Watching Clocks, Watching the Scale

First the news you've all been dying to know: The Duke and Duchess have not stolen my boy baby name. Phew. Actually none of The Little Prince's names are our front runner. Triple phew- HRH has three names after all. So little George Alexander Louis welcome to the world. I can't decide if you're incredibly lucky (an estimated 1billion in inheritance waiting for him) or horribly unfortunate (life in the spotlight, early onset male pattern baldness). Either way, good luck!

Editors Note: As I'm sure you've noticed by now, I am kind of obsessive. The rest of the post is me being obsessive, and 3 pictures. Feel free to just look at pictures and leave. Unless you have a time-speeder-upper I can borrow... or advice on weight loss in pregnancy. Then, you should read why i want those things.

Every day is so excruciating.  I feel like the day for our scan is getting further away rather than closer. Tick tick tick. It's all I think about. I'm kind of obsessed with thinking about the scan. For BLM crazy reasons like getting the final word on avoiding a second TFMR and normal ones like wanting hub to finally see the baby. How are there STILL 19 days to go?

I think the wait is just to long for me. This is a common 'problem' for me when Hub was deployed people would ask me "How do you do it" 'it' was get through every month, week, day and hour without having a breakdown. The answer was really easy for me "you can't live with the heightened fear for a year". As it turns out you can't do it for 5 months either.  I'm starting to let my mind wander into normal things like baby clothes, and what do you actually DO with a baby? I have no idea. This is brought on by my rapidly expanding belly. I mean rapidly. Look:

10 weeks- ignore my lip

16 weeks- ignore my face

 And so you all don't think I'm a mutant, here is a picture I LIKE of myself:

16w5d

All my efforts thus far have been to make a baby and keep a baby. Apparently like making a baby, there are various methods:

You can be an attachment parent- which kind of sounds like what I think of as just plain parenting- holding baby, rocking them when they can't sleep, snuggling them up. But people get wacky about it and have lotus births (which sounds like the WORST THING EVER to me) and the kid never sits in a stroller.
You can free-range parent- which means letting them spread their wings and don't hover (good) but not have rules (what?!). I think these are the people who send kids to Montessori schools or shudder un-school. I like rules, those things aren't for me (but that's cool if they re your thing!)
You can also sleep train your baby- which keeps being posed as in opposition to attachment parenting and free range parenting rules- but they are opposites of each other, why are we making triangles? I like sleep, babies like sleep. Training them to sleep seems like a really good idea, no? I also can't wait to snuggle up a baby, but we don't have to do that at bedtime. I'm so confused.. 3 more weeks and I can be looking into this... I can't actually assume there will be a baby in this house in just over 5 months... gulp.... until after that scan. That I KEEP thinking about.

So we wait.

And speaking of Weight.. I can't stop watching the scale. It just won't move. Clearly I'm gaining a belly, I think my arms might be smaller, so that explains some of it I guess. I thought I gained 2 pounds earlier in the week... but then I came to the sad realization that it was constipation by-product and when that issue resolved I was one less pound than I was almost 7 weeks ago, when the first picture was taken.  I've been told it's fine. I'm not exactly slim, by which I mean I am technically overweight so I only need to gain between 15-25 pounds according to the books. Worse than that, my mid-wife wants me to aim for 25-35 pounds (I'm not that overweight). 25-35 pounds in 23 weeks. eek. I need to average MORE THAN a pound a week. OK lady, right now I'm aiming for ONE. Hub and I agree that gaining for the sake of the scale is foolish. I don't want or need to pound a 2 liter of Pepsi and a bag of Doritos just to put on weight, I like eating healthy, real food. From actual farms and I have yet to see a Dorito tree (though wouldn't that be wonderful...). I acknowledge that I was very unhealthy before I became pregnant- I was in mourning and my eating habits reflected that. Now that I am (wait for it) happy (but cautiously happy) I don't need to fill up on sugar and empty carbs.

My one IRL friend who reads this blog (HI!) has been pregnant, and she also adjusted her intake to much healthier levels in pregnancy. I'm going to e-mail her and see what her gain/loss was like. Her little girl is healthy and beautiful, so she did something right. 

Sometimes I get to writing and forget how baby loss colors everything in the post-loss pregnancy. Even something stupid like the weight loss is related to it. Had we not lost Blue Sunday, I would have been 15 pounds lighter at the start and a much healthier eater in general. I would have made a Facebook announcement- which I plan to do this time after the baby arrives- and I would be happily stocking up on baby clothes. I didn't do the latter last time, but I always felt unsure about that pregnancy and Christmas gave me a good reason to hold off. Even then, shopping would have started at 19 weeks. So so close to where I am now.

And I could stand here waiting
A fool for another day
I don't suppose it's worth the price
It's worth the price, the price
That I would pay, yeah yeah, yeah

Duncan Shiek, Barely Breathing