In case you missed my subtle big announcement here, I’m pregnant. Gulp. I’ll bet you haven’t met too many gals who can celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary and announce their 7th pregnancy within 10 weeks or so of each other! But hey it happened to me!
Statistically speaking this is a miracle. From what I could find out on line, your chances of conceiving after age 40 drop down to around 4%. This is not however, the first time I have found myself on the short side of a reproductive statistic. 1 in 4 births end in C-section. I was that one… twice. There is only a 0.1% of having a umbilical cord prolapse – I bingoed there too. I also had a true knot and a posterior baby – both statistically less likely to happen but I managed to encounter them as well. The miscarriage/stillbirth rate over age 40 is also smaller at 40% meaning you have a 60% chance of carrying to term but someone has to make up the 40% and that time it was us.
I struggled a bit with announcing this to anyone even my family, although Mr. Pete sort of kind of keeps track of my cycles so eventually around Thanksgiving he would have wondered why he hadn’t gone on a tampon run to the drugstore lately. But I decided that a life is a life, and wouldn’t it be sad if a little life came and went and nobody knew about it! So Mr. Pete knew and so do my kidlets. My sister knows too.
Everyone was thrilled especially the kids.
My next struggle is whether to hold back a little bit or not. I mean, do I love this baby all out, make plans, fantasize about next summer… or just kind of hold on until labor starts and the kid is crowning before I decide to really invest in this emotionally. My oldest says, “Mom, you know you already love this baby.” He’s probably right.
Now, those of you who read this blog with semi-regularity might remember I was reading a novel last summer about a guy who went to prison, and my sister and I had great fun picking up and using the “lingo.” Our favorite phrases were, “You ain’t got nothing comin,”
which means you don’t have anything to look forward to, and “and what you got comin ain’t nothing nice” which is self explanatory.
After 6 pregnancies, I know what I “got comin” in the form of profound fatigue and nausea which is already starting to show up a bit. Or it could be in my head that now that I know I’m pregnant I’m feeling nauseous… but eventually there will be no doubt about it, yep… that’s nausea! And fatigue. The worst I can ever remember is being pregnant while listening to my oldest struggle through a first grade reading book and I actually nodded off and started snoring… I wonder if that had anything to do with his reading problems? But I couldn’t help myself. This is the kind of fatigue where you wake up in the morning looking forward to nap time- YOUR nap time. Gosh and to know it’s coming because I’m a veteran childbirther, it’s quite different from being a new mom where it’s all new and exciting. Ugh… and if it ends in stillbirth or miscarriage again it just seems so wasteful.
So while I know “what I got coming ain’t nothing nice” in the form of pregnancy symptoms, I am going to try and take advantage of this year of the Eucharist and see if the baby and I can receive at every opportunity, at least one extra time a week. I’m going to fight spiritually as well as physically and if God still wants this little one, s/he’s going to go really prepared. Just pray for us folks and I would appreciate it.