Who Let Me Make a Human?!

Dear Sprout,

This is our last post until ultrasound day. Apologies to all of our friends and family who look forward to the updates on Saturdays. I can only imagine what next week's post would look like. I imagine it would go something like this:

OMG! ULTRASOUND DAY! BOY OR GIRL OR BOY OR GIRL OR OMG BABY!! IS BABY OKAY IN THERE?! NERVES! FREAK OUT! PANIC!

Even I'm not that masochistic. So instead, I plan on spending the day with your nini. We will put together your crib and get your room in some sort of order and I will ignore my nerves about the ultrasound to the best of my ability. I will desperately cling to the last remaining shreds of sanity I have left.

I keep having the most horrible dreams. I know it's a normal side effect of all the raging hormones but they just don't help my mental state. Between losing either you or your father every night in a horrible dream I have to shake myself awake from... more waiting to know you're okay is driving me mad. How do people not spend 40 weeks in a sheer state of panic while pregnant?

I want to be one of those calm, relaxed pregnant ladies who just love being pregnant and the idea that they are growing another human. I really do.

Not happening.

Don't get me wrong, kid. I love you. I love that we made you. I love that you get to be a part of both me and our dude. I love that we get to spend the rest of our lives getting to know you.

The idea that I am your current housing unit and that I am ultimately responsible for bringing you safely into this world... the pressure is overwhelming. You are a person thing and I (ME! of all people!) am entrusted to be your mother.

Holy. Crap.

Do you even know what this means?

Not only do we have to make it through another 20 weeks (20 WEEKS), I have to then remember to feed you and entertain you and teach you. I have to teach you to laugh and share and never to be a bully. I have to help mold you in a full-grown human who loves and treats people fairly and doesn't make your parents' lives miserable during the teenage years. (Karma. I know it's coming.) I have to help you with homework and make you stay in school and somehow support you, even when you make terrible decisions. I have to try to instill patience in you, when I have none myself. I have to fill you with a sense of self-worth and personal responsibility and, holy crap, I am barely there myself.

All of this and you're not even born yet.

I wonder if everyone has these hysterical fears or if other people just have their shit so together they know they are going to be awesome at making babies. I hate those people.

My complete incompetence to raise a child without serious bodily harm is probably best illustrated by this story:

At work, I have a phone charger to keep my phone plugged in while I'm working. For a few weeks now, every time I picked up my phone I would be shocked. For weeks. I never even bothered to contemplate why... just went on getting myself shocked. Just yesterday I happened to notice that there were multiple wires sticking out of the part that plugs in to my phone and threw it away. Who knows how long I would have to just allowed my fingers to be shocked without regard if I hadn't seen the wires?

WHO ALLOWED ME TO CREATE LIFE??

It looks like you're stuck with us and all of our shortcomings. And a ridiculous amount of love. And a promise to try our best not to let you get shocked or run into walls too much.

All of my love and numb fingers,
Your mama