Baby Goo

So tomorrow is my yearly "fun" exam. Well, I actually really like my gynecologist, but the whole cold speculum does nothing for me.

Actually, I am dreading this appointment. I'm as fat as I was last year, maybe even fatter. My blood pressure is likely to be slightly elevated because I'm moving on Friday and they don't use the fat chick cuff unless you remember to ask them for it and they remember where it is. Those are reasons enough to want to avoid the appointment, but I won't.

I'm mostly afraid that the doc is going to tell me that I won't be able to get pregnant with our third child. We've been working on it since April and have yet to conceive. My cycles have been crazy irregular since they resumed when Violet was 14 months old. Some have been easy, but half of them have been so painful that sitting up straight makes my uterus scream. I know that a diagnosis of infertility is unlikely, particularly at an annual exam with no additional testing, but that doesn't stop the fear from gnawing at my periphery.

I know that I am very, very lucky to have the two beautiful children that I have. I know that they brighten my every day and that their being a part of my life has made me a better person. I also know that my family doesn't feel complete yet. I have room in my heart for a third child.

I am very excited that tomorrow will welcome my little brother's first child into the world. She is arriving by c-section as she's a vain little baby and is keeping her head out of the birth canal because she wants to have a lovely round head for her newborn pictures (in other words, she's breech).

It is completely irrational to fear tomorrow, but in my worst nightmares, my sibling is welcoming the start of his family on the day that I learn my family will forever be missing something.

I think this ties back to the loss we had before Milo. I was pregnant, but not really with a baby and not really in my womb. The miscarriage didn't hurt, I just bled and bled and bled. I had a D & C, but the anesthetic was ineffective, so I remember every scrape. Even then things weren't right and I had to have shots of a lime green chemo drug, one in each hip. I was a quivering mess as I sat alone in the procedure room at the hospital waiting for those shots. I actually wasn't even in a procedure room, but a family hospitality room, so there wasn't a bed or a sink or anything - just two plush chairs and a TV. A rerun of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" jangled on the TV, but I wasn't really watching it. The nurse who came in to administer the shots barely looked at me, asking me, "Was this your first?" as I leaned over a footstool with my undies pulled down so my hip was exposed.

"Yes." I said, barely audibly.

"Well, you're young! You'll have more children, I just know it!"

Of course I will, I thought, but I'll never have this child. I didn't know anything about it -- not gender, not age, nothing. That didn't mean that I wasn't in love with the possibility of my baby. I had a hard time even wanting to try for another baby until I got past the due date of that one. I finally relented to try a month before the other baby would have been due because I was certain that I wouldn't get pregnant on the first shot -- the other pregnancy had take 7 months to achieve. But I did, and I am so glad or I wouldn't have my beautiful Milo. Violet came along on the first try, too, albeit a long first try. Irregular cycles strike again!

I'm trying not to let my jealousy show, but I am getting increasingly frustrated, and now scared. I'm not getting any younger, I know that. I also know that I'm fat and out of shape. I swear, after this move I'm back to exercising at lunchtime. Please hold me to that promise, OK?

I am so very excited to meet my new niece! I hope that her arrival is safe and that her mommy's tummy isn't too sore after surgery. I hope that she nurses like a champ and gains weight quickly. And that she goes easy on her daddy -- he's a tenderhearted fellow and will likely be a puddle of goo wrapped around her little pink finger...