Somehow, I’m 85% done with this pregnancy. I’m not sure how that happened; time went SO slowly during the fall and winter, and it feels strange to be so close to the end…with still quite a ways to go. I’m now getting comments from strangers – in elevators, at the sandwich shop, even undergrads – which catches me off guard, even though it’s kind of hard to ignore this sizable basketball belly. (I said to Dan over the weekend, “Look at this basketball! Isn’t that crazy?” and he said, “Ummm that’s definitely bigger than a basketball.” And he’s not wrong.)

I am still feeling physically great. The epic heartburn continues, to be sure, and they’ve even confirmed on ultrasounds that the baby does, in fact, have a bunch of hair already. (Apparently heartburn = baby hair is one of the only old wives tales that is true.) I’m starting to get tired again, and my back hurts if I do too much in a day, but all things considered, if I didn’t have this hilariously large belly containing someone who kicks me with enthusiasm at regular intervals, I might be able to forget that I’m pregnant.

We’ve made amazing progress on the baby’s room, too. I’m finalizing some art for the walls, and we still want to go buy some gutters to turn into bookshelves. I’m also saving some projects for maternity leave: setting up a baby album (oh man I can’t wait to share my plans for that!) and making a simple mobile. But we have furniture and a rug and a little lamp and it all looks so great. We’ve had the bassinet set up in our room for a while, and I’m almost used to seeing it there. I’m nearing the finish line with the blanket I’m crocheting. And even more awesomely, my baby shower this past weekend meant many generous gifts (and so! many! books! eeee!) for this little one from our friends and family. It’s overwhelming, really, and it makes me so excited that so many people are so pumped to meet this kid.

The other stuff? Is harder. Working toward my maternity leave has meant work has been extremely busy and stressful, with no signs of it letting up until my last day on May 2. My commute has been worse than ever. Five and a half weeks after my diagnosis of GD, I’m feeling like I have a handle on things. I wasn’t able to manage my blood sugar with just diet, so I’ve been on medication to help manage it. They tell me that it will get harder to manage the later into pregnancy I get, and that does seem to be true. But starting at such a low dose means I have a lot of wiggle room. I’ve figured out what to eat, mostly. I try not to sneer when we walk past the candy aisle at the grocery store. Sure, I miss candy and drinking things other than water and unsweetened iced tea. But my weight has leveled off, which is great. And I haven’t ever eaten this healthfully.

I’m now going in twice a week for monitoring – once a week, I have an ultrasound, and twice a week, I have non-stress tests. Seeing the baby and hearing his or her heartbeat that often is really awesome, I have to say. Less awesome? When it feels like at every other appointment, there’s something new to worry about/try not to google. My blood pressure is trending high, and I have polyhydramnios (too much amniotic fluid, which is common in people with GD). It feels like the doctors are constantly telling me “the baby looks great! I don’t want you to worry, BUT…” and then I’m supposed to … not worry? Have they met me?

So it’s a lot, emotionally. I feel like there isn’t much room left in my head to worry about normal things like “will I be an okay mom?” and “I sure hope breastfeeding works out” and “will we want to kill each other when we’re both sleep-deprived?” and “do we have enough tiny socks?” and “will the kitten hate us?”. Instead, I’m trying not to google things, and worrying about whether all of this means this baby will show up early on its own, or I’ll need to be induced because one of these conditions gets worse (and instructing my belly daily that baby needs to stay put until May). Somehow, it’s even harder to deal with all of this because I feel so great physically, if that makes any sense. In all the years I imagined what it would be like to be pregnant, I knew to expect nausea and puking and discomfort and aches and not sleeping. I expected headaches and stretch marks and hitting numbers on the scale I’d never seen before. But I didn’t expect all of these “might be a big deal but maybe it’s totally fine” complications. I wonder, sometimes, if this happens to other people, but they just don’t talk about it, and I’m weird because I AM talking about it.

People keep telling me that I exude this aura of calmness and “dude, I’ve totally got this” serenity. And I sort of just stare at them open-mouthed. Inside my head, I don’t often feel like I’ve got this. I feel totally overwhelmed a lot of the time. And then other times, I remember that the doctors say that the baby looks great and I’m doing wonderfully and that I shouldn’t worry. I know Dan and I will get through whatever we need to get through, do whatever we need to do to make sure both the baby and I stay healthy. I suppose the back and forth between “stealthy raving lunatic inside my own head” and “zen mother-to-be gently placing her hand on her belly” is part of this whole pregnancy deal. Or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself. And still, despite it all, in the end, I get to meet this little baby in a month or so. And that’s a wondrous thing.

Well! I’m 20 weeks pregnant, which means I’m officially halfway there. That idea is hard to get my mind around (as is … most of this whole pregnancy business, if I’m being honest). It feels a bit like I’ve been pregnant for an eternity already, although I have a feeling the second 20 weeks will go by a LOT faster than the first have.

Dan has been taking belly photos once a month, this is the first month in which I think I actually look pregnant, instead of like I ate a few too many burritos. I’m really excited about this, even if finding maternity clothes that work has been a lot harder than I expected. (The number of pairs of jeans I’ve ordered and returned is … high.) I can still get away with my normal sweaters and t-shirts for the most part, but those days are dwindling. And I haven’t been able to use those ridiculous belly bands (just wear your own jeans unbuttoned! Because that’s not awkward and super uncomfortable, even with a stretch donut of fabric preventing them from totally falling down!) in little more than a month, and good riddance.

I’m still pretty tired. It’s big news if I can stay up until 9:30pm these days, and that’s an improvement. I keep waiting for this mystical “second trimester energy boost”… and fearing it may never come. I’m kind of used to it now, and don’t really expect to get much done on weeknights other than sitting on the couch for a few hours. We’re also unpacked now, so I’m not staring at boxes feeling guilty while I sit around. Otherwise, I have been feeling pretty good, and feeling very grateful for that. I have some heartburn here and there, and I’ve been more congested as winter progresses (pregnancy rhinitis! It’s a thing!).

I had my 20 week ultrasound yesterday, which is the big anatomy scan where most people find out whether they’re having a girl or a boy… but we decided to wait and be surprised in May. In the interest of full disclosure, knowing that we could know (and having to look away from the screen to avoid knowing yesterday!) is a lot harder than when it’s just an idea. I totally understand now why people find out as soon as they can. But after a few scary test results earlier in my pregnancy, we will really be relieved to have a happy, healthy baby in May, no matter whether it’s a girl or a boy. (We had extra testing to confirm that the baby is, in fact, okay, but the whole thing was SO scary and it’s hard to forget how that “omg what if the baby ISN’T okay?!” felt. It makes us that much more grateful for every glimpse of the baby, for every “things are looking great” from a doctor or nurse, to be sure.)

No one seems to have any very strong guesses so far, other than Dan’s sister and my mother-in-law, both of whom are convinced that the baby is a boy. I’m wondering if it’s a girl (partially in direct response to all those “well I’m sure it’s a boy” folks?), based on the fact that there are four generations of eldest daughters who also happen to be the only ones in their generation with brown eyes (me, my mom, my grandmother, and my great grandmother). So naturally, that makes me think it’d be pretty cool to have a brown-eyed girl to make it five generations. However, I have hunches that lead me to think the baby’s a boy almost as often, so who knows, really.

It still doesn’t feel entirely real, except when it’s terrifying to imagine the two of us being allowed to take a newborn baby home to take care of all by ourselves. I have been reading blogs long enough to have read some scary birth stories and scary stories of sleeplessness and everyone in the house crying and how hard it is to learn how to be a parent. I know we’ll figure it out together… but it still doesn’t stop me from being a little… completely unable to process how it’ll all work. As a planner who likes to know ahead of time what I’m getting into, accepting that I can’t know this ahead of time will be my project for the next four and a half months. But I know Dan and I are a really great team, and we have so many people in our corner (in person and on the internets!). So as much as I’m terrified, I also know, somewhere in there, that we’ll work it out.

We found out on the first day of fall, a quiet Sunday only a week after we moved into our new house. We had an idea that it might be possible, but after a few disappointments, I couldn’t really let myself believe it was actually real. I always thought I’d be the girl to buy 20 tests and take them for days before it was possible to get a real result, but I waited. And waited. And waited. I had all these cute ideas about how I’d make Dan check, because I’d be too nervous to look myself… and the + appeared before I could even set the damn thing on the counter. Within seconds.

I made myself wait a whole 24 hours before I ordered the tiny red Converse.

I also ordered myself a new pair of chucks, partly because I needed a new pair of black ones, but partly so I could assemble my method of telling people. I nestled the tiny sneakers into the adult-sized shoebox, with a book and a few other random things to weigh it down and make it feel like it had big-sized sneakers inside.

A week later, a few hours into a birthday dinner for my sister, I told my family that I had bought a really crazy pair of Converse – maybe the wackiest pair yet – and I brought them for show and tell. I passed the box to my mom first, who opened it, looked at me in utter disbelief, closed the box, and handed it back. Then I handed it to my dad on my right side, who opened it, gave me such a Look, and handed it back. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law is all, “Well FINE. We didn’t want to see your new sneakers ANYWAY.” and I’m wondering how everyone is being so quiet as I try not to shake. Finally, I opened the box so my siblings and their significant others could see, and my sister screamed and jumped out of her seat, and chaos ensued.

It was pretty amazing. And the best part? They all honestly believed that it was just that I’d bought a pair of neon glitter-striped Converse and was so excited to show them.

We told Dan’s family in a more traditional way (well, by him pointing in triumph at my belly and waiting for them to catch on) but the reaction was equally chaotic. Waiting all this time to tell The World was really, really hard.

So I haven’t really been writing here, partly because of how tired I’ve been (which, yes, has been due to my moving hangover, and getting used to my new commute, but also because of my…condition), and partly because it’s really hard to say anything at all when you can’t talk about the ONLY THING you can think about, ever.

It has been hard to get this whole real-actual-baby idea through my head, still. I have been feeling (mostly) normal (and don’t get me wrong – I have been thanking my lucky stars to the moon and back every day for that), and I still look the same. It has felt a little bit like I just stopped drinking all that beer and diet coke to play some “let’s pretend I’m pregnant!” game. I think my appetite is finally coming back, although if I eat anything even closely resembling a normal-sized meal, I feel like I’ve just eaten four Thanksgiving dinners. (I’m truly worried about Thanksgiving itself; I may have to make my mom give me a dessert-sized plate to prevent me from causing my own misery with my inability to exercise any semblance of potatoes-and-stuffing self control.)

But we’re really just so excited. I have a million ideas for the baby’s room, and I’ve started crocheting granny squares for his or her blanket. Sometimes it all hits me – that there’s a baby in there – like a ton of bricks (like when I saw a tweet around Thanksgiving about how pregnant women have not one but TWO creepy skeletons inside them! ack!) I’m definitely afraid of many of the pregnancy symptoms people like to scare you with (“I hope you aren’t too attached to all those Converse! They won’t fit before this is over!!”) and hoping that above all, things go well from now until May (and, obviously, after that), and that this little one is healthy. This is such an adventure, and I’m so thankful to be starting it. And thank you all so, so much for all of your happy wishes – it was seriously SO grin-inducing to make all of our various posts public and see so many people sharing our excitement 🙂