7 Weeks To Go... or Less?

The countdown

The closer we get to the due date, the more I'm beginning to worry myself about the whole thing. Since the start of the year my wife has undergone a number of scans and has had a whole lot of blood taken for tests. The gestational diabetes we are monitoring and things seem to be OK where that's concerned - the levels are not too high and her change in diet has meant she's actually lost a little bit of weight.

But, this in itself isn't such a good at this stage of the pregnancy - she is supposed to or expected to put on weight, especially in the final stages. Our baby is however growing quite well and in fact (according to the sonographer) appears to be a little ahead of its gestational age by a couple of weeks. This in turn means we're beginning to think whether our due date might actually be closer than we think.

So, my wife is losing weight, which isn't ideal, but our baby is bigger than expected at this stage, which isn't a bad thing really, and she needs to cut down on certain foods while trying to get more vitamins from others, which is difficult. There are so many things to think about!

I recently popped in to see my parents. I try to get there during the week a couple of times a month, as well as seeing them on the weekends. They were both in good spirits and I'm sure were glad to have someone visit. My mum was in the bathroom when I arrived. I heard the toilet flush and the water running in the sink, which I took as a good sign - even small things like this make all the difference at this stage in her illness. She might not be able to do any cleaning around the house or understands that the place might be getting messy (my father's eyesight is getting worse) but at least she manages to keep herself in decent enough condition and can use the toilet when she needs to.

I get the impression that mum thinks that my wife and I already have a child as she keeps asking to see her grandson, or how he is, or making little fun gestures. I keep telling her that he isn't here yet, but I wonder if she's thinking back to the not-too-distant past when we were pregnant for the first time. This makes me all the more desperate that things go well in the coming months, so that we can take our son to see my parents, and for them and my wife's family of course to see their grandchild.

My parents don't know that my wife and I visit a cemetery every so often, and leave flowers and like tea candles on a grave marked "101". We decided not to tell them as it's not something they should know about in their condition and at this time of their lives. We visited the other day and had noticed fresh earth had been dug up in the slot next to ours. Every time we see that, we know it's another baby that didn't make it for whatever reason, and that a parent or two or a family will have stood there at some point feeling as broken and lost as we did.