Running right through it all

We’re having another baby. No surprise there – we mentioned it a few months back, and everyone knows. We’ve been through it all once before with Sierra, so there have been few surprises on our end as well.

Of course, something doesn’t seem right.

With everything going on in our lives, it seems I’m blasting through this pregnancy – it’s easy; familiar. Nothing is a surprise. We aren’t experiencing the pregnancy itself; instead, we’re focusing on the upcoming birth.

I’m excited to meet baby boy Vilhauer, but I’m running right through the journey to get there.

With Sierra, every month was a new discovery – an eagerly awaited change in composition, a few weeks closer to the due date, a shortening window in which we would still be considered childless. We were anticipating the stress and labor involved in being parents. We were learning together. We were ready for the entire process.

Now? It’s second nature. There’s no thought – especially on my end.

My fear is that I’m losing the connection. I know he’s there. I feel him move around, and I hear his heartbeat during doctor’s visits, but I’m not totally entrenched in the act of pregnancy – not scared shitless of whether we’re doing it right, thinking about it every second of the day.

It might be a bit of guilt over the relief I feel. We can do this. It’s easy. Raising a child is a task, but not an unpleasant one.

What I’m most worried about is that, when the time comes, I’ll have no memories of the pregnancy. They will be washed out by thoughts of Sierra’s increasing vocabulary and our impending move and our friends getting engaged and everything else that busies our lives these days.

Maybe it’s to be expected. After all – nothing is as precious as the first time, but that doesn’t make each time after any less important. Any less miraculous.

It’s only natural that I’m distracted this time around. The lead-up to the birth is something we’ve both been through. We’re not taking classes, and we’re not experiencing it simultaneously with three of our friends as we did two years ago.

Instead, we’re just keeping with our normal schedule – a schedule that we all depend on for sanity, and a schedule that our baby boy will eventually work his way into in two months.

Two months. It’s only two months until we get to meet baby boy Vilhauer.

The time has flown by. And I, for one, am wondering where the hell it went.