An eventful day

Did anybody else's blogger go AWOL for a while? Together with gmail? How bloody inconsiderate of them! They really should know better than to cut off a woman's blog oxygen AND her email access. Anyway...

The ultrasound
Size. We caught up. In fact we are a few days ahead of the due date estimate now. So maybe it isn't my cells going all the very hungry caterpillar on my blood glucose. Apparently the little bugger has been getting in on the act a lot more than I thought. So new plan is to worry a little more about the content of my meals. I was rather lax on the carbs before thinking that I needed to make it easy for the occupant to get some. Now we have to worry about too big, so it's back to careful meal planning. The big scan is in three weeks, so we will get a good idea of the rate of growth by then.

Sex. Male. My reaction was to tell Dr. Best "Neurotic patient, round two." But really, I am not freaking out. I didn't get the terrible sinking feeling I got with A, so that's a good thing. The last little bit I have started to prepare myself to assume the fuck the universe posture if the news was thus. It seems to have helped. As, I think, did the starting to let myself love this baby part. See? I just called him "baby." I was all euphemisms and "fetus" before.

We are buckling in for what we expect will be a very bumpy ride. JD seems to be more freaked out than I am, actually. But we talked about one day at a time, and he observed that we are in for a lot of days. Hopefully we are. We are also in for Name That Baby, round three. Wish us luck.


News of the heartbreakingly beautiful
Monkey was having an acute grief reaction tonight. She asked to light a candle. She wanted to touch me to touch A. Then she sat on the floor directing herself downward, underground. She finally said that she will never get to see him alive. I think what she actually meant was she never got to see him in her real life, but also the whole certainty of never getting it in the future either.

She brought her fancy birthday candles to put on the table next to the candle we were lighting. She rummaged for the booklet containing the mourner's kaddish. After we lit the candle, she did more sitting, laying on the floor, more of this honest deep grief. JD came over and pulled her into his lap. She wanted me. So I moved close to them too. We sat that way for a while, and then Monkey touched my belly in a deliberately different way and said "No, nobody living there yet." I asked her what and how was she trying to ascertain, and upon receiving the expected answer explained that babies don't kick in a way that can be felt from the outside for a while. That made her sad, because clearly, she has thought about figuring things out this way, possibly for a little while.

We encouraged her to ask what she actually wanted to ask, and we answered that question. The first thing she says? The very first thing, before asking us about the sex, the first thing was "I hope this one doesn't die." Yes, we all very much do. So we talked about the sex ("Again?"-- amused and clearly somewhat surprised. She had been drawing our next baby as a girl for a while. Ahem...), about the time frame (she is no fool, and wanted the live baby ASAP. April sounded good to her. Luckily she is not yet aware of all the ways this goes to shit and prematurity isn't something she knows to fear), and about names (unsurprisingly, some silliness ensued, listing Boots of the Dora fame and a number of inanimate objects, followed by pretty much every boy name in her class. She finally singled out one name that actually isn't out of the realm of possibilities. Go figure).

I am, however, blown away by the emotional maturity on this kid. She never for a second considered conflating this baby with A, and it wasn't too long until she was talking about the two different brothers. She is trying to figure out how to relate to them. For tonight, she settled on saying goodnight to everyone-- papa, mama, A, and the new little brother.