As I impatiently waited for an update from T after her doctor's check-up today, I remembered the wonder of the Internet. If I couldn't get an update on our baby, I would look up what others are experiencing at 38 weeks. This would be the closest I could get to seeing how far she's come in there.
Yep, it turns out she's roughly the length of a leek. Who knew?! In fact, this was a poignant reminder of a fun little weekly email I was receiving from a website last year. It told us how big our baby was as it was growing inside me and it always compared the baby to a food product. We made it to size grape last year.
A wave of emotions came over me as I entered our due date in the field on the home page that begged to send me far too many emails about what I can expect in these final weeks of my pregnancy. I couldn't believe that in the unfamiliar twist that has been our "pregnancy" this time around, I forgot to go to this website and enter our due date so I could get those treasured reminders of how our baby was growing. I usually tell every pregnant friend to sign up for them. It's really a fun cohort in the obsession of your changing body. I lived for the updates last year. As I look back on it this year, it just feels like we were too busy with phone calls, papers and nursery building. I just forgot.
Plus, truth be told, I was pretty turned off by the website when I had to fight to get off of their email list after our loss. It just didn't seem right to be hounded about why I didn't want weekly reminders of how big my baby was now when there was no more baby growing. So, I just blocked them out of my mind once they finally went away.
As I let myself get carried away in the gazillion articles with which they populate the site to satiate the eager parents-to-be, it all began to wash over me again and I felt a little cheated. Somehow, in the process of the adoption side of our becoming parents, I had let myself miss the growing baby side. All of a sudden, I realized that the concept of our adopting a baby has remained on a plane similar to waiting for a big project to be completed. Not until I sank into everything one could learn about the 38th week did my heart begin to twitter and I realized that she's been in there all along, growing from lentil to pumpkin (just in time for October, I might add) and that she's gonna come out and wrap us around her little fingers, which can fully grasp as of this week!
Okay, so it's not the first time it dawned on me what we're doing here, but today was one big emotional leap into reality and it was pure and excited. Something I didn't think I'd ever let myself feel again.
We did finally hear from T. No ultrasound today, so no new information on size, dilation or timing. But, we shared with each other that we are all happy to be another week closer.
