when i was pregnant with rani, i don't remember feeling this exhausted. or lethargic. or just having this general sense of malaise. it's, to exaggerate slightly, so debilitating! there's this overall feeling of tiredness that turbans my head throughout the day, and then just unravels into a light fog at night. i don't have straight up morning sickness, but the last couple nights i've had 2-minute periods of real nausea when i sprint to the bathroom in terror, but which resolve into nothingness.
i have to take 2-3 naps a day, without fail. luckily, i'm at home right now studying for my board exams so there's always a bed conveniently beckoning to me. unluckily, i still have to get up and make up time i lost studying. rani is at the nanny's during the day, where her portuguese is coming along nicely. she can understand a fair amount of it, and it's so cute when she points to her sippy cup and asks for agua, or responds to some incomprehensible verbage coming out of the nanny's mouth with a lion's roar!
i'm avoiding what i really want to talk about.
for some unfathomable reason, i'm just not excited about this pregnancy the way i was about the first. i feel guilty about that, especially since it was planned and wanted. i no longer feel the need to shout it from the treetops, i'm not looking for cute maternity clothes, and worst of all, i don't daydream about the baby. i don't have a preference about it being a boy or girl and the thought of breastfeeding for another year makes me just a little nauseous.
it's not that i don't care, because i do. i just wonder if it was too soon. rani will be 2 when the baby is born and i'll be 32, so it's not really that soon, but every time she plops into my lap to read a book or jumps on rups' stomach in playfulness, i wonder if we're cheating her out of something by dividing our attention. or, if we are still going to pay as much attention to her because she's more active, are we somehow going to jip the baby? i'm afraid i won't have the energy i do now, and that i will never end up going back to work, and that all of the studying i've been doing the past ten years will have been for naught. i'm afraid we won't travel anymore, and that i won't have time to write the way i've always wanted to, and that all i'll be able to talk about is kids. no!!!!! that will not be my life, it just can't be.
i should talk to my friends who have two kids and see how they felt, but i'm waiting till three months. only two months to go.
the few hours that were supposed to be just mine were really only a few minutes. now i want to tell everybody. i went grocery shopping right after i found out and almost told a lady standing next to me perusing the cheese. then i almost told the woman with the expensive stroller who smiled at me because i smiled at her baby. i really almost told the pharmacist who was going over prenatal vitamins with me (don't worry, i started them a month ago in anticipation), and then i almost told my friend wendy on the phone but thank goodness the signal faded. of course then i almost spilled it to our doorman who'd told me i should ideally have kids two years apart, which they will happen to be. when will rups get home from work??? argh! all our chicago family members are coming over today because it is rups' dad's birthday. if rups is cool with it and over the surprise himself, i'm going to announce it then and then we'll all call my parents in florida.
and then i don't get to tell anyone for three months. seriously, i think that's the hardest part of the first trimester. harder than the midday exhaustion, the random cravings and aversions, the lack of wine, specialty cheeses, and coffee (well, that's a close one). i want to tell everyone (because clearly everyone would be as thrilled as me) :) because it's the one piece of news that makes everyone smile.
this post is written for me and only me at this moment, but as i know i'll share it with close family and friends in a few months time, i suppose i'll write for a wider audience.
ranya is going to be sixteen months old in a few days. wow, sixteen months! how the time has raced by. everyone says kids grow up so fast, but no one talks about how they make the parents grow up, too. i just read the last entry before she was born, and i seemed so excited, so novice, so young. i thought 'BG' would change my life and everything would come up smelling like roses.
well, it has. rani is the most amazing person i have ever met, and to know that i am related to her humbles me. i know that sounds weird, given that she's not even two and she's my daughter, but there's something about her that leaves me awestruck. she's so vibrant, and funny, and intense; she has these searching eyes that decipher exactly what i'm thinking when i'm thinking it. i have a feeling she's definitely been here before. she gets things, you know? i can't explain it any more than that. perhaps all children get things, but i wouldn't know any better.
but i will soon...
i just found out i am three weeks pregnant! i feel the same as i did when i found out last time. i'm happy, but cautiously so. i allowed myself to eat a fun-sized snickers bar, but not a whole one. i'm writing this post before i've even told rups (i'll tell him in person when he gets home from work) and so for these few hours, this pregnancy is mine and mine alone. well, and my little bundle of cells that is rapidly multiplying as we speak. mine to dream up silly names for, and mine to wish for all the things that i won't say aloud.
but funny, one major thought i had was, 'i'm sorry, rani'. i feel sorry that in one tumultuous day, i'm going to take away the full attention of her parents. she's so unsuspecting that her wonderful life will change and that she'll have to share us. i just want to make sure that she always feels as loved and wanted as she does now, and that a new baby won't replace her in the slightest. a friend who had a second baby commented during the second baby's early days that she wasn't sure she loved #2 as much as #1 yet. i wonder if i'll feel that way. even this blog entry, which was supposed to be about my pregnancy with baby #2 has been mostly about rani. well, right now she is my world. but my world (and soon my belly) is constantly expanding.
