We have achieved viability, people

Five months ago today I went to my clinic on a wing and a prayer and had to make a very tough decision as to whether to spend $1000+ on my third IUI or not.  “The egg’s in play,” my nurse practitioner said, ultrasound wand in hand.  And as has often precipitated my most life-changing decisions, I thought, “what the heck?”

And here we are.  I’m having a boy, and his name is Robert.  Everyone, including my two estranged parents, knows about it.  When I lay in bed that night and pictured the sperm meeting the egg and an amazing miracle about to happen, it actually was happening.  Somehow my crusty old one-week-shy-of-39-year-old ovaries produced one viable egg just two weeks after my first pregnancy ended so soon.  It may be the first, and last, viable egg I ever produce.  I’ve had spectacularly good timing in my life, and spectacularly bad timing.  Just once, timing was on my side.  I’m not a religious person, as you well know, and I don’t believe in miracles.  But knowing what I know now about how this whole conception thing works, it is certainly the closest thing to a miracle I know of. 

To say I have viability today on the 24^th week mark to me is a bit “premature” but it is technically the first day the baby *could* live without me.  Which is kind of mind blowing.  One lady on my March 2012 board had her baby – probably not THIS early (she’s probably a week or two ahead of me at least), but very early nonetheless, and he’s alive and hanging in there.  So it can happen.  Is this going to be me?  Am I going to have a tiny little preemie in the next few weeks?  I don’t know but somehow I doubt it.  I have no warning signs of this, and I sort of more picture myself of the type to go late – huge, manatee limbs flapping – getting to that 41^st week in just misery and hell. 

Speaking of manatee limbs and late deliveries, so I made the mistake of reading ahead all the week-by-week round ups on the WTE app.  I have to promise myself to never do this again.  Starting this week it’s all how uncomfortable I’m going to be, all the horrible things that are going to happen to my body, how awful I’m going to feel for the next three months.  As with most of this pregnancy stuff, I’m going to just put my hands over my ears and sing “la la la!!!!”  Because really, much like childbirth, there’s nothing I can do about it, so there’s no point of stressing about it.  I’m glad I didn’t know how awful my morning sickness was going to be – then I would have had a lot of anticipatory anxiety about it, instead of just being “in it”.  Every day of that hell I just felt like I was in a marathon – just get through it, was my mantra.  Someday it will end, and this is an absolute guarantee.  So that’s the tack I’m taking with third trimester woes – I suffered horribly for the first three months, and the last three may be similar (but different).  Honestly, I’ll take varicose veins, trouble sleeping, and feeling like the side of a house over feeling like I’m two seconds from projectile vomiting 24 hours a day, any day.

If you were to ask me today, I would say I’m enjoying the pregnancy.  I like my cute round body, I feel good, and feeling the baby move is amazing.  I’m kind of limited in my abilities and movement, sleep is kind of weird, and I have this ever-present worry that I’m gaining the appropriate amount of weight, but right now is a really good time.  I see myself in other people’s eyes and even I am weirded out by it – I mean, of all the things people imagined me being, pregnant is not one of them.  Especially at my age, when all the new moms around me are quite a bit younger, and all have husbands.  All of this just lends to the unrealness of it; still, every day, I wake up in the morning and sort of forget any of this is happening, and have to remind myself, “oh yeah, that’s going on.”

What will my life look like in five years?  Will I really have possibly two little red heads running around this house, after living here alone for ten years?  It’s incomprehensible to me.  Yet I know for sure there will be at least one, which is crazy enough.  Well, now that I’ve hit viability.