BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION...

I never wanted to write a blog. Never, not ever. The commitment to posting, the sharing my life with strangers, the sharing my life with people I know (!), the time sink of getting it to look just right... But now that I'm about to embark on the most exciting, rewarding, fulfilling, emotional endeavor of my life, I can't get enough of sharing it with friends and family. I still can't say that I'll be able to hold up my end of the commitment - regular, engaging, well-written updates - but I'd like to, so I'll try.

So, here's the scoop: it's the end of August (a mild one for New England, thank goodness), and I'm 39 weeks pregnant. I'm SO ready to be done with this part. Ready to upgrade: trade in the bump for a baby. I have all sorts of apprehensions about the next few weeks.
Will I be late? Go to 41 weeks? With all my being, I hope not. If I'm late they'll probably induce me, which I know I do not want. Plus, that means two more weeks or longer of the discomfort and sleeplessness of the end of pregnancy.
What will my labor and delivery be like? I want a natural, mindful childbirth, but there's no way to know how my body and mind will respond to labor.
How will our baby boy fare when he enters the world? We know he has a heart condition and that he'll have to spend his first few days in the Cardiac ICU; we found out at 18 weeks that only his left ventricle is fully developed. Despite increasingly positive news to the contrary at each cardiology visit, it's possible that he'll need open heart surgery within a week of birth. Then regardless of whether he has an operation right away, we know he'll need two more procedures at 3-6 months and 18-24 months to make his heart function well enough to survive. So, yup, all that is terrifying. (The defect is called single ventricle heart, and we'll write more about it in other posts.)
And there are all sorts of questions that go along with not knowing exactly how he'll do once he starts breathing: How long will he have to be in the Cardiac ICU? What medications will he have to have in those first few days/weeks/months? When can he start feeding? Will he have trouble breastfeeding due to decreased stamina? When can we take him home? And on and on...

All that aside, we are so, so, so excited for our first child to arrive. We have both been dreaming of this for years. And we are so grateful for our friends and family who have been and continue to be so supportive of us and our baby bear.

We'll keep you posted! Get it, "posted?"