just a month to go

Just a month to go, give or take, for baby girl to arrive.

The last almost 36 weeks has flown by, and now it feels like time is standing still.  I'm so looking forward to seeing our girl.  Who will she look like?  How big will she be?  Will she be a sleeper?  Let's hope.

I finally washed Laci's baby clothes this week, and just put them away in the dresser today.  Not much opportunity for "nesting" these days.  Some people have asked me if we have the nursery ready.  Well, no.  But only because we don't have a "nursery."  Trailer life.  The basinette will be going in the "dining room" which is a vague term for the area where there should be a table for eating, but it currently holds some of Laci's toys.  The basinette itself is still somewhere upstairs waiting to be carried down, along with other baby items like a car seat and swing.  I have no fear it will all be done in time...and if it isn't, she won't know any different.  After all, Laci's crib wasn't even put together until after we got home from the hospital.

Sometimes this whole experience seems like a dream, but not the kind of dream where everything is perfect.  More like the kind of dream where unrelated memories and thoughts are strung together in a single story, so that nothing makes sense, and you wake up laughing and telling someone, "I had the craziest dream last night."  In my younger years, I may have imagined what it would be like to be bringing babies home from the hospital, and never, ever did it involve bringing them home to live in a shop.  To say I'm looking forward to having a real house again is a huge understatement.

As for the pregnancy itself, I really can't complain.  I haven't written much about it because, with everything else going on at the moment, being pregnant has been kind of an afterthought.  I went through the sick stage at the beginning, which seemed to last forever when I was in the thick of it, but it passed somewhere around 12 weeks and looking back now, it seems so brief.  I'm so lucky to have had two very healthy pregnancies.  Except for being uncomfortable with my size lately, I'm feeling pretty good.  I don't even have deformed, swollen feet yet from retaining water.  Do I feel heavy, awkward, and grotesquely flabby?  Completely.  Is it hard to breathe sometimes because my lungs are squished?  Yes.  Do I pee all the time because someone is using my bladder as a trampoline?  Absolutely.  The truth is, I do complain...A LOT...about being uncomfortable, and hot, and awkward, but I really shouldn't because things could be so, so much worse.

Since the weather heated up about a month or so ago, I've definitely been feeling my size, and it really started sinking in that we'll be having a baby soon. I cannot stick my head in the sand any longer.  "Soon" could even mean less than 3 weeks from now if she shows up early like her big sister.  As my knees grow more tired from the weight, I'm having a harder time ignoring that fact that labor is ahead of me, and there is nothing I can do to avoid it.  Good thing the pain really does go away as soon as you see that perfect little being.  And that is the part I'm really, truly looking forward to.  To see our little family grow from three to four, to see Laci become a big sister, and most of all, to meet the little person who comes alive at night.  Really alive.  Like wakes me from a dead sleep with her antics alive.  At least I know she's strong, she'll need to be in order to stand up to her big sister.