Another milestone in the marathon

34 weeks! I'm so glad we count pregnancy in weeks now instead of months. Milestones feel much more achievable. Although I've only been on complete bedrest since last week, I've been capable of very little for months. Once the extreme nausea was over, I was already so big and unwieldy and contracting so often I had to lie down most of every day. Still, it's amazing how much more difficult it is to lie down for 24 hours/day as opposed to 20 hours/day. Our family motto is "it could always be worse," and it's not hard to remind myself that when I'm feeling the blahs and ceaseless body aches. The memory of the first four months is fresh. Anything is better than the nausea.

I've been mindful lately of all the women who have gone through childbirth before us. 100 years ago, I wouldn't have known that I was having twins, or that Baby A was breech and had the option of a c-section. I might have labored for days before dying. Or if I survived, there would be a high probability that one or both of the babies wouldn't. I lived for over a year in Paraguay and almost every family had a tiny house in their yard as a shrine to one or more dead babies. The norm was to have lost at least one baby. It was remarkable and very rare to meet someone with multiple children who had never lost a baby. In fact, I remember only one family where that was the case. The baby shrines were considered good luck. I found it heartbreaking, and yet beautiful too, that the mothers could turn a tragedy into something positive. What else can you do? Although bedrest is far from tragic, I'm determined to turn it into something positive. And I'm hoping these blog posts will make me more mindful of that goal.