waiting.

waiting.
that is how i feel lately.
yesterday marked 37 weeks.
full term. this means i have a fully developed human baby sitting in my body, also waiting.
for what, i'm not sure.
i wonder if he is the one who gets to choose when to come.

everyone told me the last month would be the hardest. that i would be uncomfortable, huge, impatient, and desperate for him to come out.

yeah, i'm actually doing okay in that department. this is the most comfortable i have been during this whole pregnancy.
even with seven trips to the bathroom every night.
even though every time i stand up, i feel like my arms will rip off from supporting the enormous belly weight.
even with the sharp pelvic pain of him burrowing deeper into my crotch.
i can do this for three more weeks, easy.

the house becomes cleaner and more organized each day. yesterday my mom and i started getting the nursery ready, arranging adorable white furniture, soft blankets, and miniature clothes. later today i'm going to start on the mobile and tomorrow my grandma is helping us sew a bunting to match the crib bedding.

the rest of the house is also getting the full treatment. i have several chandeliers, a shelf, and some pictures to hang in the dining room. if remy takes three more weeks to get here, my house is finally going to be decorated.

waiting, waiting.

as this whole ordeal comes to an end, i have been looking back and reflecting on the beginning. not the beginning of pregnancy, but before that, the reasons travis and i decided it was time to add a third member to our little family.

you may remember how reluctant i was to get pregnant. i didn't even know for sure if i ever would. part of me thinks i had a small premonition of how difficult it would be, and that i kind of knew i needed to be finished with school and other things first. travis and i both agreed that it's a good thing we didn't know how awful this would all be, or else we wouldn't have been brave enough to do it.

as i have said before, just before getting married and then afterwards, i felt a great deal of pressure to get pregnant. it seemed every time we went to a family dinner at travis's parents or grandparents', all i heard was, "so when are you guys going to get started on that baby?" one family member even told me i was being selfish with my body by not getting pregnant right away. i was so confused. why didn't my goals to finish my degree seem as important as getting knocked up? what was the rush and why was it everyone's business? from then on, even harmless teasing left me angry and defensive.

any time travis held a baby, i felt terrified and angry. and jealous. i started feeling that if we did have a baby, i would always come second with travis. you may remember that our first year of marriage was kind of a train wreck, that we were both insecure and anxious. this pressure i felt to get pregnant only added to the strain. it wasn't that travis was pressuring me; we both knew we weren't in a place to start adding kids to the mix, but travis was worried about all my claims to never want to have a baby, and i was terrified that he would love that baby more than me. thank goodness for counseling and learning that my insecurity stemmed from PTSD and could be managed.

another thing, a big thing, that started changing the way i felt about having a baby was the infancy class i took for my psych degree. and here's the huge nerd coming out in me. it was funny, because i was signed up for an adult lifespan class, a class i was looking forward to, but then the enrollment was too low, so the class was cancelled at the last minute and i had to scramble to find another class. the only class left, was, you guessed it, an infancy development class. i was devastated. imagine my shock to find that it was one of my favorite classes. turned out learning about babies' brains was fascinating. i started paying more attention to the babies travis's little sister nannied, watching for the things i was learning in my class. i started thinking, it might be cool to have one of those little things around all the time to observe and learn from. i could even do some of the experiments i was learning about in class! yeah, my desire to have a baby all began with the excitement of having a subject on whom to observe and test theories. what can i say, i love to learn.

when i started feeling this way, i decided maybe travis should know. i will never forget that day. we were doing yard work together on a hot august afternoon. i was spreading mulch around our flowerbeds and travis was in the back of his truck shoveling the earthy smelling mixture out to me.

"so travis." i started. "i have been thinking."
"okay." he said, nervously, because usually conversations starting this way lead to me asking him to do some awful chore.
"yeah, i think we should have a baby."
he put the shovel down, mouth gaping open. i laughed uncontrollably, which i'm sure only added to travis's shock and suspicion that his wife had been switched out by body snatchers.
"well, not right now. not until i graduate and work for a bit. so probably in a year from now."
travis was still not speaking. it took another half hour to convince him i was serious.

so that was the tentative plan. we spoke of it on and off, mostly off, but i kind of always had this internal countdown ticking in my head.

then in april following that august, we attended a temple marriage for one of my cousins.
i know that the marriage was all about the eternal union of two people, having nothing really to do with travis and me, but the only message i really heard in that room was that someone was waiting to join our family. that feeling was one of the strongest and most direct i've ever felt.
the rest of the day, travis and i pointedly avoided talking about it. we went to the mall to kill time before my cousin's reception, and finally i asked.
"so travis. nice ceremony in the temple today, huh?"
he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "yeah, very nice."
"lots of emotion in that room." i said. "you feel anything in particular?"
"what? no. nothing really." he said, smiling.
"yeah, me neither." i agreed.

and we both knew we were still on for august.

then i graduated from college and started that job as an adolescent substance abuse counselor. one of the hardest jobs i've ever worked. i started to feel that if i could wrangle 16 kids with serious addictions, emotional issues, and family problems, having just one of my own, who i was in charge of teaching how to be a good person, wouldn't be so difficult after all.

oh and there was also a conversation i had with my parents, where i cried to them about how i didn't want to have a baby, that it was too scary and unknown, and did i even have to? my dad told me that there's nothing quite like watching his daughter play the guitar and sing for him. my mom told me she thought i would be a wonderful, mother with my own ways of doing things. their confidence in me really made all the difference. people have always told me that travis will make such a great father, and they are right, but i kind of always felt i was too much of a mess to be a mother to anyone.

so last august rolled around and i found myself making an appointment to have my IUD removed.
a week later i was pregnant.
and the rest was misery, oh i mean history.
just a little joke for you there.

this journey has already taught me all kinds of things i didn't know i didn't know, and it's only the beginning.
i doubt i'm ready for any of it.

but at least the house is clean, we have a car seat, the nursery is getting there, and travis and i are more solid than ever before.
how much more ready can you be, right?

also, my thighs are getting pretty huge.

three more weeks of waiting.
who knows, maybe less?

xo