A week and a half ago, on St. Patrick’s Day morning, my placenta started bleeding again. I was stunned, for it had been nine weeks, to the day, since my beginning of prior bleeding episode. At 34½ weeks of pregnancy, I’d gotten comfortable, thinking I’d become the best-case scenario of a high-risk pregnancy patient with placenta previa, and I’d just deliver my baby boy via C-section when my doctors determined he was mature enough to do so, for it wasn’t safe to go into labor—or deliver vaginally—with the placenta covering my cervix.

Then a trip to the bathroom.

Bright-red blood soaking my incontinence pad and underwear.

Fear.

I called my high-risk pregnancy practice, The Center for Maternal and Fetal Health, and spoke with a nurse, who told me to immediately go to the office, rather than Labor and Delivery, because the doctors were still holding office hours. My friend Yana drove me, took my 5-year-old son home for a playdate with her son, then took both of them to afternoon preschool.

At my doctors’ office, I was quickly ushered in and waited for only a few minutes before being seen by Dr. D, the doctor I’d seen in Labor and Delivery for my bleed in mid-January, at 25½ weeks of pregnancy. She asked if I minded pulling down my pants, so she could see the extent of the bleeding. Upon viewing the blood, she said, “If you keep bleeding, we’ll just do your C-section today.”

I told her I was relieved, that the bleeding, resulting from my placenta partially tearing away from my uterus, makes me nervous because I have a sorority sister from college who lost her baby at 41 weeks—while on a fetal monitor, in the hospital, the night before she was being induced—due to placenta abruptio, a condition in which the placenta completely separates from the uterus.

“She lost her baby in two minutes, in the hospital, on a fetal monitor,” I said. “So if know that if I started bleeding severely, I could call 911, and I’d still never get here in time.”

“Placenta previa is different from placenta abruptio,” she said. “With placenta previa, YOU die.”

Subtle, huh?

My practice is connected to the hospital, so Dr. D had Kathy, one of the nurses, wheel me down to Labor and Delivery, where I was checked in, put into a room at the end of the hall, and given a hospital gown.

My nose started bleeding profusely. Sometimes it will bleed when I blow my nose, which is a common pregnancy side effect, but I’d never had an actual nose bleed in my life. I had an overly dramatic thought that I was bleeding from every orifice, which wasn’t true, but I was feeling panicky without my husband, who was on his way from his office downtown.

Alone in Labor and Delivery, I felt intense sadness, and it took all of my strength, physical and mental, not to cry. I was worried about having my baby at 34½ weeks, when he’d likely land in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) because of respiratory and/or eating difficulties. Then again, my 5-year-old was born on his due date, but spent his first five days in NICU because he was born in acute respiratory distress after aspirating meconium, his first bowel movement in utero, during delivery. After he was able to breathe on his own, he refused to eat, which the NICU nurses said was likely because his throat was sore due to his initial intubation. So even at full-term, babies can end up in NICU, but I recognized that, at 34½ weeks, my baby would have a guaranteed stay.

After I’d changed into the gown, nurses took my vital signs, positioned the two monitors on my stomach to evaluate my baby’s heart rate and any uterine contractions, and inserted an IV line.

Next, a resident entered and said she needed to conduct a vaginal exam to determine if my cervix was dilated. It was just a basic exam, with a speculum inserted into the vagina, so the resident could see—with a light strapped across her forehead, as if she were a miner—my cervix. However, it was one of the most painful medical procedures of my life: I was tense; my feet weren’t in stirrups, but straining to stay at the edge of the bed, and after nine weeks of bed rest, I had little muscle tone; and the exam was long, because the resident couldn’t see my cervix because of the amount of blood in my vaginal canal. She kept removing the blood with swabs, then trying again.

I have a high pain threshold, but I was so uncomfortable that I was whimpering, so I was relieved my husband wasn’t there to bear witness. It would have increased his stress levels.

The exam revealed that my cervix wasn’t dilated, although I wasn’t sure why that mattered, since I was having a C-section. But I didn’t question any of the bustling staff members. They seemed very sure of every stage of their evaluations of me and my baby.

Next up was a meeting with a member of the anesthesia staff, then an abdominal ultrasound, during which Dr. M, the head of my high-risk practice who was on-call in Labor and Delivery, changed course. He said that it looked like the placenta was no longer covering the cervix, but right next to it, making a vaginal delivery possible. To get better ultrasound images, he sent me back upstairs to the practice’s office, telling the technician that he wanted to personally see the images, so, when she was ready, to page him.

My husband met me in the hallway as I was being transported by wheelchair to the office. Once again, my name was quickly called, after which my husband and I were led into an ultrasound room, where both abdominal and trans-vaginal ultrasounds were performed. Our baby, breech during my previous ultrasound, was head-down, and Dr. M pushed his head up and away from my cervix to get a clearer view. But clear wasn’t possible.

Dr. M said that he thought that the cervix was free of the placenta that had been covering it since my week 13 ultrasound, more than 21 weeks of my pregnancy. He showed us what he thought was the harder edge of the placenta, as compared to what he thought what was on top of my cervix—a blood clot. He asked the ultrasound technician to run a blood-flow analysis, which made him more confident, because blood would flow through the placenta only, not through a clot. All of the images consisted of shades of gray, and Dr. M admitted he couldn’t be 100-percent sure of his readings.

He then recommended that we first try a vaginal delivery because he believes that, as the baby descends into the vaginal canal, he’ll push the placenta farther up inside the uterus, enabling him to be delivered safely—before the placenta. He assured us that, in case of any complications, he’d immediately perform a C-section.

He explained that he was considering the best interests of both me and the baby, and a vaginal delivery is preferable for me because of less recovery time, and delaying delivery is preferable for the baby because, even at 36 weeks, just a week and a half away, he’d likely be able to come home with us, rather than spend time in NICU due to breathing or eating problems.

I asked, “You really think it’s safe to try a vaginal delivery, even though I’ve had two placental bleeds?”

“Yes.”

But then he added that he wanted to consider my emotional state, that he’d heard that I had a friend who’d lost her baby via placental abruption, but that placental abruption is extraordinarily rare, as in 1 in 1,000 pregnancies, and that what happened to my friend is yet another 1 in 1,000 placental abruptions. He outlined the signs of placental abruption and said that I’d likely be at the hospital, diagnosed and having a C-section before either my baby or I were at risk.

He said we could evaluate the situation and decide when to induce, based on how I’m feeling emotionally.

“I just want to do what’s best for the baby,” I said.

And what was best for the baby was to stay put, rather than attempt a vaginal delivery on St. Patty’s Day.

So I was wheeled back down to Labor and Delivery for observation—for another five hours before I was released—during which I wasn’t permitted to eat or drink, just in case of increased bleeding necessitating delivery. I’d woken up at 5 a.m. to eat some Frosted Mini-Wheats and hadn’t been hungry again before my bleed started, so I went almost 13 hours without food or drink.

So I lay there in Labor and Delivery with fetal monitors strapped across my stomach, starving, emotional, and having to disconnect the monitors and wheel my IV into the bathroom every 10 minutes because the IV fluids were making me pee. And my husband sat there with his laptop on his lap, accessing the hospital’s wireless Internet so he could work. And we were both reeling, because we’d been worried about my bleeding, we’d been told we were having our baby via C-section because of the bleed, and we weren’t sure waiting and trying a vaginal delivery was the right call. Because, at the time, we never could have known.

But Dr. M was right, and we were right to listen to him.

When I was released, Mr. M put me back on complete bed rest until last Friday, the day I hit 36 weeks, his goal. In the past week and a half, I haven’t had another fresh bleed, although old, brown blood is still coming, 12 days later. But old blood is nothing to worry about.

I am now at 36½ weeks of pregnancy, and, on Friday, I will be full-term, for full-term is defined as 37 to 42 weeks. At this stage, our little man will likely accompany me home from the hospital.

And last, during my 36-week appointment on Friday, it was crystal-clear, via ultrasound, that the placenta has moved even farther away from my cervix.

I NO LONGER HAVE PLACENTA PREVIA.

So the plan is that, if I bleed again, for my placenta is still low-lying, and low-lying placentas are more unstable, I’ll be induced, and my doctors will try a vaginal delivery since there is now no reason for it to be dangerous.

If I don’t bleed, my doctors will continue to evaluate the results of my weekly exams, in which I have ultrasounds to check on placental position and amniotic fluid levels, plus non-stress tests to evaluate the baby’s heart rate and whether I’m having contractions. If any problems are revealed, I’ll be induced. If all’s well, they’ll likely let me continue until I go into labor.

This weekend I told my husband that, if I don’t have another bleed, I’ll probably not go into labor until close to the baby’s due date, April 23, since my 5-year-old son was born on his.

“You have a history of one,” he replied. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to rely on that.”

Yes, I have a history of just one, but having a biological child is a miracle that many DES Daughters don’t have the opportunity to experience. And because I was able to carry my 5-year-old son to his due date, although I was dilated starting at 27 weeks, and because he stretched out my DES (diethlystilbestrol)-induced T-shaped uterus while he was in utero, I felt confident that, if I could get pregnant, I could carry another child to term.

This time around, I admit that I’ve alternated between feeling blessed and cursed, because, rather than have premature dilation and labor as I did with my son, my cervix is long and closed—even at 36 weeks—but instead I lost one of my twins, and I’ve suffered from placenta previa.

But I don’t have placenta previa any more, and it’s rare for it to rectify itself in the third trimester. And if I can make it until Friday, I’m at term. Just four more days, and I’m at term.

Last Monday, I wrote a post about becoming emotional after seeing triplets at a birthday party, then later learning that my friend is pregnant with twin boys, just as I had been six months ago—before losing one of my sons in September. This morning, in my final dream before waking up, my subconscious mind was working overtime to help me process my feelings.

In my dream, my friends Jessica and Adam had just had twins, a daughter with a full head of dark hair and a completely bald son. For some reason, Jessica and Adam couldn’t take care of their newborns for the first few days of their lives, so I was serving as substitute mom to them—and breastfeeding them—until Jessica and Adam were available.

Now my friends Jessica and Adam are real, but they don’t have twins, nor are they pregnant with them. If they did have twins, they’d take care of their babies themselves—or if they were somehow incapacitated, their parents or siblings would come to the rescue. Plus, being 34 weeks pregnant with my own son, my milk hasn’t come in, so I couldn’t breastfeed. And breastfeeding my friends’ children is an act I’ve never considered. But dreams often don’t make sense, as with all of the above elements of mine. But wait until you hear the rest.

As my dream continued, I was alone, trying to breastfeed the twins, struggling to position them—and get them to latch on—with only one arm and hand available to hold each. As I was finally feeding both, I looked down to see that, as I had contorted my entire body to try to lift and support them, my skirt had flipped up, so I was revealing my super-sized underwear.

Then, as I looked to the left, I saw a baby girl lying on a bed and realized that I had forgotten about her, that Jessica and Adam hadn’t had twins, but triplets, and this one still needed to be fed. I panicked, thinking that, after these first two had had their fill, I wouldn’t have any milk left to feed their sister.

Feeling overwhelmed, as if caring for these two—and then three—babies was impossible, my final thought was I’m so happy I’m only having one.

Thank you to my subconsious mind, I experienced a scene of what my life would have been like if I had carried my twin boys to term. I’m 41, and, although I’m normally high-energy, I no longer have the stamina of a 20-something. My husband is 44 and has a very demanding job. My husband and I already have three other sons, ages 15, 14 and 5, to care for. And, regardless of what temperment our twins may have had, parenting twins would have been overwhelming.

So although I will still mourn the loss of my baby boy, vicariously experiencing one breastfeeding fiasco has helped me put my future in perspective. With only one more child, I will be able to a better mother. And with only one more child, I will enjoy parenting my last child, rather than constantly beating myself up for not having enough body parts and hours and energy to satisfy the needs of twins.

Today I am officially 34 weeks pregnant, a triumph considering that I have placenta previa, which caused pre-term bleeding starting my 25th week. At this stage of pregnancy, my baby boy has a 99% chance of survival, according to the March of Dimes website, so I was on an emotional high all day. But tonight, for the first time, my 5-year-old son said, “I hate you.”

I knew the “I hate you” would come eventually, for most of my friends have children much older than my son, and they’ve warned of the devastation of “the first time.” They assured me, however, that during some childhood developmental stages, the “I hate yous” come so often that, as a parent, you become immune.

I knew the “I hate you” would come eventually also because my son has been telling me of his hatred of others since the fall. If his friends won’t share with him, he tells me he hates them. When his older brothers, my 14- and 15-year-old stepsons, don’t play with him, he tells me that he hates them too. When we’ve gone to pick up my stepsons for our visitation time with them, only to have them not there, he’ll tell me that he hates “the boys’ mean mom.” When my husband wouldn’t agree to Luke being the name of our baby, my son yelled, “I hate you,” to him.

So I knew I would be the recipient of the “I hate you” soon enough.

Tonight, he told me that he hated me because, after he’d read me two chapters in his reader, he started making mistakes with words that he knows. He was stumbling over words because he was tired, so I set his reader on his nightstand. He insisted that he was not tired, because, in his perspective, he never is.

But arguing with an overtired 5-year-old isn’t productive, so I simply said, “We’re done,” to which he responded, “I hate you.”

Getting mad at an overtired 5-year-old also isn’t effective, so I said, “You get some sleep. I’m going to take a bath.”

As I walked down the hall to the bathroom, he yelled, crying, “I just want you to sleep with me for a few minutes.”

I responded calmly, “You just said that you hate me, so I’m not going to sleep with you for a few minutes tonight,” for, while getting angry at him would only have escalated the situation, he does need to know there are repercussions for bad behavior.

“I was just kidding,” he answered.

“Not when you said it.”

When he realized I was really going to take a bath, rather than lie next to him, he lost his sense of humor, screaming, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

And surprisingly, my bath, a simple warm bath, made me recover from my first, second, third and fourth “I hate yous” very quickly. So now, as I relax on the couch, readying myself to watch last night’s Grey’s Anatomy, I feel blessed to have a child who sometimes hates me—and another on the way.

It took nine cycles of infertility treatments—and two high-risk pregnancies—to conceive and carry these two sons of mine, so I do appreciate both the parenting highs and lows. Even the “I hate yous.”

I am not a crier, but yesterday I bawled—twice. I recognize that I am hormonal and exhausted, but I shocked myself at my reactions to, first, seeing triplets and, second, hearing that my friend is pregnant with twins, both of whom are boys.

I was pregnant with twin boys for almost nine weeks, yet I truly thought that I had moved past actively mourning Baby B, whom I lost in September.

From then until mid-January, when my placenta-previa-related pre-term bleeding led to bed rest, I didn’t get emotional when I babysat for 4-year-old twin boys once a week, plus drove them to and/or from school three days a week.

As a room parent, I was able to organize bowling playdates for my son’s preschool class—in which one, two or three sets of twins would participate—without losing it afterward.

Just a week and a half ago, a friend—whose post-IVF HCG numbers convinced us that two embryos had implanted—was concerned about my loss of Baby B, expressing fear that discussing her twin pregnancy might be difficult for me.

I responded, “Thanks for being sensitive about the loss of Baby B, but I’m really fine. I get sad sometimes, usually when sometime asks me if I’m pregnant with twins because I’m so big, but otherwise I’m just focusing on the little man I’m carrying. I think I’m coping because I have perspective: There are so many who never have children—or lose one late in a pregnancy, or even at birth. My loss was early, and I’m still pregnant, so I have something positive to focus on. So, hearing about you doesn’t upset me at all. You and your husband have been through hell and back and deserve all good things with this pregnancy.”

But yesterday afternoon, I took my 5-year-old son to a birthday party in which parents were invited to stay and socialize. As I sat in a cushy chair, I watched 8-month-old triplets—identical twin boys and their sister—play on the floor below me, doing tummy time, rolling around and biting on toys for two hours, without crying.

Witnessing these babies and their contentment, for they amuse and entertain each other, made me realize that I’d somehow separated the older twins, the ones I see on a regular basis, from my loss. Maybe this was my subconscious emotional-survival technique.

But the combination of seeing multiples who are babies, two of whom are boys, which is what I would have experienced, plus being sleep-deprived and hormone-fueled did me in. I walked into my house post-party, cried, then took a much-needed two-hour nap.

Then last night, I learned that my friend, who lives one block away, is pregnant with twin boys, and the death of Baby B hit me again for I had just been exposed, hours earlier, to what I will never experience as a parent.

My friend said that, when she revealed her pregnancy to her work colleagues, one was particularly affected: The woman who had lost a twin 18 years ago.

Obviously, the lesson I need to learn here is, bottom line, a mother doesn’t ever “get over” losing a child. I need to remind myself that it’s natural to mourn, that I need to stop feeling guilty as if mourning makes me selfish considering that I am still carrying a child. Being pregnant with one son doesn’t invalidate the loss of his brother. I can be thankful for what I’ve been given, while simultaneously feeling a sense of loss for what could have been.

I believe the other issue playing into my emotional instability is that I know too much to feel confident that I’ll be bringing a baby home at all. So, as I prepare for my baby’s arrival, I leave on price tags and keep items in their boxes, just in case I need to return it all.

It’s a terrible feeling, this inability to relax and enjoy nesting, as most other women do. And the loss of my little Baby B—for reasons I will never know—reinforces that there are no guarantees. I hate that there are no guarantees.

Yes, my ever-growing list of pregnancy-related ailments now includes this torture, which was confirmed by abdominal ultrasound on Thursday, the final day of my 32nd week of pregnancy. My baby, already 5 pounds 3 ounces, compared to the normal 4 ½-pound range at 33 weeks, is currently breech, so the incessant pounding at the bottom of my uterus really is from his pedaling, jabbing feet.

It literally feels like he’ll be able to kick his way out, so I’ve been worried about the damage done to my cervix, whether funneling, thinning, or dilating. But, apparently, my cervix is super-strong in this pregnancy, unlike when I was pregnant with my 5-year-old son and dilated starting at 27 weeks of pregnancy. During a trans-vaginal ultrasound, also conducted on Thursday, the technician said my cervix is still 5 cm long and closed.

The trans-vaginal ultrasound also confirmed that I still have marginal placenta previa, so Dr. E, the doctor I saw Thursday, said I will remain on partial bed rest.

I haven’t had any placental bleeding since the first day of my 26th week of pregnancy, which is phenomenal, but Dr. E said that as I get closer to my due date, I will have more and more contractions, which could jumpstart the bleeding again. Therefore, if I see any red blood, I need to travel immediately to labor and delivery, so the baby and I can be monitored.

Thankfully, at this stage of my pregnancy, the infant survival rate is at least 95%, plus my little guy has benefitted from steroids given to me during my pre-term bleeding episode, so his lungs will be mature soon, if they aren’t already.

Dr. E confirmed that, if the placenta previa condition continues, I will have to have a C-section to deliver. She said specifically that the practice will not even attempt vaginal deliveries when the placenta is within 2 cm of the cervix because of the possibility of hemorrhaging, which could be detrimental to both me and the baby. Considering that there has been little to no change since placenta previa was diagnosed during my 13-week ultrasound, 20 weeks ago, I don’t hold out much hope of it rectifying itself.

The ultrasound technician said that the fact that my baby boy is breech isn’t considered a problem until the 36th week, but if he and my placenta stay where they are, they’re conspiring for a C-section, in my opinion.

The two ultrasounds also showed that my amniotic fluid level is ideal for this stage of the pregnancy; my baby’s development, with the exception of his size, is within his age range; and, in addition to his large body, he has a big head. My 5-year-old son has an off-the-charts-size head too, but it doesn’t look out of the ordinary, and, as I tell my son, he has a big head to house his very big brain.

As of Thursday’s weigh-in, I’ve gained 60 pounds since starting to try to get pregnant via in vitro fertilization (IVF). I’m unbelievably uncomfortable, and the combination of my asthma and my reduced lung capacity is making my days and nights difficult. I have no energy, so I told Dr. E that, even if she’d told me to stop bed rest and be wild and free for the final weeks of my pregnancy, I can’t handle more than modified bed rest as it is. (Weeks ago, I was tested for anemia, which some of my readers thought could be the reason for my complete exhaustion, but no anemia here.)

I return to the Center for Maternal and Fetal Health in two weeks, the first day of my 35th week of pregnancy, for another doctor’s appointment, a non-stress test to evaluate my baby’s heart rate, and ultrasounds to check my amniotic fluid level and placenta. Starting at 36 weeks, I will have an appointment every Friday for the duration of this pregnancy.

As I become more and more comfortable with the age, size and strength of my baby boy, I am becoming more and more nervous about having a C-section. But I keep reminding myself that five years ago, as a result of two botched epidurals, I endured 17 ½ hours of hell to give birth vaginally to my 9 pound 7 ounce son. So, while an incision through my stomach and uterus won’t be fun to recover from, it might be easier than my prior childbirth experience. And either way, I know that my body will have no long-term memories of the pain, while I will have the joy of loving another child.

During my waking hours, I’m normally a considerate person. But according to my sweet husband, at night, in our shared queen-size bed, I—32 weeks pregnant and up 55 pounds—have become downright rude.

He admitted to me two weeks ago, following the night that I’d been afraid I was in pre-term labor, that he’d been up since 1 a.m. because, “You were on my side of the bed, and you’re big.”

“Why didn’t you push me back onto my side?”

Incredulous, he answered, “I thought you were in labor. I wasn’t going to touch you. Instead, I lay there for two hours, then just got up.” (This is where I need to mention that my husband’s normal wake-up time, seven days a week, is between 3 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., so he lost out on two to two-and-a-half hours of sleep, not the multitude of hours you would expect.)

And I’m snoring—or something of the sort—every single night. At my request, he’s tried to describe it to me, even mimicking the sound effects. He says it’s not loud, and perhaps it can’t be technically classified as snoring. He can best define it as sounding as if I’m struggling to breathe.

I know from my girlfriends that their husbands snore when they’ve gained weight. So I recognize that my massive weight gain is a major contributor to my snoring, along with my allergy-related asthma, which only surfaces to the extreme when I’m pregnant. I diligently use my inhalers, apparently to no avail when I’m asleep.

I was fat and asthma-riddled when I was pregnant with my 5-year-old son, and my husband, then my boyfriend, stuck by me for the nine months of my pregnancy—a pregnancy made possible via intrauterine insemination (IUI) with anonymous donor sperm.

“Did I snore like this the last time?” I asked him yesterday. “I don’t remember you saying anything about it.”

“Well, back then, I was in love,” he said, then winked.

I know he’s still in love, because, when I’ve offered to sleep on the couch, he proclaims the idea “ridiculous.”

I know he’s still in love, because, to drown out my snoring-like sounds, he uses earplugs, so we can both get ample sleep.

And when I resort to bed-hogging, he does nothing, putting me first.

While I always appreciate my husband, reading a recent Ask Amy column in the February 24 issue of The Chicago Tribune made me pretty much worship him. When you read about the insensitive husband of this pregnant snorer, I’ll bet you’ll join me in my husband-worship too.

Expectant parents need their Z’s

Ask Amy
February 24, 2010

Dear Amy: I am 8 1/2 months pregnant with my second child. I am a stay-at-home mom. Unfortunately, my pregnancy is causing me to snore. My husband wakes me up throughout the night to tell me to stop or get me to change positions.

You could try to open this topic with him during a neutral moment by saying, “I’m sorry about the snoring. I know it’s disruptive. Can you help me think of a solution so we can both get more sleep at night, honey?”

In the past week, three of my friends have dropped off newborn baby clothes, sleep sacs, blankets, bibs and other necessities. I’ve gone from having just a few baby items, since I gave away almost all of my 5-year-old son’s, to having half of our dining room stacked with storage bins, a car seat and its two bases, a Boppy® breastfeeding pillow, and so on. And I’ve already washed and put away enough newborn to 6-month baby clothing to fill two deep dresser drawers.

Other friends have promised to give or loan me more: Still to come are a bassinet, a baby swing, a bouncer, more clothes, and who knows what other surprises.

Yet this is just a tiny part of the generosity that’s been shared with my husband, my son and me during our two in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles and subsequent high-risk pregnancy.

My friends watched my son last spring and summer while I underwent two IVF egg retrievals and embryo transfers.

Three friends loaned me maternity clothes, since I gave all of those away too.

A friend cried with me on the sidewalk between our houses when I learned, after my first ultrasound, I was likely losing one of our twin boys, Baby B.

Weeks later, when we found out that Baby B had indeed died, other friends sent e-mails letting me know they were thinking of us—and would help in any way.

When I was hospitalized in mid-January for placenta-previa-related, pre-term bleeding, five friends visited me in the hospital, bringing me goodies—lotion for my super-dry hands, trashy magazines galore, and Coke®, since I’m allowed to have a little bit of caffeine.

In the 6 ½ weeks I’ve been home on bed rest—first full and now partial—friends have brought over dinner and also checked in with me every time they go to the grocery store or Target®, then dropped off and put away my requested purchases.

Friends have come to my house to keep me company when I started to feel too isolated.

They’ve offered to drive me to and from my doctor’s appointments.

During yet-another bleeding scare, a friend took me to the hospital, then stayed with me while my uterus, cervix, baby and I were thoroughly evaluated. She was free to do this because another friend watched her kids specifically so she could be with me.

Friends have taken my son for playdates with their children, so he wouldn’t be house-bound with me too frequently.

One friend has driven my son to every Thursday morning soccer class, while she and another friend switch off hosting post-soccer play- and lunch-dates until afternoon preschool starts.

Two friends, with whom I’ve carpooled the entire school year, now handle all the driving shifts to and from preschool five afternoons a week.

Two friends organized a manicure and pedicure outing for the three of us, driving me to and from the salon.

And so many others have offered to help, from my son’s preschool teacher to acqaintences who’ve heard I’m on bed rest.

It’s been a long, hard year for my family, but our loss and stresses have been tempered by how much support and love we have from our friends.

I strongly believe that love makes a family, and our recent experiences demonstrate that, while we have a nuclear family of five (my husband, my two stepsons, ages 15 and 14, my son, age 5, and me), we are part of a much larger extended family of loyal friends.

Thank you to them all…

Today, I’m 32 weeks pregnant, the minimum goal my husband and I had hoped I’d achieve with this high-risk pregnancy. Regardless of my pre-term bleeding during my 25th week of pregnancy, my placenta previa, and my history of incompetent cervix, this baby boy of ours has stayed put for an additional 6 ½ weeks, putting his survival rate at 95%.

Personally, I think his survival rate is higher, because I was given steroid injections to advance his development 6 ½ weeks ago, when my pre-term bleeding began—and he’s big. And based on the gymnastics moves he’s performing in my belly, seemingly 24 hours a day, he’s feisty, a fighter.

I have been cursed in the fertility department, struggling with embryo implantation and suffering early pregnancy losses, due to my in utero exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES), which led to my underdeveloped, one-third-normal-size T-shaped uterus. And due to my DES deformities, my pregnancies are high-risk.

But my one prior successful pregnancy gives me comfort: When I was pregnant with my 5-year-old son, my complication was premature dilation due to incompetent cervix, which led to hospitalization, steroid injections and bed rest starting in my 27th week of pregnancy. After all that, my son was born on his due date, a rarity that occurs in only 5% of pregnancies, according to my pregnancy books, and he weighed a whopping 9 pounds 7 ounces.

My son did have to stay in neonatal intensive care (NICU) for the first five days of his life because he’d aspirated meconium (his first bowel movement, in utero), but his size and corresponding strength helped him overcome being born in acute respiratory distress.

The nurses told me that he was the biggest baby they’d ever had in NICU. And while there were strict rules not to look at the other NICU babies, the day my son was being released, the dad of a 4-pound twin, who also was being released that day, walked over and admitted, “I looked at your baby last night.” He continued, “That’s what a baby’s supposed to look like.”

If the little man inside of me is anything like his older brother, he will overcome whatever is thrown at him from this point on, because he’s also had the benefit of the steroids, and he’s also big for his gestational age.

So, today, for the first time in my seven months of pregnancy, I’m permitting myself to feel confident that, between now and my due date of April 23, my husband and I will be bringing our healthy, huge baby boy home.

I know there are no guarantees. Even at full-term, a 100% infant survival rate doesn’t exist.

But for today I’m allowing myself the luxury of feeling like my dream of having another biological child will come true. I’m still realistic. I’m still scared. But I’ve hit a milestone so significant that the tears in my eyes right now are not sad ones, but ones of hope and happiness.

Tonight, as my 5-year-old son and I talked before he fell asleep, I asked him if his classmate Charlie’s mom has had her baby yet.

“No, but today’s the due date,” he said, with the authority of an adult.

He then announced, “I don’t like babies in bellies. They don’t play with anybody. They’re just inside, alone.”

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

He continued, “I bet they want to come out to discover grown-ups.”

He paused, then asked, “Do you know what the word ‘discover’ means?”

“Yes.”

“It means babies want to stare at grown-ups with their eyes. Is that what ‘discover’ means?” he asked, questioning himself.

“Yes. Discovering means learning about something, and we can discover by seeing, by hearing, by touching. There are lots of ways to learn about something, including staring.”

“I bet our baby will want to see our house—because it’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking full credit for the beauty of our home.

“Except for the holes,” he stated. Our house was built in 1927 and has several holes, primarily in corners, near the floor. “The holes aren’t beautiful; they’re dark. I’m afraid of the dark.”

“Yes, our house is old, so it does have some holes.”

Completely changing the subject, he said, “The baby might want to sleep with us.” Then he asked, “When is the baby coming?”

“Our baby or Charlie’s?”

“Ours.”

“Well, he’s due in two months.”

“Two poopy months?”

“No, two diarrhea months,” I deadpanned.

Unable to stop giggling, he struggled to ask, “Two diarrhea months? Did you say that to make me laugh?”

“Yes, potty mouth. Yes, I did.”

Little boys and their potty mouths… Growing up with four younger brothers and now serving as stepmom to two teenage boys and mom to a 5-year-old son, I’ve had to adapt. Soon—in two poopy and/or diarrhea months or less—I’ll have another son with the potential to be a potty mouth, but I’ve learned to appreciate boyness. So I can’t wait.

And neither can my 5-year-old son. Babies in bellies are boring…

I’ve long heard that, as women age, they have to make a decision: face vs. ass. Via an Internet search, I just learned that this age-related dilemma was first vocalized by Mae West in the 1930s. The theory is that women have to choose whether to (1) be thin, resulting in a nice ass, but gaunt, older-than-their-age face, or (2) gain some weight, giving them a perhaps-too-ample derriere, but filled-out, less-wrinkled, younger-looking facial features.

Having gained 55 pounds in the past 11 months due to infertility medications, emotional eating, pregnancy and six weeks of bed rest, my ass is super-sized. I’m on track to be the largest I’ve ever been: I’m only seven pounds less than when I gave birth to my son, on his due date, five years ago—and I have two months of pregnancy to go.

This weight gain, complemented by very unflattering pregnancy symptoms, has me feeling unattractive because I am unattractive at this point. But throughout this tough, high-risk pregnancy, I naively thought I had one thing going for me—a younger-than-my-age face.

Earlier in my pregnancy, when acquaintances would ask how I was feeling, I would be honest about the differences between being pregnant at 36 versus 41. And many of them would exclaim, “Forty-one? You look so much younger!”

And I was holding on to this, sad to say, because every other physical asset is long gone.

Then tonight, as my son—who started reading on his fifth birthday two weeks ago—was reading to me before bed, he stopped short and said, “I don’t have any wrinkles on my head.”

Not seeing any link between this question and the text in his reader, which was along the lines of “Dan has a bat. Dan can tap, tap, tap the bat,” and so on, I simply answered, “No, you don’t.”

“Did you do this a lot?” he asked, scrunching up his face and forehead.

“Why?”

“Because you have a lot of wrinkles on your head.”

At this point, I asked him which character pictured on the pages had wrinkles on his/her forehead—the racoon, the cat, the kangaroo?

“None of them,” he said.

Apparently, my forehead is so wrinkled that it stirred him out of his reading revelry, leaving him no choice but to comment on it.

Now, I’m not a Botox® kind of girl, but, even if I were, I assume it wouldn’t be safe to have botulinum injected into the forehead of my pregnant body.

So I need to start strategically styling my bangs. Or wearing forehead-covering hats. Because after my son is born, I will lose this weight, improving the appearance of my ass. But if my face looks wrinkly when I’m at my all-time largest, it will look even older as I slim down.

Looks like my only choice is my ass…