Labor Day.

Happy Labor Day! And appropriately enough, happy induction day to me. D and I will be heading off to the hospital for a 10AM appointment. I'm scared and anxious but cautiously excited, and I keep checking on the Nut to make sure she's still there. It's a surreal feeling, having something as momentous and normally unpredictable as a birth scheduled like this. Amidst all the packing, fridge cleanout, dogsitter planning, and well wishes, it almost feels like we're preparing to get on a flight. We're even going to take an Uber to the "airport."

Everybody gird your loins. You too, Schmorgy.

Where is u going? Wut is a baby? Is like hooman puppie?

Minor observations.

Obviously, this pregnancy is different from my first one in a lot of important ways, but in some minor ways too.

Skin.  My skin is fine but not particularly glowy and perfect.  At thirty-five and a half weeks last time, it was so great that I'd regularly leave the house ecstatically without a lick of makeup.  This time, not so much; but happily, I've again made it this far without stretch marks.

Swelling.  I have only minor swelling, and as a result no carpal tunnel, in my hands at this point.  My rings still slide on and off without unusual effort.  Towards the end of my first pregnancy, I had trouble making a fist and I'd stopped wearing my rings.

Aches.  I have a lot more achiness this time, leading to full-on pregnancy waddle.  I don't remember if I waddled last time, but if I did, I certainly wasn't conscious of it.

So weird how different even the little things can be.  Reminder to self: this is a different pregnancy.

On the calendar.

I'm officially on the calendar at UCSF L&D for an induction on Monday, September 7th, 10AM. I will be exactly 37 weeks along.

Omfgomfgomfgomfgomfgomfg!!!1!!!!

It was as simple as Dr. R making a one-minute phone call at my appointment last week, as D and I traded bug-eyed astonished glances at each other behind her turned back.

As if spurred on by this development, the next day I started having contractions that were mild but uncomfortable and so frequent that I went in to be seen. As I lay there hooked up to the monitor, I wondered ruefully if I'd be admitted, caught unawares in the hospital for a chaotic delivery for the second time, after all these months of quiet, clenched-fist waiting and planning. I wound up being watched in L&D for eight hours before the contractions started to subside and the doctors sent me home with instructions to avoid exerting myself and to stay hydrated.

My number one hope is to come out of this healthy and with a healthy baby, and my second desperate hope is for all this to just -- go -- according to plan, this time. I would dearly love to just be able to pack and prepare at my leisure, drop off my dog with his sitter as discussed, show up calmly at the hospital at the appointed time with a bag carefully packed with all my toiletries and comforts, and be monitored by medical staff from minute one of my fast, smooth, and relatively pain-free labor. No surprises. Please.

Someone different.

I'm at 22 weeks -- a full five months pregnant -- as of this past Monday. Things are starting to feel less abstract now that I'm showing and that we know that the Nut's a girl. It also helps that her kicks and punches are getting stronger, sometimes vigorous enough that I can see my belly jump a little.

I remember Mila's movements at this time. She'd swish around after I'd eaten and press against the seatbelt while I drove. D had just felt her move for the first time. The Nut is at least as vigorous in her movements, maybe even a little more decisive in her punches, but her patterns are different. I feel her the most when she kicks into the bed as I drift into or out of sleep in the mornings and evenings. There really is someone in there! And it's someone different.

It's been over two years since Mila was conceived, and sometimes I really feel that time. People have gotten pregnant, had first babies, had first and second babies, in that time. I have this book, Trying Again, that I bought almost a year and a half ago in (apparently overzealous) anticipation of a second pregnancy. I haven't even touched it since I got pregnant with the Nut. There was such a long pause between Mila's birth and the Nut's conception that a lot of the issues that the book addresses just don't feel relevant to me anymore. I've already had the chance to come to some sort of acceptance about Mila. I don't confuse the two babies, or half-wish that the Nut will be a "replacement" for her. I don't keep myself awake at night feeling terrified, for the most part.

If anything, I sometimes feel that I have to retread old ground to get myself back to the mental place where I was at the end of 2013, ready to transition from life with just me and D (and the pup) to life as a mom with a brand-new baby. That's been a surprise to me, but I guess it is of a piece with everything else. This is a different baby, a different pregnancy. She will have a different name and parents who have a different perspective. I will prepare a different nursery for her, and a different space in my head and heart for her. That space will be close to Mila's, but it'll be the Nut's own.

Little sister.

It's a little sister for Mila and Schmorgy. She's got all her bits, so far as can be determined via ultrasound at this point, and a normal cord insertion. D and I are happy and cautiously relieved. I'll let Schmorgy be the one to be unreservedly, no-holds-barred excited and optimistic. :)

Somebody asked me how it felt to have the anatomy scan done for the Nut (as we're calling her until she has a proper name). It was confusing -- scary and happy and sad all at once.

Scary because every pregnancy ultrasound I'll have for the rest of my life will be terrifying in the moments while the tech applies the gel and moves the wand, before the picture comes into focus and I can see movement and a heartbeat.

Happy because she proved to be alive and well -- unmistakably human with developed little hands, big feet like Mila's and D's, four pumping chambers in her heart, a spine with every vertebra clear on the screen, shapely quads and hamstrings wrapped around two strong femur bones, an umbilical cord and placenta that are wonderfully unremarkable. Because she moved vigorously, kicking and squirming and doing flips like her big sister did. And because she is a she, who will give me another shot at doing all the sweet little girl things that I didn't get to do with Mila.

Sad because still, still, Mila doesn't ever get to do those sweet little girl things, or play with the toys we bought her, or sleep in the crib that D put together for her. It feels like she was shortchanged. Some cell on some random, careless whim divided or implanted in some funky way that led some other cells down some narrow path, further and further, until they all turned into a velamentous cord insertion. Which everybody said would work out fine, until it didn't. And just as randomly, just as obliviously, the Nut's earliest cells went down some other path and gave her a normal one. The membrane separating the two paths feels so thin. Why, why, why? There is no reason why. Sometimes the universe is random. Atoms and molecules and cells move about in the dark.

Here is my strongest, dearest, sincerest wish that they all come together in just the right way for the Nut.

Trying again.

People tell me they can’t imagine what it would be like to lose their babies.  “I’m so sorry, I just can’t imagine.”

Well, before, I couldn’t imagine it either.  And I didn’t think I needed to.  In my prenatal reading, I briefly came across a single article about stillbirth, the story of a woman who discovered her baby was dead in the womb and was then faced with the unimaginable task of birthing her dead child.  I glossed over the article.  A horrible story, but filed squarely under Not Applicable.

That was in the Before.

From where I stand now, I actually have trouble imagining having a living child.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, I have trouble believing that pregnancies don’t all end in disaster.  I am surprised when other people have perfectly healthy babies, so easily, like it’s nothing.  I see pictures of pregnant friends and acquaintances nearing their due dates and I think, oh god, it’s going to be so horrible when the baby dies.  But then a few weeks pass and their belly photos promptly, magically, turn into photos of beautiful, healthy babies.  How do they do it?

It’s hard to have faith in the statistics once you’ve been the 1 in 160.  Once you’ve been the 1 in 160, the statistics all become meaningless.  1% might as well be 100% for all the good it does you.

But, but.  Some part of us must still believe, because we aren't giving up.  There are two types of newly bereaved mothers.  Those who can't even think of getting pregnant again anytime soon, and those who can't get pregnant again soon enough.  I fall into the second category.  I wanted to be pregnant again as soon as I got home from the hospital.  I knew even then that it was just a way of missing Mila - for nine months, even when I was alone, I wasn't really alone; and I couldn’t stand the sudden, total emptiness.  I know the next child will not be her.  We will not get her back.  But we still want a family, so at least we can work towards that.

The next pregnancy will be hard.  We will be so happy, but also so terrified, for nine long months.  And I can’t help but feel frustrated that we are in this place.  We’re not even back at square one - we are at a place worse than square one.  A year ago, my body was in its best shape ever and our hearts were untouched.  Now I worry that I am, maybe, a little depleted.  I worry that I still haven’t lost the last twelve pounds.  And I worry about how I am possibly going to love another baby as much as Mila.  She occupies so much room in my heart; it scares me to think that I might not have enough for the next baby.

But I think back on my pregnancy with Mila, and I realize that even as she made my belly and butt bigger, she did the same for my heart.  As she grew, my heart grew to accommodate her.  To pump more blood, more nutrients; to give more love.  So I trust that that will happen again.

So, fuck it.  This is clearly kind of a crapshoot.  And I choose to believe that things will work out.

Mila, moving.

The first time I felt her move was during a summer night in SF around week 15 or 16.   Just a couple of twitches on the lower left side of my belly, one after the other in the exact same spot.  They could have just been muscle twitches, but I don’t think they were.  She’d made first contact, and she was real.

One night shortly after that, in our old Telegraph Hill place, I flopped belly-down on the bed and felt what seemed like a tiny kick of protest, flat-footed straight down into the mattress.  Hey!  I got the hint and I quickly rolled over.

I started feeling soft, mysterious little swishes, especially after I ate.  Whenever I wore a seatbelt or slightly too-tight pants, I felt her probing and straining against the resistance, more and more aggressively as the weeks ticked by.  For several weeks I felt her swim about like this - still undetectable from the outside, like a secret conversation she was having with me.  Mama, hi!  I’m here.

September.  D and I were on the big island in Hawaii for our babymoon, and we’d just discovered her gender.  We floated in the pool and talked about names, college funds, and life insurance.  It was in Hawaii that I insisted that he put his hand on my belly and just have a little patience.  Did you feel that?  No.  There, how about that?  Yes.

On October 10 I had an all-day meeting with clients at work.  Throughout the day she bounced so vigorously that I could see my belly twitching wildly in all directions under my shirt.  This is boring.  Let’s play.

One night around 30 weeks, I looked down and saw that my belly was hilariously misshapen and asymmetrical.  I put my hand over the lump sticking out of my right side, which felt very much like a little round head.  I believe that was the night she turned head-down, nestled into position to meet us.

In the last weeks of my pregnancy, I’d lie in bed and feel her slithering about like a bag of snakes; it tickled.  She’d kick her dad repeatedly in the back while we lay half-asleep.  She’d worm her way up into my rib cage, and I’d push what I was pretty sure was her butt back down so that I could fill my lungs.  At antenatal testing, she'd punch indignantly at the sensors strapped across my belly, sending them up and down and passing her tests with flying colors.  I’d rub my hand over my belly absently and feel something distinctly foot-shaped shifting position.

When she was born, I thought I might have some feeling of recognition.  I remember looking at her little face and wondering if she looked like me or D or some combination.  The likenesses didn't strike me immediately.  But the shape and the weight of her in my arms, and her little feet and knees and elbows, felt so familiar.  I didn't recognize her by sight, but I did recognize her by feel.

Biology.

A woman’s body is amazing.

For a long time when I was first pregnant with Mila, you could not really tell.  I looked in the mirror each morning, hoping to see the first signs of a legit baby bump, but just saw a weird-looking, high-seated fat roll.  For a long time, every time I saw my friend M she would wail in disappointment that I wasn’t showing yet.  We want a baby bump now!

When things finally got going, maybe shortly before week 20, they really got going.  Each week, I didn’t think I could get any bigger; but I did get bigger, every week until she was born.  I was all belly.  I felt like a capital-W Woman.  I kind of loved it.

The day after I had Mila, I remember looking down and realizing my belly looked really, really strange.  I had been lucky not to get any stretch marks, but my belly looked stretched out.  Pouchy.  I prodded it and it felt loose to the touch.  Empty.  It was sad.

Two days after that, my boobs suddenly blew up two or three cup sizes.  They hurt.  They leaked freely.  They looked like bad fake boobs, tacked up too high on my chest wall.  They were a sad reminder of who we had lost.  I didn’t recognize them as belonging to my body.

A few days after that, the boobs were gone as quickly as they had come.  I think that was when my body decided it was time to start cleaning up shop.  My stomach started to tighten up.  The swelling in my fingers subsided.  My joints felt more stable.  I started exercising again.  Now, two and a half months out, except for a little extra padding over my belly, you’d almost never know what my body has done.  I am back to running on the treadmill, lifting weights, doing planks.  The baby weight is not melting off.  I am having to starve and exercise it off.  But it is coming off.

Even while I hated the extra weight, weird sags, and misshapen boobs, part of me grieved the loss of these changes, the last physical signs that I had once wholly carried Mila.  But my body is not letting me dwell, and is charging inexorably back towards its original state.  In the span of less than a year, I have produced and expelled many strange and foreign fluids, an extra organ, and a lovely little human; and subsequently, have very nearly reverted to normal.  Biology is wild.

We are animals.  It is gross.  It is beautiful.