Counting Down the Hours with Mixed Feelings

Kiddo is still incubating. We are down to the final hours - as I type this, his arrival should be about 49 hours away at the most. We are scheduled to be in the OR for another C-section at 9 a.m. PT on Saturday.

Last time, with Miss A, I was so excited about the idea we would hopefully finally have a baby that I wasn't really focused on anything else, and I couldn't wait for her to get here.

While I'm certainly eager to meet this little guy, this time around there are other feelings rising more to the surface. I know how high-strung I was during Miss A's pregnancy, but in reality, while there were certainly a lot of scary moments and uncertainty in the first trimester of both of these pregnancies, I have loved just about every moment of being pregnant.

I'm not sure that we will try for a third. If I was 10 years younger, the answer would be "probably", but since I'm not (I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago), we're at the "probably not" stage. Actually, R would tell you that we're at the "definitely not!" stage, but I haven't reached the point of absolute certainty about it yet.

And so, given those things, I am feeling a bit melancholy about this pregnancy coming to an end.

We're also reaching an end of an era in being a family of three. We have so much fun with Miss A, and she gets so much attention from both of us. In the evening, we both encourage her in eating her dinner, we both help her brush her teeth and give her a bath.

Now we will have to divide and conquer. I know it will be an adjustment for her to not have the full attention of both of us. It will be an adjustment for us, too. But I know we'll all figure it out.

I'm also a bit nervous about this kiddo being a boy. That's ironic, because when we were expecting Miss A, my mindset was all about a boy, and finding out that she was a girl threw me for a loop. But now I'm used to having a girl, and a very girly-girl one at that, which is something I am definitely not.

Even at 2 years and 4 months, even with most of her toys being things like blocks, Legos, and toys with gears, with very few pink toys and only one doll (which it didn't even occur to me to buy for her until she was nearly 2), and a playroom that has very little pink in it, she loves pink, tea parties, fancy dresses, and pretty shoes. She has even recently insisted on wearing her Christmas dress (with its crushed velvet top and poufy taffeta skirt) to day care and to my birthday dinner. The day care teachers said she absolutely loved wearing her dress and insisted on keeping it on all day rather than changing into the other clothes we had sent with her, even though it is 110 degrees where we live.

So I have learned to embrace the girly-ness, and I even enjoy tea parties now.

But it will also be good for there to be a bit more testosterone in our world. Aside from one male dog in our household, R is surrounded by females - my mom, me, Miss A, one female dog, and two female cats. It's amazing that the guy is still sane... :-)

My next post will hopefully be a birth announcement. Stay tuned!