32 week appointment

I had another appointment today. Two weeks goes by fast. I can't believe I only have (roughly) eight weeks to go. I finally gained some weight this time - 2 more pounds. The baby was measuring on track with my weeks (not "big" like last week) and is still head down. All other vitals = normal.

Did I mention that I only have eight weeks to go? Crazy! I just can't quite believe that we are going to have an actual baby in that short amount of time.

The two questions I am asked most right now are "How are you feeling?" and "Is Anya ready to be a big sister?" So, I'll briefly answer both of those. When I think of the eight weeks remaining, I think I am feeling amazing! I don't feel like I should be that far along. With Anya's pregnancy I felt like I was pregnant forever and that my body would never be the same. With this pregnancy, I am like, oh yeah, I'm pregnant!...as I bump into things and try to go up stairs faster than I am capable of. Don't get me wrong, I am still really tired, have a lot of back pain, have trouble sleeping comfortably and seriously go to the bathroom every five minutes, but it really just seems more temporary the second time around, even though my body will truly never be the same. Oh, and for some reason fast food hamburgers always sound really good to me. I didn't really have any cravings with Anya, so this is new.

And how is Anya? Clueless, for the most part. And that isn't because she's lacking in intelligence. We just haven't seen the necessity to bring the whole baby subject up. She loves babies - real and in doll form. When we see a baby in a store and it goes out of Anya's sight, she repeatedly whines, "See baby again, see baby again...!" I have to make up answers about how the baby is going in a different direction or maybe the baby is going home to sleep or just anything so that I don't seem like a stalker following some random baby around the grocery store.

Our opinion right now is that it doesn't matter what we tell Anya about a baby coming into her life. The chance for confusion or misunderstanding or upset at not getting to see the baby now is huge, so why try to explain it? But that's kind of our parenting style showing through. (Why feel like an idiot asking infant what sound a duck makes when they aren't even crawling? It's just not us. We do things when they come up for us and when Anya is interested. That doesn't mean we didn't/don't go through the whole, "What color is this?" Or, do you see the doggy?" routines, but it came at a time when it didn't feel forced.)

I'm sure we'll talk about it more as the time gets closer, but I imagine that happening more when we set up the crib and make the "yellow room" into "the baby's room." I envision Anya not totally getting it, but thinking that it's kind of a neat idea to have a whole room for a baby in our house. And I imagine she will be fascinated by our baby whenever she gets the concept, whether it's before birth or when she finally gets to meet him. To me, it doesn't really matter. Right now she's fine not knowing or needing to know what changes are ahead. Because let's be honest, none of us know what it is going to be like, so how can we prepare a two year old when we aren't even ready ourselves. I'm sure there will be hard moments ahead as Anya adjusts, but I would bet money that I won't be posting an entry that says, "I wish we had really talked about the abstract baby in mommy's belly for months before the baby was born. That would have made this easier." That doesn't mean that I think it's silly for that kind of talk to take place. It's just not us. Right now we are having too much fun talking about what is happening in five minutes or what just happened this morning. And for now, that's enough.

Okay, so now that this turned into a much longer post than the few sentences I intended to write, I think I will take my pregnant self to bed.