January 5th

Posted January 5th, 2011 by Michelle

I’m sorry I haven’t been writing, baby boy. I was pretty busy starting a little new side business (EverPresent Gift Bags) and generally getting caught up in all things holiday. You, however, have been very busily growing. I’m 31 weeks tomorrow, and you are apparently about 3 1/2 pounds and potentially viable outside the womb. But I think you like it in there, or at least, that is how I’m interpreting your daily calisthenics. You are one crazy active baby and your still love kicking my bladder and you get the hiccups every day. I hope you are sleeping, because I’m certainly not.

Turns out I’m anemic for the first time since I was 18, either because I’m not absorbing enough iron or because you, sweet boy, are leeching it all out of me. And then, last night, we had our first big scare. I woke up at 4:30 AM with searing pain in my right ankle and foot. The pain was so intense and so terrifying that I was sure something was terribly wrong. My ankle was trying to contort out and minute after agonizing minute passed while I tried to breathe through it. I scared Jon so badly that he almost threw up. After about five minutes, the pain started to subside, and leafing frantically through one of my baby books I found a section on leg cramps. Turns out this is a pretty normal pregnancy symptom – severe, charlie-horse like pain but in the ankles and feet. It means I’m electrolyte- and magnesium/potassium-deficient. So today I ate multiple bananas and your father spent the evening rubbing my ankles and feet. (Never take for granted how much love there already is in this family, little man.) I can only hope it doesn’t return.

Because I’ve been on airplanes the last few weeks, and because the pain was so severe, I was convinced it was an embolism that was going to travel to my brain and that would be it for me. Even after reading about the cramps, I lay awake for an hour in a cold sweat panic hoping that I wouldn’t, you know, die, from a pulmonary embolism. I was happy to finally fall asleep, and happier still to wake up.

I’m also having Braxton-Hicks contractions, somewhere in the ballpark of 20 or 25 of them a day. And sometimes you decide to kick while I’m having the contractions, and that’s just a barrel of laughs. But I love the constant reminder that you are okay, that you are growing.

So, keep at it, little one. You were feted at Christmastime with the sweetest gifts from a family that already loves you like crazy. You already have three “baby’s first Christmas ornaments” even though you weren’t technically here yet for the holiday. And no fewer than three baby showers are planned to celebrate your imminent arrival. You are my beautiful baby boy, and it’s your job to keep leeching minerals from your mommy and keep growing like a weed. Just two months until we get to really hang out with you. Can’t wait.