pictures of you.
It's the strangest thing, really.
Here I have nearly 60 photos from our last ultra-sound shoot and it's of this face that...I don't know.
I can sit in the privacy of my own home and literally study you.
I have shots of your hands and your ears and your nose and I'm just sitting here trying to put them all together.

It's very surreal.

Your face, the contours of which are now unfamiliar to me, will soon be one that I could pick out from hundreds of babies by touch alone.
I will know every curve, every inch just about as well as I know my own.
I can close my eyes right now and bring up Rhyse's face and truthfully say that I know every bit of it.
Every. Single. Bit.

But for now, I look at you curiously.
Trying hard to see the familial resemblance, of which I couldn't see at first.
Last time we saw you, I was left with the impression of Chas as a newborn.
Tonight I commented during the ultrasound that I couldn't see much resemblance at all to anyone.

Having left the photos for awhile, I just returned to them a few minutes ago and pulled one up and thought,"Rhyse." 
You looked like him to me just then which leads me directly to Creux because those boys are nearly identical, especially when comparing them at the same ages.

Your hands are big, this I can tell.
More mitts.
Those are from your dad's side of the family.
Mitts and hooves.
My side of the family is long-legged and lean.
Daddy's is not :)
Short legs and long torsos, that's the Martin thing.

We're two for two, there.
Chas and Greer take after me, Rhyse and Creux like Daddy.
I wonder where you'll fit in?

Here's something I think about a lot and perhaps it's a strange thing:
It's your eye color.
You were peeking tonight, just a bit here and there and I thought...I wonder if those will be blue like your dad's or green like mine?

Out of all four of your siblings, there's only one green-eyed babe and it's Rhyse.
Chas has the bluest of blues (another Martin characteristic) while Greer is blue too...if you look closely in her eyes, you can see a rim of me there. 
A small circle of green, outlining her pupil, before the whole thing just lights up into brilliant blue.

My eye color is my absolute favorite trait and one that I've always felt has sort of set me apart a little bit.
It's the rarest color passed down and only 2-5% of the world's population has them.
I looked it up once, because I wanted to know how recessive they are as a trait.
They are very recessive.
So...I think that makes them very cool :)

My greens come from my own father and though I do not have any contact with him, on occasion I see my cousins from that side of the family.
All long-legged, skinny women with striking green eyes.
It's always been a bit off-putting to me in a way to see such a strong resemblance of my own to family that I don't really know.
But who look A LOT like me.
My hands, my eyes, my build all pulled together in a smattering of people that are family but are removed family.
Most people think I look like my mother but that's because that's who they see.
I think I look more like my dad and I definitely look a lot like his sister's grown children, those cousins of mine.
Which is....complicated.

So for me, staring into Rhyse's green eyes is as close as it gets to really seeing a true piece of me passed along.
I don't see that on a regular basis; I don't see my dad or my cousins and have the opportunity to notice those small things that signify that we are genetically related.
And maybe because my eye color is so rare to cross and yet because it's so not in the "other" part of my lineage or maybe it's because it is something that I identify with as "me" so strongly...it's something that just tickles me to see in one of my own children.

Either way, you win.
You'll have the clearest, bluest of blues that will be nearly blinding in the sunlight.
Or you'll have glittering greens that will flare brilliantly with the passion of your feelings.
(Your Memaw has always commented on how mine would flash crazily when we would argue over boys or curfew or why I'm not wearing the super cute, super short skirt I had just bought WITH MY OWN MONEY.)

(And she was almost always right, by the way.  Completely annoying but right.  So don't bother flashing your blues OR greens at me over issues of those kind, either.  I am not swayed by a pretty set of eyes--and neither was she, let me tell you!)

As for the rest of you....

We were told to look away right from the start so the tech could get a good once-over without you announcing your gender to the room.
You weighed in at two pounds and 13 ounces, length 16 inches long.
Using some formula, the tech projected your birth weight to be eight pounds, five ounces and length at 19 inches.
That's big for me but big is suddenly the average.
Rhyse was eight pounds, two ounces and Creux was eight pounds, eleven and a half ounces.
And Creux, just mere ounces more, was enormously more uncomfortable to carry than Rhyse.
(Greer was near perfect at seven pounds, 14 ounces and poor Chas was like a bag of potato chips at five pounds, eleven ounces.)

Annoyingly, your measurements indicate an arrival date of JULY ELEVENTH.
What in the hell is going on with you, child?
First it's the 8th, which is what is correct if we're going by conception date.
I think.
But it could be the 9th if you took awhile processing or whatever it is that you do when you're deciding how to split your cells up and make yourself whole.
However, the 11th is OUT OF THE QUESTION.

"I'm not going to change your due date at this point," said the ultrasound lady.
Yeah, no kidding you're not.
I'll go stark raving mad if my date switches again and KEEPS HEADING BACKWARDS.

When people ask me when I'm due, I say "Early July" because I don't want to pin my hopes on one day.
But I'd be lying through my teeth if I didn't admit that I'll go a smidgey bonkers if I pass the 9th.
(Oh, don't be cruel.  Do not pass the 9th.  Do you need a calendar in there?)
We're just going to be optimistic here and press for June.
I realize I sound like a broken record.
I don't care.
I really will be climbing the walls if I end up laboring for the entire last month like I normally do, breathing through working contractions for weeks on end, waiting for the other shoe to drop at any given moment only to watch that number nine come...and go....with no infant to be found.

Look, you don't want to do that.
I wrote those words and even just writing them, I had a reaction, a bad one.
I can't say in what condition you will find me in when you finally arrive.
I perish the thought.

Okay, enough for tonight.
It was so nice to see you again this evening.
For the last time (I said this once before but really, THAT was the last time) before you're "here."

You're beautiful and I truly get the statement "love at first sight."
I've loved you all along, even before I knew of your creation.
But seeing you like that, your small bitty bits, your mouth opening and closing, your hands touching your face, trying to find your mouth, and your smile....you lit up my heart.

I can't wait to be your Mama.
Officially.

Loving you already,
Mama

28 Weeks, 5 Days

Something's changed.
In one day, something has majorly changed.
And it does NOT feel good to me!

I noticed it yesterday, on Tuesday.
I woke up, got dressed, started my morning.
What I wore is significant because it fit...and then it didn't.
A white Gap shirt and a plaid button down (one that I searched for for AGES in the stores because I just thought you'd look so bumpishly cute in it), plus my black yoga pants.

I'm still fighting the maternities.
I simply do not want to wear them.
But I have caved slightly.
There's a shopping bag in my closet with seven tank tops and two pairs of pants, all still wrapped in tissue paper.
Why am I battling this so much?
Can't say, really.
But the point here is this: that white shirt and plaid button down fit when I put them on in the morning.

And by the time I went to bed, you were hanging out the bottom of the t-shirt.

More importantly, I can feel the change.
Whereas I was a rather fast waddler, I am now...hobbling.
Slow and lurching.
Not. Sexy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm almost seven and a half months pregnant so my sexy days are sort of on-hold indefinitely but still.
Not. Sexy.

Certainly, you grew.
But I'm hoping that what I'm feeling is a temporary adjustment.
Because, good grief, I can't be approching my wall yet.
I still have possibly 11 weeks left.
So...we need to work this out.

You're hurting me, too.
What are you doing in there?
It feels like you're crawling.
I know I've said that before.
But you're like, BUSY, doing something all the time.
Not necessarily kicking, though you do that too.
If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were knitting or something, your hands and elbows flying all over the place in constant, repetitive motion.

You're up now. 
It's 12:30 and I'm tired.
But you're knitting and I can't sleep when you're doing that.
You've been the first one up the past few mornings, too--waking before the others come storming in.
So I'm awake while you mess around doing whatever it is that you do and then I realize that you're using my bladder as a pillow and I have to go pee and then we're BOTH really up...sigh.

You are predictably woken, too.
A loud noise, a sudden laugh from me, today a whack to the belly with a soccer ball (RHYSE!).
Seconds later, I'll feel your first jerk...and then you go knitting for half an hour.

My contractions have picked up and they hurt.
Nothing scary and regular, just warm-ups that, if they are any indication of how your birth will go, are telling me that I'm in deep crap.
I don't think I'm going to get the whole, "Oh, I sit out on the porch swing and labor, watching the kids chalk draw rainbows on the driveway while I serenely focus on my breathing" type of labor.
I think I'm in deep crap.
I think it's going to go really fast and it's going to be really wickedly painful.

These "warm-ups" are sort of scaring me just a bit.
They make me remember what it feels like.
Pregnancy is weird like that--you tend to forget the pain, the actual feel of the pain, for some reason.
Even the morning sickness that I had, already I'm like, "It wasn't THAT bad, was it?" 
Yes.
It was.
It was the most horribly awful thing I've endured long-term and yet...poof!
People ask if I'll have another post-you baby.
Right after that, I swore not.
But then I forget the bad.
And I think of not ever having a newborn again and I go..."Welllll...."

It's sort of the same thing with labor, the forgetting.
Ironically it is NOT that way with a root canal :)

I'm hoping that by this weekend maybe I'll be back to feeling so superb and moving like a human and not a snail.
I don't want to hit that point yet.
It's too early.
IT'S TOO EARLY.

So...find your room, take what you need...and then scoot over.
I can't breathe, your feet PLUS an organ are jammed in my ribs, and now my back hurts all the time.

How's June 25 sounding to you?
July is a whole different set of four letters.
And, dear God, it's a whole three weeks more than June 25.
You'll be full-term.

Think about it.

Loving you already Space Hogger,
Mama

27 Weeks, 4 Days

I am the model patient.
I swear, that's what they told me.
"They" being our midwives.

That certainly felt good to hear, especially after they picked through my diet with a fine-toothed comb.
I've been handed homework (actually I MISSED turning in this homework from a month ago so really, I am not quite the model patient they believe me to be :))--a week's worth of food diarying.
Yeesh.
I eat well and all but it's still weird to hand over such...intimate...information!
(It doesn't sound intimate but I assure you, it is when it's being scrutinized.)

My only trip-up is my darn coffee consumption.
I have two a day--one in the morning and one in the evening.
They initially asked me to cut back, slowly to one and then to none.
So I wouldn't have a "jittery baby" come July.
I scowled, I couldn't help myself.
I love my coffees and really, I am quite conscientious about what else I am consuming so as not to add any more "junk" into my daily diet.
"But we don't want YOU to be jittery either so...just do the best you can," Abby told me.

I assured them that I would not be jittery.
I would be asleep.
I can not function without a hit of caffeine.
My days are too long and hard and...long and hard.

I didn't have any caffeine with you until about month five as you simply would not allow it, even if it were the only beverage in all the land.
But as I started to return to myself, I picked that up again just a bit.
And I don't always have an entire cup and I almost always drink about a gallon of water after each time I do in the attempt to dilute and quickly flush it from my body.
(Look at me justifying!)

But in the end, after asking me what else I drink in a day's time, I was given a pass.
"What else do you drink?" Abby asked me.
"Water."
"Anything else?"
"Just water."
"Any colas?  Diet drinks? Carbonated anythings?"
"Nope.  Just...water."
Pause.
"Okay then, I feel comfortable with your coffee."
Whew.  THAT was a close one.

Everything looks great with both of us!
You're somewhere around two and half pounds at this point (pork chop!) and measured big this time!
At my visit, I was about 26 weeks and 5 days and you clocked in with a 28 week measurement.
The month before you'd been just a smidge small so you had a terrific growth spurt in those four weeks!

We will be seeing you again after all, and considering my last post, I'm a bit nervous about this one.
Previously discussed had been the issue of my retained placentas after delivery and so they're just wanting to get a peek at where it is right now and so I'll need another ultrasound next week.
If it's grown into scar tissue, it could be problematic for me.  (Read: extremely painful.)

But I also had a bad bleeding issue with Greer during the onset of labor that, honestly, I never batted an eye at until reviewing my labor in full detail with the midwives earlier in this pregnancy.
Like I tend to do, I awoke with a start in bed at around 4:30-5:00 in the morning and was in full-on, hard-core labor.
And I was bleeding which was a new thing for me but I was REALLY in labor, far worse than I'd ever been before at home before heading to the hospital and I just chalked it up to...full-on, hard-core labor.
But it turns out that really, truly bleeding like I was might not actually be a totally normal thing (I swear, I was in so much pain, it barely registered though I do remember it and in hindsight sort of wonder why I blew it off so quickly) and could also signal a potential problem with where my placentas tend to lie.

I'm really excited to see you again though.
Nervous because of that gender dream but really excited to maybe get another glimpse of what you look like these days.

I feel...magnificent.
I definitely feel some of the late pregnancy aches and pains (my back is really starting to hurt from over-compensating for my big belly) and other than the usual "I'm tired" stuff--I really feel great.
We're just days away from our seventh month together and I've officially started my third and final trimester.
The time is flying and each day that I feel this wonderful, I feel very grateful for.

You are all over the place these days which is unbelievably cute.
You're awake a lot and for long periods of time (at night, I can see the sheets jump as you shift and kick--it's quite amusing, really) but you also sleep deeply a lot and for long periods of time.
You seem to wake when we all do in the morning, even if I'm not up yet but if/when my bed starts filling up with children who would like me to be up.
You're just one of that gang in there!

There's far less kicking (though you do sneak in some good ones now and again) and far, far more...crawling, churning, turning, shifting, twisting.
You like to lie on your left side, upside down; I can feel your tiny bottom and I get lots of little-foot action on the right side of my own body.
When you do kick, it's in a series--almost never just once now.
I remember those first few times I felt you, how I'd have to lie super still and there'd be just one quick, tiny tap and then...you were gone.
Now if you're in a kicking mood, it'll be ten minutes of pounding while I lay in bed staring at the ceiling wondering when you'll get tired and fall back asleep :)
(And that's not a complaint--I'm totally giggling while I'm staring at the ceiling and am usually poking back at you.  Unless I'm really tired.  Then I just wait because there's nothing else I can do.  Am trapped, I tell you.)

Oddly enough, I have pinned down my birth sheet set which I rummaged up from the back of the linen closet this week.
I need a set to have on the bed, a set that I obviously do not care if they look as if they've been at a murder scene and then another set that the midwives will change for me while I shower (if they can wrangle you from my arms--I am LOATHE to part with my newborns, even FOR a shower) so I can get back into a clean bed with you right away.

It's sort of strange as this stuff starts to become a little bit more real for me.
(We touched on my "Birth Kit" a bit at this appointment so I could start preparing.)
Let me be clear on this point: I am scared.
Oh yes, I am definitely reconsidering the wiseness of this choice and it has everything to do with my fear of pain and nothing to do with anything else.
It does not matter (for me) how many times I've "done this" because it hurts and hurts bad every single time.
If I can rise above that fear and the pain, then I think this will be the most amazing experience.
If I can't, then I think I'm going to be in big, big trouble.
So we're just going to go with the "I can" route until I notify myself that "Whoops!  Misjudged that one!" and by that time, it will be too late anyway.
But maybe I can convince someone to knock me out and put me (and everyone) out of my misery.
I'm quite convincing when I want to be :)

You're asking for an apple and some peanut butter which is just terrific as it's like midnight and all I want to do is sleep but it seems that I'll be slicing a darn apple up instead.
Oh well.
Could be worse, right?
Like you could want, say, a Twinkie.
Which sadly sounds amazingly tempting suddenly.
I better go make that apple before I end up sending you-know-who on a midnight crack food run.

Loving you already,
Mama

26 Weeks, 3 Days

I had the most vivid dream about you last week.
I meant to jump on here and record it immediately but I didn't though it doesn't matter.
I still remember it so clearly.

We had gone in for another ultrasound, one last little peek at you.
And I was laying there, while they were taking pictures and I was so excited to see you again.
You were much bigger than you were just six weeks ago when we saw you last and this time, you weren't shy.

Though the techs knew that we didn't want to know your gender, there was an accident.
Or in my dream, I think I thought it was almost intentional.
I'm not really sure why; maybe because we'd been so adamant about NOT knowing who you were that I couldn't believe that someone made such an incredible mistake.

These ultrasound photos that they took, they tossed up onto an illuminated box, exactly how they would do it in order to read an x-ray.
The whole of you lit up immediately and I could see your face so clearly (you looked identical to the one good photo we were able to get in our last real ultrasound session where you looked just like Chas) and just as I was sitting up and exclaiming with delight, my eyes trailed downward and there, before the world, you presented your gender.
As plain as day.

You were a girl.

And I was so completely thrown, excited and PISSED--I remember my stomach dropping at the sight of your girly bits and my sheer joy to be expecting another daughter but I also was throwing a major fit because (and this is what I kept saying), "I wanted that surprise!" 
I wanted that surprise in the moment, the realization of your gender, and though I'll love you either way, I think I'd be truly tickled for another girl.

Let me explain because that might sound bad.
I don't want you to think I prefer one gender over another.
I don't.
I do not.
I once thought I did, I really wanted Chas to be a girl because I have NO boys on my side of the family--I didn't grow up with any brothers or even a father around so his maleness was totally foreign to me.
But that changed instantly (of course it did, the second I held him--he could have been an alien, I was that smitten) and it's been the same for me ever since.
I rather like having all these boys.
But I sure am glad to have my Greer.

Take for example, what happened yesterday, which actually sparked a gender conversation between your dad and I.
Memaw had taken Chas, Rhyse and Greer out for the afternoon to give us some time to prepare dinner and to get ready for our Easter egg hunt.
They'd been gone for awhile when the phone rang.
My caller ID said it was Chas so I picked up quickly.

"Hi!"
"Hi.  Is Dad there?  Can I talk to Dad?"
(Pause)
"Um, yes, he's here." (Pause) "Is everything ok?"
I thought maybe something was wrong and he didn't want to tell me first because he knew I'd freak out. 
Oh, how wrong I was!
"No, nothing's wrong.  I got new roller blades and I wanted to tell him."
(Pause.)
(Pause.)
(Pause.)
"Oh!  Oh, wow, ok.  Hold on, I'll get him."

Those pauses?
That was me processing the fact that I am not necessarily the preferred parent anymore for my oldest boy.
It's a given that through childhood, Mama is just...well, just about everything.
The sun rises and sets with Mama.
At least in this house, that's the way it is; the way it's always been.
But his call startled me in a way that I didn't much like.
He wasn't calling to share his news with ME, he was calling to share it with his dad.
And I don't mean to make it sound like I don't appreciate that relationship between them; oh, how I do.
I love that they grow closer as the years go by.
But I felt...left out.

I came downstairs a little while later and lamented to your daddy.
"This family needs some balance because you have ALL THESE BOYS and they're going to grow up and be your best friends--you'll all be hanging out in the basement drinking beer and playing pool while I drive Greer nuts because she's my only daughter and the only one I can truly relate to in this family full of MEN!"

"No, you won't," he said, which started to sound sweet until he added, "because Greer will be down there drinking beer and playing pool with us!"
Over. My. Dead. Body.
She will be shopping and mani/pedi'ing it with me or else I will go off my ROCKER.
I need some girl in this family.

And so, there you have it.
If you're a boy, welcome to the damn party, son.  You've come to the right place.
And if you are a girl, thank you, thank you, thank you for even-ing things up a bit around here!

One thing's for sure, whoever you are, you are growing by leaps and bounds every week it seems!
Luckily, I still feel terrific and I'm hoping to ride this wave of wonderfulness for as long as I possibly can because once it starts to go downhill, it won't come back up again until you arrive.
I remember my "point" with Creux was at 32 weeks.
It was downhill from there and it was a looooong way to week 39 (and 5 days).
But you don't seem as big as he was, even now (though I may eat those words at 32 weeks when I'm convinced that I'm ready to deliver you from all the pressure and aches and pains) and you are definitely more relaxed. 
(PLEASE don't make me eat those words!)

Somehow a whole month has passed and it's time for our midwives appointment tomorrow!
I'm looking forward to the visit--I always am.
Though I think...the next time I come, I will be THIRTY WEEKS.
Wow!
Just one more month and we'll truly be in the homestretch, with you able to safely arrive just seven weeks after that point.
Maybe that sounds long but a week passes in a blip for me.
Especially right now, with our lives as busy as they are.

I feel like I'm in some wicked spin cycle and I'm going to be dumped out at the end of May, when school ends, when soccer stops, when summer officially begins.
That's really scary to me because I feel like I do actually have a lot I need to take care of before you arrive and right now, I barely have time to shower.
We still have a major renovation to do with my bedroom and a big vacation looming, plus our weekends have been sucked up by sporting obligations which leaves...June.
Exactly where I DIDN'T want to find time for your stuff.
I wanted to be done by June.
I don't think it's going to happen but...we'll see.
I guess so long as we're ready by early July, it'll be fine in the end.

I need to make some firm decisions in the next little while...your name (am pretty solid on your Maybe Girl, am waffling on your Maybe Boy), to circ or not circ (nothing like a SMALL detail like that to chew on), I need to choose your diapers (am I going cloth?--maybe), buy you something sweet and cozy for your first night here, decide on my sling, etc. etc. etc. 
Just...stuff.
Stuff that's cluttering my head and making me feel like I'm starting to run behind schedule.
I'm not--not yet but I'm starting to toe the line if I want to relax in June.
And I really want to relax in June.

I'm carrying you very high which isn't unusual and not significant of anything except that's how you babies fit in my body.  Some people look and say, "boy" or "girl" but it's never seems to make a difference to my body.
At the end of the day, I'm starting to feel a lot of pressure on my pelvic floor and at times I can feel you turning your head.
It almost tickle hurts.
That's the best way I can describe it.
You're still tapping away in there and surprisingly, I'm not terribly uncomfortable right now.
I'm slower for sure, have perfected the waddle, can barely get up off the floor without pulling down a bookcase in order to help me up, and would really, really, really like to not gain another ounce but other than all that....I feel amazing :)

Thanks for being so good to me.
It almost makes up for how much I wanted to die back in weeks 7-13 :)
(I said almost.  You are not totally off the hook yet for that stunt.  I'm banking on the whole Chill Baby thing and then you'll be cleared of all wrong-doing.  I will not delete the entries just so you know how miserable I was and that should translate to how much I love you but I will not hold it over your head.
For too long ;))

Loving you already,
Mama