The Early Pregnancy

For the first four or 5 months I believed or at least wanted to believe that life while pregnant was going to be pretty much the same as life while pregnant with Isabelle was... I was wrong. I knew this intellectually WAY before I allowed myself to believe it emotionally. For starters, I worked until 5 (yes 5) days after my due date with Isabelle and felt guilty calling out sick on the day I went into labor. I mean I didn't go into labor until 7:00pm I am a teacher... I could have worked the school day if I had put in some effort!

This time around was different. I felt tired the first 3 months with Isabelle, but as if `by magic I felt the BEST I have ever felt in my life during months four all the way until about 2 weeks before she was born. I kept waiting for this burst of energy, this feeling of excitement, this feeling that anything was possible... it never came. I continued to interview for teaching jobs until I realized that with a due date in November and the School year starting in September I was out for at least a year. Financially this was not a good thing, and I realized this before Jason... our financial planner. So, since I was reading lots I decided the way to share this realization was through reading parts of books to him. The one we found particularly useful was When You're Expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads, Revised Edition: Proven Guidelines for a Healthy Multiple Pregnancy. Aside from the fact that it gave a little more of a realistic impression of what pregnancy was like when expecting more than one baby, it went into the diet, possible need for bedrest and likelyhood of early delivery.

Still the realization that finding a job was not going to be a realistic goal for me was not a good thing. I called it the "Death of Happiness" period of the pregnancy. We had just purchaed a house, found that Jason's employer's idea of about the same salary really meant $4.00/hr less and now realized that we were going to be struggling for at least the next year financially to even keep our home. Honestly, I am not sure how we did keep our house, but we did!