Despite growing evidence to the contrary, I still don’t feel big. In some ways I feel amazed to be here, but at the same time over the last few weeks I’ve started to trust my body more again. The pelvic pressure is still around, but fortunately not getting worse. My cervix has been looking great through all this – nobody can quite tell if it’s the singleton or the progesterone, but I’ll happily take it. And I’ve slowly been moving from “if everything goes well…” to “we should probably start buying a few things over the next weeks”. Which is a huge change. Much as I love my milestones, it didn’t come quite with them, but in between, no doubt facilitated by all the good news we’ve been getting throughout this pregnancy. Even before I reached 24 weeks, after my husband brought up again how much he’d love to go home for Christmas, I talked about this with a fellow expat who has two young sons, and said that her trip when their youngest was 2.5 months old worked quite well. And my first thought was not about all the what-ifs, but that – we’d need passports. Shortly afterwards I started to worry about vaccinations, and I’m certainly not going to buy plane tickets before she’s here safe and sound and we have talked to a pediatrician whether this is a good idea at all, but… well, I’m not sure I can accurately describe how much of a big step it is to think that, likely, we will have a living baby with us by the end of this year. And how grateful I am for this.
Conceptionally challenged 
As an expat (my and my husband’s families are in the upper midwest; we’ve been living in Europe for almost a decade now), going home for my daughter’s first Christmas was a must. She was due mid-Nov., which meant we couldn’t buy tickets until pretty late, because we didn’t know her name!, but applying for her birth certificate and then her passport all went quite smoothly, we got the passport about two weeks before we flew. She was 6 weeks when we left, and it was far easier traveling with an infant than I expected — she basically slept the entire time, and the flight attendants were more than happy to help out w.r.t. making bottles, etc. Going home for Christmas meant I got to show her off to all the family — on my side, she was the second of three new great-grandchildren born that year, and on my husband’s side, she’s the first, and likely to be only, grandchild. That Christmas still stands out as one of my best Christmases ever.
Thanks for sharing! Your experience is very encouraging :)
I hadn’t even thought about the name aspect, but wasn’t going to buy tickets before she arrives anyway.
“Morphing” is a good way to describe it. :-) I used to think that after one of the “milestones,” I’d suddenly start feeling (mostly) confident, but it didn’t entirely work that way for me either. But it does gradually get easier to think about the future. Planning an international trip sounds like a lot to think about! but it could be a good excuse to do some research and consider what you’d be comfortable with, at least.
Glad you’re starting to accept this more and more. Yes you will have a baby before the end of this year. <3
Loved catching up on your past few posts. I think you’re going to feel everything more acutely because of where you’ve been – the lows will be low but the highs will be even higher and richer for it. I want for you to enjoy every second of buying goodies for strawberry baby as much as you can. You’ve earned every bit of that lighthearted joy. It’s not a betrayal to let yourself wallow in it.
I’m so glad you are starting to trust your body more and that things are going so well! Amazing to think about making traveling plans for Christmas with a little one in tow! Woo Hoo!