Baby Dos

The 2nd Child Neglect Syndrome is already in full force. I am officially 26 weeks and 5 days pregnant, which I actually had to take a few moments to calculate. The first time around, I could tell you how many weeks, days, hours, and dog years that my uterus had been occupied. I'd tell complete strangers what fruit/vegetable was the most accurate representation of the length of Fetal Golding in any given week. This often was preceded by a quick google search for "rutabega" or "fig" so I'd be optimally informed. I scoured pregnancy books, websites, magazines, and yes, my old Ob-Gyn textbooks from medical school. Elle's name was chosen before she graduated from embryo status. I had my own personal parking space at Babies-R-Us, and my days off were spent lovingly planning nurseries, assembling Pack-N-Plays, and drooling over high-end strollers. There were weekly blog posts with expanding belly photos, meticulous attention to caloric and nutrient intake, and incessant anxiety over minutia (I haven't felt the baby move in 90 seconds! What IS wrong?!... WHY can't I hear the heartbeat with my stethoscope?! Why can I hear my heartbeat so loudly in my right ear? Is that a sign of fetal distress!?).

The second time around, things have been a bit different. As mentioned above, sometimes I am off by weeks when someone asks me how far along I am. I haven't made the first trip to Babies-R-Us, not even the website. Life with a 3-year old hasn't slowed down enough for me to even THINK about resurrecting the nursery, reorganizing baby clothes, or dusting off the breast pump. There hasn't been the first burgeoning belly photo, although it is definitely documentable. I sleep on my back. I might occasionally consume tiny amounts of caffeine (EGAD!) and have at least once or twice snarfed deli meat which may or may not have been properly heated to steaming (DOUBLE Egad!). So the 2nd child syndrome begins, even in utero. Please don't hold it against me forever, Elise. You do, finally, have a name. A name, which thanks to your loving Mommy and no thanks at all to your crazy yet insufferably peristent Daddy, does not contain the word "Danger". I think that makes up for a host of the previously described offenses, wouldn't you agree?

So to even the score, if ever so slightly, here are some photos of our sweet baby girl. If her in utero activity is any predictor, she will make a fine RiverDance member or kickboxer. I will try to maintain some degree of sibling equity, although I don't know if my iPhoto memory is large enough for another 2000 baby pictures.

We love you, E^2, and can't wait for your arrival.