Baby Watch

I'm posting this from my phone, so no pictures, just some thoughts about being on babywatch I thought I would share while Grace plays the climb up and down chairs/ couch game.

Though this is my second child, I can't help but notice how different the wait for this child is compared to the wait for Grace. With her, in some ways it was harder, because in the months leading up to her homecoming, we didn't even have a month to guess for her arrival if someone asked. However, now that I am experiencing the pregnancy wait for a child, I see that there were benefits of that side too.

It was never going to be a surprise in the sense that one day she wasn't here and the next she was. There were very clear steps along the way to getting her here. First passport, then interview, then paperwork and interview again. Once we passed that we knew we were close enough to make plans. Those plans, which we hoped would happen, gave us the probable date we would arrive in Ghana as well as when we would get home with her. We had from the date we made our plane flights to the day we got her to wrap our heads around the life changing moment and to make plans accordingly.

Not so with baby watch. Sure, we have known for all of 2013 that it would be in September, and that amount of knowledge is nice, but now that it is here, it actually feels like we have less warning and more of an unknown than we did with Grace.

Every day we wake up wondering if today is the day we have a second child, every night I wonder if contractions will wake me up, and he will be here. Every plan we make,  from dinner to outings with friends is made with the contingency of "if I don't go into labor."

Adding to this level of wondering, which I suspect exists for every pregnant woman who doesn't go way early, I have had off and on contractions for 2 weeks as of tomorrow. So it isnt just idle wondering...its wondering if they will get regular and painful or if these will go away when I rest. So far, obviously, they have always gone away when I rested (or else this post would be very different).

Yet I know that the most likely scenario is one of these days...they won't go away, they will be the signal of real labor...and then we will be parents of 2! But which day? No clue. Nor will there necessarily be any clue that those contractions are the real ones as opposed to the variety that I've had for the last two weeks.

As typical of most teachers, I like having a plan. Sure lesson plans have a degree of flexibility but there is always a plan. I plan our vacations, I plan our meals for the week. For me, the hardest thing about this baby watch time is not that I'm still pregnant and desperate for him to come out, it is simply the lack of control I feel because I dont know and can't know what day he will arrive, or if it is day or night when he makes his appearance, and because of that I can't make any solid plans for my life for the next few weeks.

The only thing I can be sure of these days is that every day is either THE day or one day closer. So we wait.