Pregnancy dream: We couldn't get the cats out of the sofa

August 31, 2010 - about 9 weeks pregnant

Yesterday Suzi got an awful runny-nose cold and spent last night in our bed, tossing and turning and waking up to cry that her nose needed wiping. It was one of those thankfully rare nights on which all four of us sleep in one bed, and when this happens I am always so grateful we bought our king-size bed. I wonder how we are going to fit our family of five in there. It probably won't happen often, but there will be a thunderstorm or two, I'm sure.

When Suzi fell asleep, and I finally fell asleep, I dreamed that it was Christmas Eve and we were supposed to be setting up gifts in the living room but we couldn't, because we discovered that a bunch of stray cats had taken up residence in our sofa cushions. There were at least ten of them in there and it wasn't easy getting them out of the house. Then some strangers showed up who wanted to stay the night, but we were running short of space, especially considering our sofa was full of cats. And what with all those cats running around, Jordan was concerned about his furry black guinea pig, Hail Mary, which had recently gone missing.

I woke up suddenly and half wanted to go back to sleep to figure out what happened with all those cats. They were making the couch smell gross and it was really menacing the way they peered out of the little holes they'd ripped in our cushions. But my dreams generally don't pick up where they left off like that. Now Ivey is happily napping in my lap and Suzi is watching Alice in Wonderland, and I'm hungry, as usual.

Later this week I'm hoping to hear Robin's heartbeat. I'm so excited! Then, if this pregnancy is like my two others, I'll start dreaming about giving birth to a litter of kittens.

Six weeks

August 10, 2010

While I'm not quite ready to blog about my pregnancy yet, I don't want to lose all my early pregnancy thoughts, so I'm writing now and posting later. I'm at about six weeks now, and this pregnancy is already showing itself to be different from the past two.

1) I'm not nauseous unless I make the stupid mistake of going to bed without a snack first. It's even worse since Ivey nurses during the night, removing calories while I sleep. If this happens, when I wake up I have to get Jordan to run downstairs to make me some emergency toast with jelly. It's about the only thing I can even think of eating when I'm morning sick (or, as is usually the case, just have low blood sugar). When I was pregnant with Suzi it was the same, except I had to scrape most of the jelly off before eating it. I can't stand too much jelly, it's gross. But this is our third time and Jordan's gotten pretty good.

2) The night we found out we were pregnant, I thought of the name Robin. It made sense because of the extra egg in my nest and I said it would work for a girl or a boy. Jordan disagrees; if it's a boy he wants to name him Robert. He said Robin is not a boy's name. I said it was. Hello, Robin Williams? Robin Hood? Christopher Robin? But he really wants to name a boy Robert, and it was his grandfather's name, so I understand. If it's a boy we'll name him Robert and I'll call him Robby, but I kind of hope it's a girl.

3) Last night Jordan and I were watching Up together on Netflix. He'd already seen it and was so excited to show it to me because the couple reminded him of us. And we were having a great time seeing how cute the couple was and how much the guy looked like Jordan in those big geeky glasses of his, until (spoiler alert) the part where they lost a baby or couldn't get pregnant, and had this beautiful life together but never did get to go on their adventure, and then the wife died. I made it through all this quite stoically, and when it had been over for a couple of minutes and the movie had moved on, unexpectedly burst into tears. It was a sad movie, but this is not normal for me, and it made me feel better because lately it's been hard to believe I'm really pregnant, even though I want to be.

4) With Suzi and Ivey, I had daily pregnancy calendars that told a neat fact about the baby for every day of development. It had a sheet of stickers for me to mark important days, like "you feel me kicking," and I wrote notes about what we were doing to prepare and what I was experiencing. I still have these and I like to flip through them to see if what I'm going through now happened back then. Someday I will give them to my girls, and I'd planned to have one for each child. I was about to order one for Robin a few days ago, but I stopped myself. This time I thought I'd make my own. It won't be a frugal project because the calendar I was going to buy is only about $10, but it will be fun. I'll put my own pictures on it, and I'll have more room to write what I want. I haven't gotten started on it yet, though.

5) I want to hear the heartbeat. That will tell me this baby is okay and make all this seem like a reality. I can't wait. About four weeks to go.

An open letter to my baby

July 27, 2010

Dear Robin,

I just found out about you last night, after four tests, and now I should be in bed but I can't sleep. The first line didn't show up at first. Fine, I thought, and started to go tell Jordan we were right, just a little late. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then something, ever so faint, began to rise from the pale pink. I blinked, squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again. Held the test up to the light, looked over my glasses. I must have used it wrong. Or, we bought it at the dollar store, it must be a cheap test. Should have known that price was too good to be true. But another test, showing that same pink line, plus two more tests, the expensive kind, confirmed the news: You are there.

Happenings over the past month which seemed meaningless at the time fell into place like puzzle pieces. Somehow, Suzi knew about you, insisted you were in my belly, but I told her no. There was no way. We weren't trying, and it was far too early to tell anyway. She held her fingers up and said you were really tiny and she was right. You were the size of a poppy seed, but she knew you were there--and could barely contain her giggles of excitement. She has wanted you for a while.

Then Saturday I made this bird's nest necklace. It was nothing expensive or spectacular, but I loved it--a beautiful symbol of motherhood. Three was the obvious number of eggs to put in the nest, and I told myself one was for Suzi, one was for Ivey, and one was for the baby I hoped to have, someday. I really didn't think someday would be coming this spring.

We were not expecting you, and we did not try to bring you, it's true. But sometimes God knows better than we do and He put you there. You are so wanted by all of us. I don't care what anyone says--that we should have waited for a more convenient time, until we had more money, until we'd given several more years of attention to your sisters, until we were older. Yes, having three children at our age does fly in the face of modern wisdom. There will be challenges, but we will face them, and there will be plenty of love to go around. I am already filled with joy at the thought of you in my arms, in our van, in our bed, at our table. Everyone else will be, too.

We love you.

Mama