Happy Friday!
Happy May! (Where did the first 4 months of 2025 go?!?)
Happy birthday to Adrian!!!
Just as grumpy as ever, but at least he’s got a slight sparkle in his eyes with the hope that he’ll be sharing a birthday with his son or daughter… That we’ll be welcoming our son or daughter into the world in hopefully a matter of hours… That we’ll be holding our newborn baby soon enough and introducing him or her to big brother, Bryson!!!
I can’t WAIT for that introduction to take place! Oh my!
Only time will tell…
As time is all we have at this very moment, I felt compelled to try and capture a few more of my personal thoughts and feelings surrounding this 2nd pregnancy and the arrival of our 2nd child any moment now. What a beautiful pregnancy it has been overall, and I personally never want to dismiss the fact that we are very fortunate to have had such a smooth, positive, effortless, healthy, and happy pregnancy yet again. I realize this is not always the case for everyone, and as much as I have been having some ‘big emotions’ surrounding this daunting waiting period, I still feel very grateful for where we are in our lives in many respects.
My mind has quite literally felt like absolute chaos for several days and possibly weeks now. Again, hence the title I chose for my blog – calculated chaos of the mind. Although all of the calculations have evaporated. Just pure chaos up there!
At this very moment, I can happily share that I am at peace. Utter peace. Finally! It’s been quite the rollercoaster! Even in a hospital gown with an IV in my hand (5th attempt to land on a ‘good vein’). Here we are. The moment neither of us wanted to come, but it came. A date with the hospital. Or rather a date at the hospital? I mean Adrian and I did just enjoy his birthday lunch from Fresh Market with a nice view of the hospital’s parking lot. We could easily classify that as a date?! We haven’t been on a date just the two of us in some time! I’ll take it!
With an EDD of April 20, technically baby is 12 days ‘past due’ and we both landed on choosing today as the day to resort to welcoming some additional help.
I was all for baby will come when he or she is ready.
Trust myself, trust baby, trust my body, trust the process, trust the healthy pregnancy I have had all along.
These past few days and weeks have really felt like such a whirlwind. Again, it’s felt chaotic in several respects.
We’ve always understood that April 20 is just one single date, an estimation, a tentative guideline to know when to roughly expect to meet our son or daughter. We know we can expect to meet our baby anywhere as early as 38 weeks through to 42 weeks, roughly. Pregnancy is unpredictable. Parenthood is unpredictable. Trust! All signs point to I have grown a healthy baby. Our baby is thriving in the womb per all testing. Why would we doubt this? And we don’t! I feel like I could write a whole novel at this point to recap and explain and elaborate on what these past few weeks have looked like and felt like for us. I’ll spare us all that novel, and ‘long story short’ this for you – we’ve decided to move forward with seeking some additional assistance to greet our baby. We’ve soaked up the final moments with ‘just Bryson’, we’ve soaked up the quiet evenings and nights at home (in fact, we’ve already not been sleeping well for awhile now in anticipation and such), we’ve soaked up the extra ‘us time’ that we lost at some moments early on with Bryson understandably. We have meal-prepped several times in anticipation of his or her arrival. We are ready! We believe baby is just about ready and he or she just needs a little nudge to essentially ‘head towards the light’! The light at the end of the birth canal of course!!!
There are so many factors at play here, and it may not be worth listing them all out even for my piece of mind. As we all know, my default is to overthink in such an excessive way, and sometimes that genuinely does calm my mind, and sometimes it revs me up to such an extreme that I lose sleep, start to stress and spiral, etc. I sometimes feel like I need to fully process, write, and/or talk something through to feel that closure, sense of peace and calm, etc. Sometimes I don’t.
I have thought about this final pre-baby # 2 post for quite some time. The last post I wrote was last Saturday, so just about a week ago, and I didn’t feel I would actually have the chance to write again… Yet, here we are.
I am actively trying to calculate all of my thoughts for this post, but how can I?! There is so much to capture, but I am just realizing – I don’t need to write it all down. I don’t need to explain anything to myself or anyone of how we got to this point at the end of our waiting game. I don’t need to fully understand why a baby chooses to arrive on the earlier side or later side of EDD’s. I don’t need to completely grasp why I have carried two babies who have chosen to ‘torment’ their mom and dad by taking their sweet a** time to enter this world. Clarifying that this is all written in very a friendly and mostly joking tone. I am feeling GOOD! In this very moment, I feel very good. I feel very much at peace with myself, my body, our pregnancy, our baby’s decision to stay cozied up a little longer.
We had so much fun leading up to this day!
Adrian & I even insisted that yesterday’s theme of the day was FUN! No matter what, I, as typical ‘fun police’ wasn’t allowed to spoil any fun. Sure, I could let out whatever tears I needed to as they came and went, but when a decision came to be made, I had to go with the most FUN option. It was awesome!!!
Bryson colored half of his face blue with a whiteboard marker, and as much as I did genuinely want to stop him at times, I held back. Or rather I was forced to step away from the marker and simply let Bryson be Bryson. He was having fun!
I look back at the last few weeks of preparing myself for labor and delivery. I definitely didn’t mentally prepare for going past my EDD by this long again which looking back – that might have been where my focus should have always been. The mental aspect of all of this! My mindset! Keeping my composure and calm day by day. Not allowing other’s opinions or insights to mentally affect me. Ignoring the insistent 41 week cut-off language by our current provider. We ignored it, but we can’t deny that all of those conversations didn’t affect us mentally and take a toll. A ‘false alarm’ late Monday night. Returning home a few hours later and just feeling so utterly confused and perplexed in several different ways. Knowing our 2nd child’s labor and delivery would most likely be incredibly quick given how relatively quick it was for Bryson. Remembering how the doctors and nurses at Martin North, where we delivered Bryson, joked that we should stay nearby to the hospital in the days and weeks leading up to a 2nd birth because of how quickly things progressed with Bryson. Bryson born 11 days past his EDD, two days before a scheduled induction date. (You would think we could handle some additional waiting after him eh!!!) Assuming we shouldn’t spend too much time at home laboring to ensure I would receive the necessary antibiotics (positive GBS swab) in time and I wouldn’t end up delivering in Adrian’s truck on the drive over.
Okay, now I feel I am truly just dragging on here… WOW! I just realized that as I took a peak at the time.
LONG STORY SHORT – we are here. We are as ready as we could possibly be to meet our newest addition. We are excited!!! We are at peace with where we are at in this waiting game to meet baby # 2.
I drank all the tea, ate all the dates. I tried evening primrose oil, the miles circuit, adjustments, prenatal massage with a focus on specific labor inducing pressure points, lots of walking and general exercise, and a myriad of other ‘natural induction techniques’ in hopes that we would meet our baby on his or her own terms.
No more overthinking. No more questioning. No more doubting. No more worries.
Happy Friday, happy May, happy birthday to my Adrian, and happy mommy and baby!!!
…and maybe a happy birthday to baby, too! Let’s see! ♥️
As Adrian has constantly reminded me in this final waiting game ~ we wanted the gender of our baby to be a surprise, just like with Bryson, and the surprise of when he arrived was absolutely incredible! We still do not know when # 2 will officially arrive, and if Bryson will have a younger brother or sister, and this surprise will yet again be worth the wait!!!
I have so appreciated all of the check ins from family and friends even if I haven’t always chosen and/or managed to respond. I really, really appreciate the check ins and sentimental, supportive, kind, and positive wishes. None of that goes unnoticed.
Such a wide range of emotions these past few days and weeks – I can’t stress that enough!
I now choose to tune out the world and continue to tune into my body!
I’ve got this!
We’ve got this, baby!
Alright, it’s time for Adrian and I to continue having some fun as we approach the true end of this beautiful waiting game!!!
Let the birthday festivities in a hospital room begin!!! We’ll have to get creative!
There are actually TWO bouncy balls in the room so needless to say ~ we are set up for success in terms of a FUN afternoon ahead!
We can’t wait to meet you baby!
This is it!!!
See you so so so soon!
AH!!!
We love you so much!
We are ready when you are!!!
With love,
Izzy (& your dad and big brother!!!)
♥️
calculatedchaosofthemind 