There are certain milestones that a pregnant woman finds herself relieved to have hit. Among them: the end of the first trimester (when the risk of miscarriage dramatically drops), the mark of viablility (when the baby, technically, could survive outside the womb), and then the 37-week mark (when the baby is considered full-term). I remember feeling particularly happy about reaching the first two, and now I’m in awe over the fact that I’ve hit the last! The baby, so to speak, is fully cooked – and it would seem there isn’t much to do but wait… <\/p>\n
With that said, the shrinking countdown doesn’t mean I’m just sitting around like a cool cucumber. In fact, my head has been filled with lots of nagging questions\/concerns these past weeks – and my worries seem to be lumped into three handy categories:<\/p>\n
-Labor: What if I go into labor early? What if the pain is worse than last time? What if my platelets aren’t high enough, or I get to the hospital too late, for my (very necessary) epidural? <\/p>\n
-Baby: What if something is wrong with the baby? What if I don’t love her as much as Zoe? (And: how <\/em>can I possibly love her as much as Zoe?) What if she is colicky or unhappy all the time – i.e. the exact opposite of how Zoe was?<\/p>\n -Zoe: What if Zoe feels abandoned, unloved and\/or sad after her sister’s arrival? What if I never get to spend quality time with her? What if I always feel a little guilty for disturbing our happy family of three?<\/p>\n I know these thoughts are so<\/em> not unique, and I try to keep in mind that something good <\/em>is about to happen. Besides, I also worried a lot (about labor, the baby, etc.) the first time around – and things turned out pretty well!!<\/p>\n -M<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are certain milestones that a pregnant woman finds herself relieved to have hit. Among them: the end of the first trimester (when the risk of miscarriage dramatically drops), the mark of viablility (when the baby, technically, could survive outside the womb), and then the 37-week mark (when the baby is considered full-term). I remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-34two-and-a-half-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}