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