Managing the Details

3 weeks left!

It's amazing, how quickly a pregnant woman will stop counting up and start counting down to delivery day.

We are down to the final month. My last pregnancy was 2.5 years ago and I will verify that this child-bearing "thing" is for the younger crowd. Little Miss Bunny seems to be resting very low. There are times mid-walk I have to stop and kind of crouch over to get her out of a very uncomfortable and compromising position.

As you can imagine, two very excited parents are already packed and ready to fly! I have yet to pack my hospital bag, so they are making me look bad.

Almost all of the legal stuff has been completed. The Pre-Birth Order (PBO) was approved! That document will establish the rightful parents and will take my name off of Bunny's birth certificate once she is born. The only things now left to do will happen after she is born. What a relief it is to have very organized parents.

I had an OB appointment on Monday and am down to the once-a-week visits. I am dilated to a 1 and "about half way thinned out," according to my doctor. Let me just say, there are a few things one forgets and blocks out after the birth of a child; cervix checks are one of those. Since I grew up on a farm, I always related it to my dad preg checking the cows (just google it...). Those gloves go all the way up the shoulder, so that poor cow has it MUCH worse off than myself.

Tap Dancer

 

I was in denial for a while.

It's undeniable now; Bunny is kicking or tap dancing like a Riverdance girl.

My OB told me I have a posterior placenta (meaning it's attached at the back of my baby tank) so it would be a little longer before I could feel her really clogging around (my words, not hers).  At 20 weeks, let it be written, she made her presence known.








At 21 weeks, she is about 10.5 inches long and weighs just a little less than a pound. I'm still not that big out front, but definitely fitting well into my maternity clothes. The cold Kansas weather lets my bulky pea coat hide the extra me. That makes picking Dempsey up from daycare a lot easier without any extra questions about reserving an extra space for the Young family.

Hopefully I can get the Bellybuds out this week and start some Baby Mozart jam sessions. For those of you that don't know, Bellybuds are little speakers you stick to your growing belly to play music or other audio. I got them as a gift with my son and I think they are great. Dempsey is quite the music connoisseur and at age two enjoys Call Me Maybe, Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus (referred to as "the broken girl...)... but only if these artists are singing with Jimmy Fallon (truth be told, he really loves Jimmy Fallon).

Our goal with Bellybuds this go-round, is to have Michael and Jason record their voices to play to Bunny. I've heard that Alice in Wonderland is currently in production. Until then, she'll be listening to Baby Mozart, the Lumineers, Mumford and Sons... and maybe Katy Perry... Or Jimmy Fallon if Dempsey has anything to say about it!

Incubator?

It wasn't hard for me to find a blog name. The first one I typed in was available. There are quite a few blogs pertaining to this subject to choose from if you are up for a good read. Many of them have "typical" names related to buns and ovens, peas and pods and, plainly stated, surrogacy.

My first admission. I'm a farm kid. I look back and love every aspect of my childhood. I love my mother's home movies. Many of them include me hopping around without many clothes on (a luxury of living on a secluded farm), dragging an animal around until it submitted to my country girl charm (i.e. a 4 year old dragging a kitten, goat, dog or bucket calf around until it got used to me being "the boss") and my favorite, baby animals. My dad often hatched baby chicks or ducks (and even ostriches a few times!) from an incubator. I even got to be their "mother" sometimes.

To me, then and now, this is what an incubator looks like:

See the eggs?

Not this:

This is a baby incubator post delivery.

...but I digress.

When people asked me how I was doing when I was pregnant with my son, I often stated, "Oh you know. Just incubating."

So, I chose to become an incubator for someone else's little eggs. 

I am the baby incubator.