November 6, 2009

The anxiety is back. Jamie has had no symptoms for a full week now. Not a single one. In the beginning she was tired, weepy, her face was breaking out and her gums were bleeding. Now she is symptom free. I hope and pray that just means she is going to have a healthy, symptom-free pregnancy. God please allow her to have a healthy pregnancy and please allow us to care for your healthy baby.

The last couple of days have shown us how hard some of this pregnancy will be. Of course, I don’t mean to complain, and we would go through all of this again in a heartbeat if it meant a healthy baby in the end. This is just such uncharted territory for all of us, and so we are all now realizing that some things will come up that we have not considered, and we will need to work through them.

I was talking to Jamie yesterday, and she said that Jamie crawled into bed next to her and rubbed her belly. She said that their most intimate memories are of exactly that, him rubbing her pregnant belly. She told me that she wondered if it would be the same this pregnancy. She wondered if he would rub her belly; pride himself in waking the baby, even if it wasn’t his own. I can completely understand her curiosity—it makes absolute sense. It was really hard to hear though, because these are the moments that Fred, our baby and I won’t have. I want to be rubbing my belly, loving our baby. I want to have Fred rubbing my belly, loving our baby. God, I want that. The thing is, I also really want this baby—our baby. We’ve dreamed of this baby. I’ll endure 9 months of unlimited emotional anguish (and then some) for this baby. If these moments are some of the dreamed of moments that we need to let go of to help this little embryo have a  fighting chance in a womb that will do its job to nourish it, then it is a small price to pay.

All this being said, it would be a lie if I said that it isn’t sometimes hard. It would be a lie if I said that it won’t sometimes be very hard. This will be an emotional challenge but, in the end, I know that we will look into our baby’s eyes and it will all be SO worth it. And, little one, if you read this someday—please know how very loved you were from conception. Please know that I send you hugs and kisses every single day, if only in my thoughts and dreams. You have ALWAYS been loved by us totally and completely and you always will be.

Monday can’t come soon enough. Please Lord, let there be one or two little hearts beating away. This journal has 8 more months of chapters waiting to be written. Please God let it have a happy ending. One for our baby to read years and years from now…