So, I am 21 weeks pregnant. Everything is going well with the pregnancy and it appears that in November we will be adding a new baby to the family. I am not very good at telling people that I am expecting. My general approach is just to show up in my maternity wear, mention nothing and make everyone slightly uncomfortable until some brave soul finally asks, "So, um, you're pregnant, right?" I know this is weird, but I can't seem to find another way to do it. Because of my past history with miscarriages we put off telling people about the baby and now it just seems we waited too long. We delayed announcing partly because untelling people that you're pregnant sucks, but mostly because I never feel as excited as everyone else expects me to be. Four months into the pregnancy, I'm still worried about finding a heartbeat while everyone else is wants to talk nursery decor. But now that we've made it past the 20 week mark, I am feeling more confident. I'm still getting there on the excited thing, but I'm making progress.
We did tell Baby M that we'll be bringing home a baby brother for him soon. His reaction was, "I hope it has duck feet." He also offered a name suggestion- "Flombu". We took him to our 20 week ultrasound where we hoped to set his expectations on the feet thing ("Look! You can see the baby's totally normal human feet!") but he got bored and asked if he could go back out to the waiting room and play with some toys. Since he doesn't really seem to be getting this whole baby thing, I've been on the look out for some age appropriate books and toys to help him prepare for the upcoming change.
The first book we got was Baby on the Way
by Martha & William Sears. It's a very sweet book which describes pregnancy as feeling like "love is growing inside [you]" and tries to give a children some insight into what's happening to their mother. Pregnancy symptoms like queasiness, hunger and fatigue are related back to the child's own experiences. However, with Baby M this approach backfires. When the books states mommy's tummy feels yucky like "when you eat three slices of birthday cake and ice cream" it completely loses Baby M. How could there be too much cake? Granted, Baby M has never had 3 pieces of cake in one sitting, but it sure sounds good to him. And birthdays are fun too. And I'm going to be 3 on my next birthday. Can I have a fish superhero party? Baby M completely loses focus. I've started just skipping that section altogether. But I do think Baby M is making progress too. A friend crocheted Baby M a doll with a removable hat and diaper and he spent an entire afternoon changing the baby's diaper (the doll is awesome, you can check out her etsy store here). And tonight Baby M walked over, planted a kiss on my belly and said it was for the baby. Now who couldn't get excited about that?