She Looks Big to Me

The thing that's hard to remember with this kid is that she's still small, she's still fragile, and she's still a month out from being officially born. By all rights, she should be peering at me from an ultrasound, not a bassinet. The 8th month is when moms say "you know, the baby could come now and everything would be fine," and everyone around them says "stop that! you don't want the baby to come this early, it could have all sorts of issues." Penelope is still a preemie.

But from my point of view, she's huge -- almost a pound and a half bigger than when she was born. She makes eye contact (albeit briefly). She moves and picks up her head, shrieks like a banshee when I don't hold her the way she likes in the bath, and grasps fingers, binkies, and my iPhone wires for fun. She breastfeeds, for heaven's sake. Compared to where she was a month ago, she's Bam-Bam Rubble. So what's the fuss?

She's very close to coming home, and I have to grab the reins on my runaway motherhood and slow down. It is so hard to see her the way she really is, and give her time to catch up. It's not that I expect more from her than she can give -- it's that i'm so optimistic, I worry that I'll be too cavalier. On the other hand, I'm not afraid to handle her, not worried I'll break her -- from early on I was able to handle her IVs and leads with a decent amount of self-confidence, and I don't want to lose that.

She's just so awfully spunky. I vacillate wildly between "this is going to be so great" and "holy crap I'm going to screw this up so utterly." fun to be me!