The second time around

It's official. I'll never be a surrogate. The other day I told Dave that even if someone offered me $1 million, I wouldn't carry their baby. Pregnancy, in all its excitement and miraculousness, just doesn't agree with me. Or maybe I don't agree with pregnancy. As I've told many people throughout this pregnancy, "I love the end product, but not the process."

Today I am 33 weeks pregnant. The home stretch, so to speak. Just seven weeks to go. That's 49 days, 1,176 hours, or 70,560 minutes, depending on how you measure it. But who's counting? Lots of people have asked me how this pregnancy has been different than my pregnancy with Owen. For starters, I've written a lot fewer blog posts. I've even left a few unfinished. I'd be typing away, inspired by a good idea, but then the phone would ring or Owen would wake up from his nap and Poof! the spell would be broken. I still have those half written posts in draft. This from someone who takes great pride in crossing off everything on her to-do list.

One of the biggest differences this time has been going through pregnancy with a toddler around. An increasingly active, talkative toddler. One who loves to dance, wave at buses, point out airplanes overhead and run up and down our hallway at full speed, which I'm sure our downstairs neighbors love. He's at a really sweet age now at 22 months. He gives me spontaneous hugs and points at me from across the room saying, "Mama, mama, mama, mama," as if we're all in danger of forgetting who I am.

Pregnant with Owen (Sorry, no pics of the current bump)

It's because of him that I'm doing the whole pregnancy thing again. I knew it would be tough, even though everyone says, "Every pregnancy is different." But I wanted him to have a sibling. I wanted to round out our family. I wanted to have another little person around that I loved as much as him. I heard a quote the other day that having a child is like having your heart run around in another person. Blame it on the pregnancy hormones, but when I heard that during a radio interview, I teared up and cried.

The other day Dave and I watched the movie, "Gravity," the space odyssey starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. When it first came out I didn't have much interest in seeing it. I'm not one for sci-fi and outer space. I don't care how good the special effects are or how many times Dave tries to tell me a movie is "critically acclaimed," I'm not interested if there's no human interest story to draw me in. But then my friend Erin told me that it was about much more than an accident in space. She said Sandra Bullock's character goes through an emotional journey and suddenly I was in.

If you haven't seen the movie but plan to, then stop reading right here, because I'm about to give away a major plot point. Halfway through the movie you find out that Sandra Bullock's character is not just a scientist up in space, but a mother grieving the loss of her 4-year-old daughter who died in a freak accident. The rest of the movie is not just a story of survival, but of choosing life despite the heartbreak, despite the seemingly unbearable pain. As the credits rolled, I sat on our couch and cried.

"What's going on, babe?" Dave asked gently.

"If anything ever happened to Owen, I would just die," I sobbed.

It's something I've heard my mom say about me and my brother. And until I had my own child, never completely understood.

"I know," Dave said quietly. "I know."

Being a parent makes you vulnerable. For me, that starts in pregnancy. The nausea, the headaches, the fatigue, the crabbiness, the dry heaves, the shortness of breath and all the anxiety. During my first trimester I caught Owen in our bathroom standing over the toilet pretending to spit into it over and over again. Our nanny saw him doing the same thing and we both came to the same conclusion: he was imitating me throwing up. It was one of the cutest things I'd ever seen and for a moment, I smiled, feeling a little less green.

One thing I've noticed during this pregnancy is that I've gained a new understanding of acceptance. During my pregnancy with Owen, I was so blindsided by how terrible I felt and how long it lasted (way into my second trimester), that I just struggled to make it through. During this pregnancy I find myself forging a new relationship with discomfort, the intensity of which fluctuates from day to day. These days, as my belly gets bigger and pushes my internal organs into pancakes, the discomfort tends to be indigestion and feeling like I can barely breathe. Sometimes it's so intense that all I can do is choke down a peanut butter sandwich for dinner and go straight to bed. Other days I feel fine and it's not so bad.

On one particularly nauseating day a few weeks ago, Dave picked me up from work. We drove home together and parked in our space in the alley behind our apartment building and started walking toward the front.

"Maybe there is something to learning to live with a discomfort," I told him as we walked single file on the path along the side of our house.

Dave stopped and looked at me.

"That is something I never thought I'd hear you say," he said.

He says that because I'm a fighter, someone who thinks that if you remain quiet in the face of injustice, no matter how small, you let the bad guys win. You're telling the world, "Hey world, I'm a doormat, come walk all over me, hurt me and treat me however you want." Thus, I've spent much of my life being the outspoken one, the one who clenches her fists and marches down the hallway to speak to the man in charge. The one who complains loudly about the smallest of physical or emotional pain.

Over the years I've heard that the quickest, easiest way to get through difficulty is to accept it. Feel the anger, sit with the sadness, embrace the fear. But that is so much easier said than done. And I've always secretly worried that by doing so, accepting things as they are instead of how I think they should be, I'm endorsing whatever is happening. That I'm saying it's okay. That I'm left with sighing and shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Nothing we can do about it. That's just the way it is."

Nothing is farther from the truth. Acceptance doesn't make me a victim of circumstances, it allows me to see more clearly what is happening, experience what is going on. It's not a matter or liking or disliking it, but seeing it for what it is, then deciding how to respond. I know this sounds awfully Buddhist of me and I'll admit, much of this thinking is the result of mindfulness classes I've taken, meditation exercises I've been doing and a Wednesday night women's group I regularly attend.

Today I still feel the heartburn, the lack of oxygen and the tightness in my chest. I still complain (a little) and blow up at those I love (but less and less). But I also feel an underlying calmness, a greater willingness to say, "Okay, I feel like shit today, so what?" Then go about my day. It helps that this is a temporary state, that it will all be over soon. Did I mention I only have seven more weeks?

Despite my knowledge of that time frame, I know there will be many more discomforts even after the pregnancy, because that's a part of life. I'm so glad that I've finally stopped fighting so much, not just for my well-being, but for the benefit of my kids.