In count down mode ...

Well ... time sure does fly sometimes. I am 8 weeks away from induction today and to be honest I am ready. Tomorrow I am having a level 2 ultrasound to just check things out since we haven't had one in a while and I have been having some contractions (some are just the braxton-hicks but some are the real deal). I am really not worried about it - it's is funny the peace I have had through this entire pregnancy. I have no doubt in my mind that God is governing this whole thing and he is the one that is giving that to me daily. I just have this very strong feeling that all will be well and so I am just not getting to anxious about anything.

On a related note I read an article recently done on maternal stress and the baby. Now this one was studying animals, not humans, but they are wondering if the conclusions could be similiar. They found that when a pregnant mother undergoes prolonged periods of high stress conditions during pregnancy that the child (after birth) has higher tendancies toward fearfulness and is more easily affected by stress. This really made me think. I mean it has crossed my mind more than once (and apparently my mom's as well as she has said so several times) that as stressed as I was during pregnancy with Garrett if it caused some of his issues for the first few months of life (he had horrible reflux with projectile vomiting requiring meds at 2 weeks and then had months of colic-like behavior until almost 4 months). I know that the stress I was under, while understandable, could not have been good for him. It just made me wonder - not that there is anything I could have done differently as the situation was what it was right then. Just food for thought ... hopefully this one will be a little more laid-back.

On another note, Kevin and I watched a tv show that really hit home with us last week. It was Grey's Anatomy and one of the plot lines was a woman in her late 3rd trimester comes into the hospital for one thing, but they discover that her son has died (stillborn). They went through the dr's reaction, having to tell her, delivering the baby and holding him afterward. Man, was that difficult to watch. I was in tears most of the time, as was Kevin. Now we knew that this was going to be addressed in this particular show, so we weren't caught off guard so that was good. Kevin paused the TV after that segment was over and told me that he was proud of us for getting through that with Jeryd. That many couples don't survive the death of a child and how he was so incredilbly happy that we pulled together and got through it. I told him that I directly credit him for that as I was truly ready to just roll over and give up when I finally absorbed that our son had died, but he wouldn't let me. What KP did at the time was sit me down and tell me that as long as we stuck together we could survive this but if we didn't then neither of us would ever make it - that he needed me to not check-out and neither would he. I completely feel that God had us in his hands right then and lead Kevin to say those things to me and he gave us the strength to manage that pain. 2 and a half years later and I still just break down when anything gets too near to that spot in me -- grief is interesting.

Well, I should run. Need to take care of a few things while Garrett is napping.

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