Dear Gestating Baby

Dear Gestating Baby,

Wow! Here we are, 14 weeks into this pregnancy. You’ve existed for a full 12 weeks, which according to the experts means we’re likely in this for the long haul. This is such exciting news for me and your dad, as well as your two loving sets of grandparents and many other relatives and friends who are eagerly awaiting your arrival.

According to the many websites I visit on a weekly basis, you are now about 3 to 5 inches long – about the size of your dad's fist - and weigh between one and two ounces. I’m hoping my growing uterus and placenta account for the 14 pounds I’ve gained so far, since you only weigh as much as a large paper clip. This week, you’re supposed to start practicing two vital life skills – breathing and peeing. Good luck!

I didn’t even know that your ears were previously located on your neck, but apparently they were. This week, however, they’re going to move to the more customary location on the sides of your head, for which I am grateful. I wonder what you can hear in there? Can you hear your dad and I arguing about what we should name you? Get used to that noise, because I think it’s going to continue for quite some time. You are developing vocal chords this week, so you could voice your opinion on the subject – only, you don’t know how to talk yet, so I don’t think we’d pay much attention to your little babblings, even if we could hear them.

Your thyroid gland is developing this week, and your body is producing its own hormones. “Hormones” is a word you may have heard your father and I saying a lot, these past few months, as it seems more than anything they dictate my physical state and thus my mindset and behaviour. I won’t lie to you, those hormones have been making my life pretty tough these past few months. But all the websites assure me that the worst is behind me now as we sail into the second trimester – time of glowing, energy, and peaceful bliss.

Well little baby, I’m glad you’re in there, and though I look forward to meeting you, don’t you be in any rush to come out. Stay in there until we’re all good and ready for you to be born, sometime next May. We’ll talk more, closer to the time, about what that’s going to be like – but for now, you just keep growing, keep breathing, and keep getting strong and healthy, I’ll take care of the other details.

Love,
Momma