Don't.

Are you my doctor? No?

Then don't tell me what I should or shouldn't eat.

Don't tell me that I shouldn't sit where I want to sit.

Don't tell me that I should prioritize a healthy pregnancy over activity x.

Don't tell me to avoid air travel.

Don't tell me how I should train my dog.

Don't tell me that I shouldn't lift that.

Don't tell me what I will or won't be able to handle after the delivery.

Just don't.

When I lost Mila, I wasn't skiing or lifting heavy objects or eating cold cuts or flying on a plane. I was sitting quietly on the couch in my own home watching TV. I followed all the rules. None of those things would have changed the outcome of my pregnancy with Mila. Don't put the onus of that on me.

Change.

The switch flipped.  I'm pregnant again -- 16 weeks and 2 days today, which gives me a due date in September.

We'd just come back from Argentina when we found out.  I was late, but I'd been late before.  I went about my life for four days in a mild state of denial, not wanting to test and see that single line again.  After ten months I'd started to become resigned and begun to think, why would this time be any different?  Then suddenly, inexplicably, it was.

I'm really happy about it, of course.  I remember lying with my eyes closed shortly after we found out, marveling about it.  I think about Mila now as being part of the fabric of the universe, and in the same way I thought about this new baby as another wisp of that infinity that has taken up temporary residence in me; slowly growing, adding matter, and waking up into a tiny embodied part of the everything that there is.

But it also took me a while to digest this.  I'd gone a full year being not-pregnant.  I had, after a time, returned to feeling like my body was my own -- strong, predictable, mine to do what I wanted with.  Pregnancy this time, without the novelty or blind optimism of last time, just feels like watching my body slowly going haywire.  I feel frustrated when it's physically harder for me to do things that I did easily four months ago, and when my clothes don't fit right, and when all I want is carbs.  My body doesn't feel like the same one that walked the W, although I still have a pair of fucked-up pinky toenails to prove it.

So it is taking a little mental rearrangement.  I'd really like for September to arrive and to be finished with the pregnancy, but I'm not as scared or anxious as I thought I would be, at least not yet.  It helps that D and I adopted a rescue dog last month, who is the best pup we could ask for.  All we do is give him a home and something to eat; and in return he gives us endless smiles and butt wiggles and fun and lightness.  It's the best therapy I can imagine.

He sleeps in a little dog bed in our bedroom.  At night I listen to D breathing in his sleep to my right, the pup breathing in his sleep to my left, and sometimes I feel what might be the slightest little bounce from baby Peanut; and I feel comforted amidst my pack.  It's finally growing again.