Milestones & birthdays

Today is my mother’s 70^th birthday.  Considering the fact that she belongs to a religion that doesn’t really encourage birthday celebrations, I’m fairly certain she’s ignoring it.  I know I am.  But I am thinking about it.  In a normal family, we’d all throw some big bash for her (as we did for my aunt last year).  But, well…so it goes.

Last night I had my first ultra-real labor dream.  To be honest I’ve dreamed very little about the baby or any pregnancy stuff.  I know a lot of ladies have dreams where they picture themselves with a baby or a child, see their child’s face, etc.  But I don’t, which further encourages my fear that the baby and I won’t bond and I’ll be a horrible mother. Still, last night I dreamed I went into labor a little early – mid-Feb as opposed to end of March – and went to the hospital.  I was in a huge open room with tons of random people wandering in and out like a waiting room (can you imagine?), and I was having no pain or feeling at all.  I kept asking myself, “how can I be in labor?  I don’t feel any contractions!”  I also had this weird, insecure young feeling that I haven’t had in ages (since I haven’t been young in ages) where I felt very unprepared and too young to be having a baby.  SO not the case in real life!  The subconscious is indeed a strange beast.  I can guarantee that a) my labor will NOT be pain-free, and b) I will not feel like I’m too young to have a baby.  Hopefully I will also not deliver in a hospital waiting room with random people watching.

Plans are forging ahead for my baby shower, which will be Feb 19^th.  I was deeply touched that apparently there is a whole team of people involved in this effort.  I don’t know why, but I always assume nobody gives a shit about anyone but themselves and I’ll just have to do everything myself.  I’m certainly not like that – I’ve hosted several showers over the years, and gotten a big kick out of it – so why would I think nobody would step forward to host mine?  Yet another lingering aftereffect of a narcissistic mother?  Absolutely. 

Currently having a guy peel off the badly applied (by me) wallpaper in my living room.  It’s a huge, messy job, and I am SO glad I didn’t think I could tackle this myself.  It involves chemicals, scraping, and sanding.  And I hate all of those things, which is why I never dealt with this project until now.  It’s going to cost but it’s going to be SO worth it to not have to stare at droopy wallpaper edges anymore.

I can’t believe I’m just a few days short of “viability”.  This is another one of those things I never thought about until TTC – the fact that there is a point in your pregnancy during which the baby *might* be able to survive on his own; that if some emergency happens you might be able to birth a live baby, rather than in the early part where there’s not much point in rushing to the hospital because there’s no saving it.  I just read a fascinating article in the New Yorker about the ethical dilemma of saving such early premature babies, given the physical/mental challenges some of them end up facing.  As with many of the ethical dilemmas we face today, there are no good answers.  However, I’m pretty excited to be coming up on this milestone.  To me every week thereafter means the possibility of having a baby that’s that much bigger and healthier.  Bring it on!