The hardest part, for me...

…is not the knowing what, but the not knowing when.

We know what's going to happen, and we get ever so closer to it with every tick of the clock. And Every day I wake up wondering, will this be the day? And it's so damn hard.

I still don't know what I'm going to do. This is all entirely new to me...

Sigh.

Overheard at work today...

"How's the baby? It's getting close, yeah? October?"

Sigh. "Yeah." It's getting close, all right...

I'm still here. Still not curled up in the fetal position at the prospect of losing our son/daughter, but that sure as hell isn't to say that I don't want to be, or that I'm not having a hard time with this. I'm going along as best I can, but there are still some days.

Like I said elsewhere before, though, sometimes I don't cry. Sometimes my anguish just channels itself into my hands shaking...

Giving the baby as much as we can.

If you knew Sabra or me in real life, you'd know that we love to eat — particularly at certain San Antonio landmark restaurants. Well, we've hit up several of them in the last couple of weeks. What's that got to do with Psalm-Angel Guadalupe?

Well, right after Sabra and I got the news, we got the idea to take him/her to as many of those places as we could before the time came. Why? To give him/her as much of what we do in San Antonio as we could before the time comes. Yeah, there's no Fiesta or Rodeo, but of course there's not a whole lot we can do about that. So far, we've hit up Lulu's (best chicken-friend steak ever, w00t!), Armadillo's, and Broadway 5050. Sabra and the younger two (Marie and Douglas) hit up Bill Miller Bar-B-Q today. And I brought home Whataburger last week. (I should go for honey butter chicken biscuits this weekend…) What next? Most likely Schilo's Delicatessen, this coming Monday.

I can't explain exactly why, but strangely enough, this helps in its own minuscule way.

Haunting

(Sorry, that's really the best title I could come up with for this entry.)

Things haunt me. Come back to my brain when I least expect them, namely the memories of the ultrasound. I remember thinking, this can't be happening...

...missing leg...

...heart protruding...

...organs outside of the body...

...no diaphragm...

...rupture...

I remember my brain screaming, NO, NO, NO!

I remember saying, barely out loud to the ultrasound tech, "Rup...ture?"

I remember Sabra saying "Hush" as I said that...

I remember thinking that shit had gone rodeo for sure and certain, when Sabra asked if they could tell if the baby was a boy or a girl. We've always been diehard Team Green fans.

And all of this is going to haunt me until the day I shuffle off this mortal coil.

My thoughts from yesterday.

Like Sabra, I was also quite glad to find that the midwives were going to stay with her. They've always been good to her, and I think it's always good to have as much support as you can, especially in situations like this. I'll be honest. I would have felt that she was being abandoned. (I almost said we, but, well, that would have just sounded weird.) Put it like this: it's like we're heading into this really bad storm in a boat, and there's no way around, and they're along for the ride with us. It would have felt like they were being plucked out and flown to safety. But they'll be there, and that'll be good. I'll be there too, of course, but I am still quite glad they'll be there with Sabra through this.

And no, I didn't cry when we heard Psalm-Angel Guadalupe's heartbeat yesterday, but I came damn close. Other than the damn LBWC, the baby's just fine, heart thumping along like any other baby's. Take that all by itself and you'd never know s/he was going to die. And dear God in heaven I hate to say that, but...ugh. I guess I know the only way to deal with it for me is to face those hard facts head-on.

But I sure as shit don't like it — even though I know there'd be something wrong with me if I did.

Things I won't get to do.

All of this hit me yesterday...

I won't get to bounce the baby on my knee and make up silly songs. ("The Ballad of Princess Fartybutt" was arguably Daddy's finest moment.)

I wont get to hear the baby copy his/her older brother and ask me for "offee" (coffee) or "oda" (soda) as I am drinking it.

I won't get to feel the baby lay his/her head down on my shoulder, just lying there with me.

And all of this, all of this absolutely destroys me, over and over.

(Yes, I know, the "his/her construction may be a bit cumbersome, but I will be damned to hell if I call our baby an "it.")