I was all ready to type up some warm and cuddly thoughts tonight, but then I sat down and read my latest weekly pregnancy update. Week 15: Your baby weighs about 2.8 ounces (79 grams) and is about 4 1/2 inches from crown to rump — roughly the size of a small gerbil.
A small gerbil?!
Apparently we are past the fruit stage and into the rodent stage. Yippee!
We heard it! Even though it’s been described to me dozens of times and even though I snuck on some website and listened to one a few weeks ago, hearing our own baby’s heartbeat was pretty amazing. My eyes were watering without me even realizing it.
So, I’m not even afraid anymore. I had spent the first 2 months paranoid and doubtful, but I think all of that is behind me now. Now I just walk around with a little secret. I may not look like it, but I’m going to be a mom! It’s crazy to think that inside of me right now is something that can swallow, wiggle, and feel things. It’s even peeing! It can do all that and more, but it’s just the size of a lemon. (It has progressed from an apple seed, to grape, then a strawberry, a small lime, half a banana, and now a lemon. Sounds like a tasty fruit salad, huh?) So our little lemon is perfect. Beating at 160 beats per minute.
I am 14 weeks and 2 days pregnant. (But I tell people I’m in my 15th week because I’m impatient and it sounds farther along.)
Maybe froze isn’t the right word. It just stopped. I was completely dumb-founded. And it doesn’t make sense really, because we had been trying to get pregnant for about 8 months. So 8 months of looking at the calendar and anxiously awaiting the end of each month, and I still wasn’t prepared for those 2 pink lines. It’s happened only twice before, when Jeff asked me to marry him, and when Angela told me she was pregnant. Both were totally unexpected and rendered me completely stupified. I acted like an idiot. My brain just wouldn’t register what was happening.
That’s how it was this time. I saw the lines and just froze. I don’t even know what I was thinking. All I could do was pace, but it wasn’t a nervous pace. It was like those times you walk into the kitchen and suddenly stop because you’ve forgotten why you were there. I just didn’t know how to get to the bed to tell Jeff. Finally I managed to climb in next to my sick and sleeping husband.
“You need to go in the bathroom, ” or “There’s something you need to see in the bathroom.” I said something like that. I was aware that those words made it sound like there was some kind of bug or something that he needed to get rid of. But after he woke up, he looked at me and he just knew.
I’m just thawing now. I’m 11 weeks and 2 days pregnant.