Unchartered Territory

I haven't ever been here before. I haven't ever been 16 weeks pregnant. But I am today. And I am so very thankful for that. But I also feel weird about it too, and I have been having a lot of flashbacks of last summer. I feel cheated - I am not sure that is the right word - but that't the one going through my head. I feel like I should know what this feels like, instead of asking people who are farther ahead in pregnancy then me. I feel like I have been in a perpetual state of pregnancy since March 2009, and in some ways I have. But yet, I have never gotten to this point. I have been pregnant for a total of 38 weeks in the last year, yet, I don't know what week 16 feels like. Or any of the weeks after that.

I think for some people it is hard to understand that these thoughts to through my head - they treat this like our first pregnancy (even though they know it isn't). They ignore the fact that while we are ecstatic about our little Walter and how s/he seems to be doing well so far that there are so many things that are different this time around. The fact that I have to add "so far" to all of my sentences is just one of them. The fact that I still don't feel guaranteed that come January/February, there will be a baby in my arms. I go there sometimes - yesterday I was picturing it in my head. But it is hard. It is scary. Because we are still grieving our two angels. Just because we are pregnant again and things are going well (so far), that doesn't mean that we are "over" the last year of tragedy.

Don't get me wrong, most people are really and truly wonderful with us, and get it. But there are others, that I would think SHOULD get it, that don't. But such is life I guess. And I will just continue to focus on, and be thankful for those that support us through the good and the bad.

And for now, we move on into unchartered territory. With all of my research on pregnancy, trying to conceive, etc - I have never researched week 16 and on. So, time to break out the books again and see what the rest of this pregnancy thing is all about, because, while I am petrified that something will go wrong, I also have hope that we will get to buy that furniture that we have had picked out since last April, and we will get to use those little outfits that are sitting in the cedar chest, and we will get to be like so many others with their "normal" pregnancies. (Even though we will never have a normal pregnancy.)

And today - I am going to sit here and work and smile at this little orange that is floating around in my belly blowing bubbles at me. It took me a few days, and with some advice from my best friend, to figure out that it was in fact baby Walter in there, kicking mommy. Keep kicking me baby!!! I love it! (Just don't do it when you are bigger then me OK?)