Issues R Us

My brother called me yesterday to tell me that, at her 36.5 week checkup on Friday, an ultrasound estimated the baby to already be 8 pounds. She's been measuring ahead for several weeks and they've been keeping an eye on it. After Friday's ultrasound, the doctors decided that they'll let her go to 38 weeks on her own, but if she doesn't go into labor by then, they'll schedule a c-section for March 14, 15, or 17. The doctor wanted the 14th or 15th, but my brother and SIL specifically requested the 17th if possible. It's my grandfather's birthday (my mother's father, who died before we were born) so I guess that's why. Suckups.

So anyway, the baby will be here in less than two weeks. And even though I know it's not about me, I am dreading it. I am starting to realize that somehow I've tied up a lot of my issues about Joseph's death into SIL's pregnancy and now it's all coming to a head. I feel horrible, because so much of it revolves around the "new baby fuss" and that makes it sound like I just want to be the center of attention. But I don't think that's really it - I think it's more that I'm afraid that people will forget Joseph.

For example, I was thinking that I hope their baby isn't a girl, because I want at least ONE thing to be just mine and Andy's. If they have a girl, then ours will be nothing to get excited over. Plus I imagine being pressured to take SIL's hand-me-downs. Bleh. But then I started thinking that if it's a boy, everyone will make that sexist fuss over the "first grandson"--even though it won't be. My mother tries to tell me that Joseph will always be the first grandson, but I don't believe for a minute that that will be true when faced with the reality of a real live baby (especially one born on her father's birthday).

So, sometime in the next two weeks I will be expected to drive down and coo over them and their new baby that was born 9 months after Joseph's death. I can't stop thinking about it. And I had a nightmare about Joseph last night. In this one, I was still pregnant with him, but they'd somehow found the lung problem that would kill him. I was in the hospital and they were going to do a c-section, but they wanted me to go into labor first, and they told me they did not expect him to live afterwards. I was in an L&D room with my mother and there was a giant 3D ultrasound screen type thing in which I could see Joseph perfectly, rolling around in the womb.

It seems as though the further along I get in this pregnancy, the less confident I feel that the Pad is going to make it. All of a sudden all of the unresolved questions about Joseph's death are weighing heavily on me. The doctors never figured out why Joseph gasped in utero and took in so much fluid, and they never figured out why taking in fluid killed him, since he had the routine lung suctioning that all c-section babies get. The "one in a million fluke" thing was good enough for me last July, but it's not good enough for me now. This time I'll be having a section again, at 39 weeks. What if the baby's lungs aren't mature enough? What if the c-section causes some kind of fluid problem, since I read that one benefit of labor is to squeeze the fluid out of the baby's lungs? Would it be better for me to go into labor on my own and then go in for the c-section at an early stage of labor?

I'm not doing so well, all of a sudden.