peanut update- week 23

It's been a while since I've posted any pregnancy news...that's because there is nothing to report, really! Everything is going well and my midwife visits have been blessedly uneventful. I'm looking big and prego, and the baby is moving often though no one has felt this from the outside yet. It's a good time to be pregnant...my energy level is good (most of the time), and though I'm already starting to have some aches and pains, I can still do what I need to do without feeling like my uterus is going to fall onto the floor at any moment like it does at there at the end. I've had my risk assessment from the obstetrician and we are all cleared for the birthing center, barring any future complications of course.

Most importantly for me, this baby suddenly feels very real to me. From the beginning, this coming baby has felt very kind of abstract. It's hard to explain. It's kind of been like, even when we started hearing the heartbeat, or I started feeling the baby move, when we talked about the baby it felt like we were talking about some hypothetical baby, not a real baby that was actually already here and slated for arrival. We have always just kind of left our family planning in God's hands thus far, so once Jack was about 6 months old and my fertility returned I knew we could hypothetically conceive a baby at any time. We would even talk about doing this or that "when we have another one". That's kind of how it has still felt up until now. I don't know what has changed, really...maybe feeling the baby move more often...or maybe it's starting to get a feel for its temperament, like the way it sometimes stops moving when I sing and then start up again when I stop, or the way it wakes me up with kicks early in the morning...or maybe it's just that my due date is now looming so much closer now that the holidays have passed...but now the baby seems very real, and very sweet to me. I can't wait to meet him or her.