So as the dust settles from our little announcement, after receiving almost 150 congratulatory emails, messages, and comments (thanks everyone!), and having had our first doctor's appointment and coming to terms with the fact that yes, come August, there will be indeed someone else sharing our lives, I thought it probably is a good idea to share a little about how things have been evolving these past month or so. So Jude and I actually found out about the little kiddo on
New Year's Day itself. It was a wonderful way to usher in 2009 :) First there was surprise (in an extremely good way of course...), then euphoria, and then a deep profound panic when I realized I had had a ridiculous amount of raw salmon and tuna sushi the night before.
What if the baby ingested too much mercury from all that raw fish???!!! Then there was more panic at the thought that I would no longer be able to have coffee for the next eight months.
Oh the agony... For Jude, it was more like, "OK, we so need to get some books..."
Since then, things have been slowly changing around the house. Our shopping habits are definitely different, for one- instead of scouring for earphones or music online, Jude's been looking at strollers and cribs instead. It's adorable, really... :) We're trying to be really good about the kinds of food we're buying so that I can eat healthy, although, that's been the biggest stumbling block so far. Not the eating healthy part, just eating at all. As Jude likes to say, I've been almost always hungry, but I actually feel little inclination to eat. Food just hasn't had the same allure these past months. What an irony... Oh, I'll eat because the baby needs to eat, but I haven't been deriving much pleasure from it. Honestly, if I could eat the fortified cereals from Trader Joe's or Kashi with milk for every meal, I would. And of course, there's the whole coffee thing. I haven't even been taking much decaf. I think I love coffee so much that going decaf is like some kind of infidelity... I'd rather go without it altogether than to compromise.
Physically, I've been completely fatigued out. It's getting better now, but initially, there were days when I actually took TWO naps, on top of a solid 8 hours of sleep at night! It felt overindulgent and almost ridiculous until someone put it in perspective for me that I'm making a person in my body- I am literally someone else's life support system and that's hard work! Besides, once the baby arrives, neither one of us will
ever be able to get that much sleep again so I'd better savor that as much as I can now :)
Right now, it's just taking little tiny baby steps (pun FULLY intended...) towards preparing the house and ourselves for August- buying a new mattress, planning on how to reconfigure our house for baby furniture, registering for classes (because really, despite what many people think, no one is a born parent- it's a learning and growing process...), reading up on as much as we can (for both Mommies and Daddies), slowly buying some
baby clothes, and leaning on the wonderful support of our family and friends who've been such lifesavers!! Thank you for all your warm wishes, advice, and recommendations- you guys are the awesomest best!
Right now, our baby's only the size of a peach (although it already has teeth, a spine, and this week, fingerprints!!) but it's already very real to us. When I heard its
heartbeat this week, I thought my heart was going to burst and I almost starting crying...
Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
-Elizabeth Stone
