24 Weeks???

When life gets busy something bizarre happens to me. I lose track of all time. Before I went back into school I vigilantly tracked my pregnancy, I could tell you to the week and day how far along I was.

A requirement of pregnancy seems to be sharing your brain with unborn baby. (Maybe a better description is, it’s like having your brain hijacked by said infant because sharing sounds voluntary and pleasant, which it is not) I say this because lately I feel about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. The once seemingly simple task of tracking classes and what to do has become so complex to me that it has taken over my mind, there’s no room in there for any other information.

Such as, did I take my pre-natal vitamin this morning, or did I call that place that Kevin politely reminds me to every single day. I’m not intentionally being dull it just happened, things aren’t sticking well. Fortunately I’ve devised a way around my forgetfulness. I’ve resorted to carrying around a pen and paper with a list of necessary items and tasks for the day and keeping checklists around the house, I’ve always been a list maker but usually the lists were a way for me to feel that I could organize things on paper and then store the info in my brain. It’s strange being totally dependent on a piece of paper; it’s become an addendum to my brain.

The point is, in this chaos I have completely lost track of how pregnant I actually am. My sense of time is skewed so suddenly (in my mind) I was sailing through the weeks. Just yesterday I was thinking, “I’ve got to be getting close to 30 weeks!” When I did the calculations I am actually only 24 weeks along.

Hey, 24 weeks is great! But when you are starting to feel uncomfortable, back aches, frequent potty trips, mild swelling, and overheating when the temp gets anywhere above 71 degrees it’s a bit disheartening to lose weeks, even if they never existed in the first place.

The good news is I love being a mommy. I’ve been trying to drink in every last moment thinking things like, I should write down what times of day she’s most active so that I can tell her when she’s old enough to understand (like something like that will be interesting to her) We spend the nights before I fall asleep giving my belly little pokes to which her response is to rush to the spot and poke back. I call it the poking game and it makes me smile, these are our first interactions with the little girl. As much as the amazing human body fascinated me before it has exponentially increased my fascination. The birth of every child really is a MIRACLE. And it’s an honor to get to be such an important part of it.

It’s fun to see Kevin getting excited too, he has little talks with her about how she needs to keep kicking mommy because he wants her to be shooting free-throws by the time she’s 30 minutes old. He also likes to play her Billy Packer’s version of, “One Shining Moment.” and the Notre Dame fight song.  I think she will come out a little irish fan because she dances up a storm in belly when we play it for her.

So this little baby becomes an even bigger part of our lives already. And if it takes a few months of forgetfulness and some less than welcome changes to my body I say bring it on, because it’s already been worth it!