Can't believe it's been 38 weeks!!

mood: so so ready yet a bit pensive

i seriously can't believe i am full-term and BG is going to be here literally any day now. she's not due for another 14 days, but as my OB is convinced she's going to come early, it really could be anywhere from tonight to three weeks from now (please not three weeks--i am ready now!). she 'dropped' about a week ago (the uterus falls lower into the abdomen in preparation for the upcoming labor so i can finally breathe again and don't have the searing rib pain anymore!). she's rapidly approaching seven pounds and is about 20 inches long right now. supposedly her weight continues to increase half an ounce per day (wow) while mine comes to a halt or i start losing weight. i've gained another two pounds over the past three weeks so the pound count is now at 18, which i'm content with. everyone has been saying i look ready to pop, which i take to mean my belly is huge, so i know she's gaining appropriately. i've been having braxton-hicks contractions regularly for over a month, but no real contractions yet.

BG responds to light, has a strong grip, and is now engaged in my pelvis in the position she'll be in when i deliver. last week the OB did a cervical exam and said, "i feel the baby's head." it was such a surreal moment--she was touching BG's head??? as ready as i am mentally, it was still odd to hear there's physically a baby in there! to be honest, though, even though it was wonderful to hear, i felt kind of jipped because i wanted to be the first one to touch her.

so the labor bag is packed (rups even packed a miniature one for BG's stuff), the car seat is in place, the pediatrician has been chosen, the clothes and bedding have been washed, the labor and delivery tour is done, the breastfeeding class has been taken, daycares have been contacted (she is on a six-month waiting list at three of them!!), maternity leave is worked out (i'm taking 12 weeks off so i won't be done with residency till the end of August), the nursery is ready to welcome her, friends and family have their cell phones, work phones and pagers on hand, now it's just wait time.

for the first time last night, i started becoming a little scared. i'm not sure of what really, but i've been having dreams lately of wanting to be taken care of and nurtured myself, as if once she is born that will never happen again. i know and and expect my life will be drastically different, and i think that's something i'm nervous about. rups and i have built a really good life for ourselves and we are so ready to bring a little girl into it, but we also have no idea about what to really expect. i think part of my fears are about labor itself, but three friends who have delivered recently said their deliveries went amazingly and they would do it again in a heartbeat. that's definitely encouraging. a lot of the fear is, to be trite, fear of the unknown. what is motherhood really like? i have plenty of good mothers around me, including my own, to see what to do in the later years, but i still have no idea what being a mother to a newborn is like. i can see how my friends are with their newborns, but i have a feeling until i experience it, it will still be totally foreign to me. admittedly, it's a bit selfish, but i wonder if i'll ever have time for myself again to just do my own thing like browse old bookstores, or write, or have a girls' night out, or sleep. i really love sleep. my little girl is going to be my world, i know, and i can't wait for that, but these questions still linger, you know?

so i turn 30 tomorrow (november 11). 30! it seems monumental but at the same time it feels like, 'so what?'. it doesn't really change anything, i'm definitely not upset in any way about it (i'm actually happy about it), and i feel like lots of the things i thought i'd do by 30 have been done (but plenty have not). the number is just so built up in our society as if our entire lives have to be set by now, so i am refusing to accept it as such a defining number. i'm going to choose 48 for mine.

rups had surprise after surprise for me this past weekend, from a beautiful pair of diamond earrings to a fancy dinner to a musical--i had a great time! i didn't need all that, but it was so nice to see how much thought he put into everything and how he still regards my happiness so highly (i think it was also his way of thanking me for the being the baby mama without the drama). as i've said before, he's going to be an amazing dad. he just better not be the fun one and relegate me to the discipliner role! it's funny to think there's a chance that BG and i might have the same birthday. she's definitely going to be a fiery scorpio, but i think for her future independence, it might be better for her to have her own day and not feel obligated to be with her mom on every birthday.

38 weeks: our knocked-up prom shot from this past weekend

so that's what's been going on lately. perhaps the next time i write i will be a new mom! or i'll be a very roly-poly overdue prego lady who's truly ready to pop!

showers for the baby

mood: pretty darn good

i've taken a huge hiatus from posting an entry, mainly because the last several weeks have been so packed with events (mainly baby related) that i haven't even had time to process them all. there's been the friends' baby shower in milwaukee, the family baby shower in chicago, rups' marathon, the family puja for the baby, my in-service exam, innumerable trips to babies r us, and ridiculous amounts of moonlighting to cover our expenses while i'm on maternity leave. i have no idea where to even start and have a feeling this will be a ridiculously long entry. you have my permission to read this in shifts. ;)

i suppose we'll start with the most important person. BG. :)

this is the ultrasound of her at 32 weeks. she's too big to fit her entire body into one image anymore, so here is her waving and her chubby cheeks.

our little chickadee is now 34.5 weeks along, about five pounds and just shy of 20 inches long. i'm not sure these numbers are normalized for indian babies, because i was 19 inches when i was born AND i was almost two weeks late! i've read she resembles a miniature being, whatever that means. from now on, not a lot changes except her fat stores build up (translation: adorable big cheeks and chunky monkey thighs). she has fairly well-developed lungs and would be able to survive outside the womb without extensive medical intervention. i'm not planning on having her come now, but good to know that if she did, she'd be okay. she can produce tears (yes, even within the womb!) and her brain is in a period of rapid growth and is producing hundreds of billions of new nerve cells! she is able to move to the rhythm of music, although being a product of rups and myself, let's just hope she takes her sense of rhythm from our sisters! all five of her senses are working, her nails are completely formed, and she already has REM sleep. wow. she acts completely like a newborn, with her eyes opened when awake and closed when sleeping--and she can blink. she can also see more clearly when there is a bright light on my stomach and probably has the outline of all my organs memorized! this stuff is amazing.

my belly shots at 34 weeks (this week)

she kicks all the time now, and i can often see her body parts creating trails across my belly as she swims around. the(unofficial, of course) ultrasound done a couple weeks ago showed all her measurements were normal. actually, her femur length was 3 weeks ahead of what was predicted for gestational age, which means i've been right all along and she's going to be a long-legged runner like rups. as for weight, she's even above the 80th percentile for her age! where is it all coming from?? i look pregnant from a profile view, but somehow only my basketball abdomen grows, nothing else. (trust me, i'm not complaining about that one). the good news is that somehow all the weight i was concerned about NOT having gained, i've gained in the past two weeks. i've gained about 2 pounds per week, so the pound count is now at 16, which my ob was relieved at. i told her it was mainly from junk food, but she covered her ears and said she actually didn't care how i gained it now, she was just happy i was gaining. well then, i guess that is free reign to eat as much ice cream, drink as much whole milk, and snack on however much chocolate i want.

of course, being pregnant can't all be peaches and cream, right? i have developed this awful sharp rib pain on my right side that doesn't go away with any treatment except a hot towel placed on it all night. i have no idea what it is...is it my uterus pushing on my rib? is it my rib pushing on my uterus? is it BG running her marathon in there? it's supposedly pretty normal, but my ob said it will be there till the baby 'drops', which basically means when she falls lower into my abdomen as her due date nears. i'll be able to breathe better and not have this rib pain, but it also might not happen for another 2-4 weeks. weeks??! also, i can't sleep worth anything anymore. i've gotten one of those ridiculously overpriced body pillows that looks like a ginormous cinnamon bun, which does help a good amount (or at least i think it does--i'm too afraid to try a night without it). some of the girls saw it after the baby shower and rightfully laughed pointedly at it, as rups does every night as he tucks BG and me in.

speaking of the baby showers, they were wonderful! the friends one in milwaukee was thrown about two weeks ago by my sister anjali and my awesome friends nish, wendy, and anna. it was beautifully organized and run; they really did a fantastic job. the cake alone fed 100 people and rups is still eating it. the decorations, the games, the clubhouse, the generosity of everyone who came totally blew me away. i'm usually someone who doesn't go out of her way to mix her different social worlds, but this baby shower had people from so many different parts of my life and it was just perfect. i think i've revised my separate worlds theory. i'd been looking forward to it for so long and i was so happy the whole day. within a few hours, my den/nursery went from organized and professional to so filled that i can only walk halfway into the room. granted, it's not huge, but it's not tiny!

picture 1: the hostesses and me: anna, anjali, me, wendy, nishat

picture 2: me and the sis

picture 3: friends palak, monu, me, rohini, jenny

picture 4: profile view

the family baby shower in chicago was this past weekend and was thrown by my sister-in-law rachana and my mother-in-law. it also was a lot of fun, and again, the generosity of all our family and family friends brought tears to my eyes. i feel really lucky and humbled to have such caring people in ours and BG's life. because of these wonderful people, however, i am now relegated to just the doorway of our den/nursery and left to marvel at all the cool things BG has that i wish came 10 sizes bigger. sometimes i feel brave enough to create a path to the computer, but mostly i just stare at our personal version of babies r us (which, i have to guiltily admit, i have frequented many a time in the past week to fill in the last bits of things we need and therefore have contributed to the overabundance of 'stuff' for BG).

picture 1: my mother-in-law (my MIL is on my left) and aunties

picture 2: my sister (to my left), me and my sister-in-law rachana (to my right)

picture 3: my family (sister's fiancee matt, sister anjali, rups, me, mom, dad)

picture 4: my sister joking around pretending to be pregnant by sticking her stomach out way farther than it actually goes (the auntie in the background is getting a kick out of it!)

it was great seeing my parents again this past weekend, too! they came from florida for an action-packed weekend. when my mom first saw me waddling down the hallway on friday night after not seeing me in person for at least four months, she let a howl of excitement and laughter that i'm sure would have had her arrested for noise pollution in florida. :) she was so happy to see how much my belly had grown! my dad was of course happy, too, but he was a bit more contained. the family baby shower was saturday night, and then rups ran the chicago marathon on sunday morning. he shaved half an hour off his time from last year, as well as his head! yes, he actually did pull off the mohawk! (by the way, thanks to all of you who contributed to his cause for autism research--it was really kind of you and there will be mohawk pictures posted soon!). he was happy to note he was the fastest patel in the race. :) and there were 30 of them!

if that wasn't enough for the weekend, we had the puja for BG that evening at rups' parents' house. family events in the patel family are never small; i think there were about 75 people there! it went well, i got slapped across the face by his kumkum-laden cousins (a staunch gujrati tradition in which they put red powder on their fingers and slap the mother-to-be to remind her to continue taking care of them. as i am marathi, i slapped them back). :) i gave an impromptu speech to our parents which was meant to just be a thank you and acknowledgment and appreciation for everything they've done for us, but which turned out to be a 5 minute talk on their sacrifices, their devotion, our respect and admiration for them, and how much we love and appreciate them. i was crying, rups' was tearing up, every person in the room (yes, even our dads) were choked up. it was great. :) we don't tell them enough how much we love them, and i couldn't think of a better time or reason.

so i think we're all caught up for now. BG is getting restless and wants her daddy to read to her. i think she really wants to watch smallville like i do. stay tuned for the next entry entailing the l&d tour, breastfeeding class, and the class on post-natal fears!

Sugary sweetness

Week 30
Mood: pretty good

















i can't believe this is me. seriously, this is weird. i've really popped out in the past few weeks. i now walk past a mirror or large window and it takes more than a few seconds to recognize my own reflection. rups actually thinks it's funny how big i am getting. he's gotten into the habit of staring in awe and then laughing, which then of course gets me laughing.

about three days ago, i had the gestational diabetes test at my ob's office. i drank this incredibly sweet syrupy orange concoction that i think is really just raw sugar melted in cotton candy swirled with sugarcane juice. getting it down wasn't the problem, but i seriously felt more nausous after drinking that than i have my entire pregnancy! it was so gross, and then i had to just sit there for an hour till i could get my blood drawn so that i didn't burn any of the sugar. everyone knows i am not an excerciser, but i would have PAID to be able to jog around the waiting room! i'll probably get the results tomorrow. i'm a little concerned, since i love sweets and diabetes runs in my family, but i feel i've been making pretty good healthy choices about what to eat, and the ultrasounds show she's growing at a good rate and is a good size.

speaking of size, i've decided not to be concerned about my lack of rapid weight gain. i'm due in 10 weeks and i've gained 11 pounds. i know that doesn't sound like much, but she's healthy, she moves around a lot, her size is good and my mom didn't gain an incredible amount of weight and i was just fine, so i'm just going to not stress about it. my ob has even said she feels okay with the weight gain, as long as i gain a pound a week for the next ten weeks. i'll try, but we'll see... BG now weighs about 3 pounds and is 17 inches long. she is running out of room in there but somehow (thankfully) keeps growing. sometimes i'll feel or even see a big hard lump against my abdominal wall, and i imagine it is her head--either that, or her little behind. :)

oh, and i started having braxton hicks contractions about a week ago! i thought the pressure was just BG playing the linebacker and ramming her head into my abdominal wall, but i found out yesterday that these were actually the contractions i'd always heard about. don't worry, they're normal anytime after the first trimester and do not indicate the onset of labor--it's just a lot of pressure from the uterus contracting that lasts a few seconds, and they don't hurt, but sometims they are a bit uncomfortable.

i'm so used to being pregnant now, but to actually have a baby...i'm ready, but at the same time, it's like, "really? someone is just going to give me a baby and i'm going to be it's mom?" but when i think about her--actually think about her, not just about being pregnant--i feel like she's so completely mine and we already have this total connection. BG and i understand each other's moods, communicate mentally, and have this language that only we can understand. i already know what her different kicks mean, and if i ever have any coffee (maybe once or twice a week), she definitely shows me her disapproval by kicking for 24 hours straight. i've quickly learned not to have more than one third of a cup, and even then only if i need to stay up all night when i'm on call at the hospital. she let my sister feel her kick (oh yes, she decides who she's going to kick for) for the first time a few nights ago, and it was one of the top three strongest kicks she's ever given. anjali's hand virtually flew off my belly! i think that means she really likes her.

the 'stuff' we need to get before she comes is coming together, but now i need to focus on the 'whos'. i have to find a pediatrician, a daycare center, an attorney to make a will, etc. that all seems like such adult stuff to do! we're ready for it, though. rups has really been wonderful throughout the pregnancy--from running out to the store to buy milk (i go through a lot of milk) to making sure i don't carry anything weighing over 2 ounces to setting up the nursery/den to even going shopping for baby girl outfits. he'll listen as i talk on and on and on about whatever comes to my mind, even if he's heard it a hundred times before. it's really so cute, and it's clear he's going to be so involved with her life.

...and the third trimester begins

mood: exhausted

first, i have to say i love getting emails and messages from all of you about the blog! it makes it even more fun to write. keep 'em coming!

i can't believe the third trimester is already here! at this point (week 27) BG weighs almost 2 pounds, measures around 14 inches from head to heel, and hears noises, responds to light, and is generally more aware of her surroundings. in the next 13 weeks she is going to gain about 6 pounds! where the heck is all that going to go?! i feel huge already! sometimes i don't know what to do with this big belly. it bumps into things (lightly) and seems to lead the direction i'm going in even if i planned on going the other way. i think BG is definitely playing games with me. she's already such a tease! i haven't gained any weight in the past two weeks, though, which i suppose is a bit concerning. she's still kicking away all the time, but i've only gained about 12 pounds in all so far. as long as i gain about a pound a week for the next 13 weeks, i should be fine, though. i started buying 2% milk, eating more chocolate, not getting anything low-fat, eating ice cream on a thrice daily basis, and in general eating the way i haven't eaten since high school. it feels good!

i'm getting kind of nervous. the only things we've bought so far are some books, stuffed animals, a crib and an armoire! that's not exactly going to feed and clothe the baby. we've been looking for and registering for bassinettes and play yards and gliders and blankets and pumps and all sorts of random things that i'm sure our mothers did without, but somehow seem crucial now. i'm trying not to fall for all the hype about the super brand name items or the ridiculously expensive 'must haves', but i find myself wanting things more organic. i read reviews like a maniac! anything under four stars from more than 20 people and the item is out. i know, it's a bit excessive, but that's really all i have to go on right now. everyone around me is having babies, but they're all being just born, so the experience is only starting to kick in for them, too. i'm sure by the next one i'll be like, 'that costs $2.99 and you have no idea what the reviews say? i'll take it." after we sort-of impulsively bought this beautiful armoire because we got a great deal on it, we realized we don't have any space in our bedroom so we have decided to turn the den into a nursery. rups put together the crib (it was very cute!) and moved the armoire in, aso the nursery is definitely starting to shape up!

this week i've reverted back to my first trimester exhaustion. i just don't sleep well at night anymore. rups says i've started snoring! i take offense to that! i do NOT snore, i just breathe deeply because my lung capacity is greatly diminished thanks to HIS child. (that excuse still doesn't prevent him from having to sleep in the guest room sometimes.) i wake up at random times throughout the night and have to find things to occupy myself (email, eating, reading random textbooks to bore myself back to sleep), and then all day the only thing i want is a nap. i start scoping out places to sleep at work--this office, that chair, that corner that looks semi-vacuumed. no, i don't actually just curl up in random places, but i do daydream about it. a lot. today i had about 24 minutes between work and a dentist's appt and i came home for a quickie nap. and it actually helped!

everyone keeps asking me about names. i'm not telling! we have one picked out but we're keeping it mum until she's born. too much input otherwise. and i'm keeping a backup just in case she doesn't look like the first name. we've gotten so used to calling her by the name that i really hope she looks like it!

25 weeks and the physical symptoms kick in

mood: more tired than usual

today (tuesday) is rups' birthday and BG (baby girl--very original, i know) got him a card and baked him a chocolate cake with reese's peanut butter cups crumbled in. he thinks it's funny and cute when i hold my belly and attempt my far-from-perfected ventriloquism by talking in a high pitched little girl's voice as if BG is talking to him, or do things as if she's the one doing them. and who am i to not further the developing bond between father and daughter? we haven't been as good about reading to her at night because our schedules have been so erratic and i've been out of town on my own for a week, but we're getting back into it. she seems to respond to his voice really well--she often starts kicking when he talks to her, which makes him even more happy to talk to her. it's really quite cute.

i also had my o.b. checkup today. at the last visit one month ago, my o.b. was concerned that i hadn't been gaining enough weight. that definitely wasn't the case today. i had been instructed to gain a pound a week over the past month, and i gained five pounds (total, not per week). so there! i definitely look pregnant now when i wear a dress, but when i wear looser shirts, people still can't always tell. i'll have my gestational diabetes test done next month. i'm a little concerned because i love love love sweets and there is a family history of diabetes, but my ob feels given my age and prior birth weight, i should be okay.

BG is doing really well. she's a lot quieter during the day nowadays, but at night, she loves to kick up a storm. she's about 1.5 pounds (how the heck does she kick so hard?!). she's obviously not ready to be born, but it is some comfort knowing that if i did go into labor this early, she is now old enough to be viable. she'd be in the hospital for months growing and avoiding infections, but she would likely survive. i'm scaring myself just thinking about it, so enough of that.

the heartburn kicked in a couple weeks ago and i finally understand why it is so awful! it's this searing discomfort that runs up and down your esophagus, and i found the only thing that makes it better is ice cream or chocolate milk (well, i guess regular milk would work but chocolate milk tastes so good!). this is not an excuse to feel like i'm doing something beneficial by gorging on ice cream, but it seriously is one of the only things that makes it go away. the heartburn doesn't happen every day, but when it does, it seriously makes me feel like an old wrinkly man melted into in his rocking chair complaining about and expecting a badge of courage for every ache. yes, heartburn makes me think all that.

to get my second badge/war wound, i have to mention that today i had the first pangs of back pain. you know, the achy kind that is so deep rooted that no massage even makes it feel better. that might be because i was trying to give myself a massage (rups was at work) but i don't think anything would have helped. i try to minimize the amount of tylenol i take; i usually only take it if i have a pretty bad headache, but if this backache keeps going, i might give in to the siren call of the tylenol.

AND, to top it all off, i haven't slept well in weeks. i just can't find a comfortable position, and i have three and a half more months of growing to go! i'm not quite as elatedly happy as i was in the past few posts (in fact, i'm a little grumpy in the evenings for about half an hour at a time), but i don't let myself take it out on rups. i'm pretty sure it's because i'm not sleeping well.

so there's all my complaining. the good news is that i feel pregnancy has been bringing me and my mom even closer together. we've always been close, but i think she feels that i can understand better the things that she's gone through (and she's right), so our conversations are longer and less hierarchical than they used to be. we talk basically every day now, whereas i remember when we'd go 1-2 weeks without talking before. it's nice. i feel lucky to have her support, especially as i've heard stories about moms who really just don't get involved in their daughters' daily pregnancy woes or make them feel like talking to them so regularly is kind of a nuisance. since we can only have two relatives in the room when we deliver, she is definitely going to be one of them. rups will of course be the other. sorry, anj!

she's got rups' features

mood: amazed

thanks to everyone who emailed or called or sent mental prayers after the last entry. yeah, it was a scare, but with the first pregnancy, you feel like you can't take anything for granted. several of you reading this are pregnant, and i know you can't say otherwise! she's doing great now, kicking away like a soccer player [i know, we live in the u.s.--who cares about soccer? ;) ], especially early in the morning just as i find a good sleeping position.

rups' friend, an ultrasound tech, performed a 4D ultrasound for us, and the pictures are amazing! she's only 22 weeks along, and already we can see her with such clarity--it's as if we're already holding her! you can see her cheeks, her nose, her chin, her hands, her knees. unfortunately, we can't put the videos up here, but seeing her move around in 4D was such a rush! she'd open her mouth wide or scratch her nose and it was kind of like watching tv, but it was watching a movie of our unborn child!

so i've attached some of the pictures here:

don't worry, she doesn't have a mohawk and she does have a hand! it was just the angle at which the pictures were captured. her eyes are fused shut for another six weeks, so no open eye pics just yet. i think she looks just like rups. what the heck??!

here's what's happening inside my belly this week: the baby is very thin but very developed. she measures more than 9.5 inches now, but still only weighs about 13 ounces. at this point, she has only 1 percent body fat. (i'd settle for 25% at this point). her eyelids are completely developed too, though they're fused shut until about 28 weeks. (i'm not sure i believe this; either i saw her eyes on the ultrasound or i saw right through her eyelids). her eyebrows are now formed, too, and the hairs are pure white! (guess we won't have to worry about unwanted hair removal for some time...) her arms and legs have reached their final proportions (but not their final size), and jumping jacks are her favorite activity. and she has nails! (remember that scene in juno...the nails saved the baby's life!). now for sure she can smile; i knew i wasn't seeing things! also, most importantly, her brain begins rapid growth. i better ramp up the talking to her and start playing classical music!

i'm doing well, too. i still have a lot of energy, i get the best nighttime shifts to work because everyone wants to look after the pregnant lady, and my belly still hasn't started knocking things over. before i got pregnant, rups and i met a pregnant woman who was really rather crabby 24/7 (major euphamism) to everyone around her (especially her husband), and i promised him i would never be like that. trust me, sometimes i want to get kind of snappy, but i hold it in because no one wants to be around a pregzilla. and, i, for sure, would never want to act like one. it's easy to feel like, because you're prego, the world should stop whenever you feel so much as the urge to sneeze. but it doesn't. nor should it. sure, the majority of my thoughts are with the pregnancy, but i am fully aware that my gravid state is not the center of everyone else's universe. to be honest, i'm a little surprised at myself--i thought for sure i'd be more demanding, more emotionally labile (the weekend doesn't count--there was a reason!), and more self-centered, but i'm just not feeling that way. i feel like the vibe i give off is the vibe my little girl picks up on, and all i want is positivity and happiness right now, towards myself and towards everyone around me.

waiting for that kick

mood: still a bit speechless

i'm discovering a baby is so much responsibility even BEFORE she is born, and when even the tiniest concern arises, the self-blame game is inevitable. tomorrow i'll be in my 22nd week, and i still think about those three drinks i had before i knew i was pregnant, not eating enough protein or calcium, not getting enough sleep, working too many weekends, not talking to her enough, sometimes forgetting to take my prenatals, etc. i know we just have to try our best, but is what i'm doing my best?

something happened last night that absolutely petrified me. i haven't even told my family about it yet because it's still too scary to talk about easily. it was basically a normal day for us. i got up, went to work, and was on call that night in the ER starting at 9 pm. as i woke up from a nap at 8 pm, i realized i hadn't felt her move for pretty much the entire day when usually she is so active. i mean, she loves to kick all day long! it just hit me all of a sudden that there could be something really wrong. rups was in chicago and i just didn't know what to do. i called rups and in the middle of telling him how concerned i was, i just started crying uncontrollably. i can't imagine what was going through his mind. it wasn't like a pms-type mood swing; he could tell i was genuinely frightened. he called his colleague who was on call that night and had me go to his hospital right away to get an ultrasound. all i could think of was the worst, and all the possible things i could have done wrong.

i don't even know how i drove myself to the hospital through the blinding tears. rups had told me to call a friend to come with me, but i didn't want to see anyone but my baby on the screen right then. i had finished packing up my stuff for the overnight call as if everything was normal because i didn't want to behave as if the alternative were a possibility. i ate an ice cream sandwich in the car even, because sugar always wakes her up before an ultrasound. i was trying to keep everything on the outside as normal as possible, but those were fifteen minutes filled with the worst thoughts i could imagine. all these awful scenarios kept going through my head (i will not repeat them here). i don't know if i've ever been that scared before, or wanted something that much. i kept repeating over and over: "be okay, xxxx. be okay, xxxx". even after the sugar load, i didn't feel a peep out of her.

rups' friend was waiting by the hospital door to take me to the ultrasound room. normally when he sees me he gives me a big hug, but he could see the gravity of the situation in my face and my bloodshot eyes. the ultrasound tech was this middle-aged japanese lady who was so sweet and tried to busy me with small talk while she was setting up the probe. normally i would have been annoyed at the distraction at such an important moment but that night i was grateful. she had me lay down on the table, put the probe on my stomach, and all of a sudden there was my little girl, sleeping away, her heart beating in the 140's, her hand up by her ear as if she was trying to listen to what i was whispering to her. she was so beautiful, carefree, and completely unaware of how much love someone already had for her. seeing her there like that, tears started streaming down my face. i was so relieved i didn't even know what to do but cry!

but still, even after seeing her heart beating, i waited several minutes to watch that she was having random movements of all her limbs, her head, her torso. i saw each millimeter of her move spontaneously, from shuffling her tiny feet to opening her eyes, and only then did i accept she was okay. my wish had been granted, my prayer had been answered, and my nightmare was no longer a reality. i went to the bathroom and just let myself sob for a while in such utter relief and happiness. rups had been waiting on edge for my call, and when i told him she was okay, i could feel over the phone the release of air that had been stored in his lungs. i think he didn't totally believe i wasn't still delirious, so he asked to talk to the ultrasound tech to confirm it.

that night i floated through work, and as a dazzling morning snuck up on the busy ER in the middle of suburban milwaukee, the little girl inside me gave a huge kick.