{ Brain Dump...Not a Pretty One }

I want to blame it on something--third trimester hormones, the ridiculous busyness of April, lack of sleep--but to place blame anywhere other than my own heart, while convenient, is avoiding the real issue.

Fear.

I'm afraid we won't get the office-to-nursery conversion done before Miss Peanut is, like six months old. Judging by our current rate of progress, that fear is one I eagerly justify even as I type this...because if I believe it's legitimate, then I'm not sinning when I freak out about it, yes?

I'm afraid our home is going to be a permanent construction zone. At least one room has been ripped apart and unfinished since the roof leak in mid-January. Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy, every day walking around the same piles of unfinished we-haven't-had-time-to-put-this-back-up-yet.

I'm afraid life will never slow down from this not-sustainable-long-term-pace we've been on the past few weeks. Subconsciously, I brace myself: This is just how it's going to be. Mike's commute? His professional growth and change = investing time and energy? 8+ hours on Sundays, transforming a gymnasium and three trailers into a church for 700? Going to bed hours before my husband because his to-do list grows longer each day, while my capacity to help is slowly but surely diminishing as my belly grows? Is this life a hamster wheel we can't escape?

I want to write about the happy and the lighthearted: birthday celebrations and glorious spring days and how most of the time, I feel like Mike and I really get each other. In spite of how much these past weeks are stretching and challenging us, for the most part we have managed to stay on the same page, on the same team. Up until this week, those posts would've been easy {too easy?} to write.

But this week has been hard. Suddenly I feel like the cliched hormonal pregnant woman, crying at the drop of a hat and unable to cope with things that, a few days ago, I could have taken in stride. I'm overwhelmed by the undone. Frustrated by my pregnancy-induced limitations in helping whittle down the list of undone. Anxious. The emotional rollercoaster kicked into high gear on Tuesday, when I had to fast for nearly 12 hours for a gestational diabetes screening test {my results were normal}--that really turned on the waterworks. This was followed immediately by the news that Baby Girl's heart rate--which was at the low end of the normal range two weeks ago--dipped low enough when they checked again that we needed to do a nonstress test to monitor her heart rate and activity level for a longer period of time.

Ever since I became a cardiac sonographer, I've thought it would be the height of irony if I have a child with a cardiac concern; I know far too much about what can go wrong. And though in my head I knew it was likely just that Miss Peanut's normal rate is a bit slower than the norm, it freaked me out. In spite of a normal nonstress test and the midwife's admonition not to worry and that everything looked normal, I feel responsible. "Just keep track of her movement and let us know if it decreases," she charged me as we wrapped up the test. "That's something we need to know about right away."

So now I am the gatekeeper, the monitor of this tiny two-pound-person's well-being. On a deeper and much more serious level than I felt it before. It's up to me to determine if she's moving a "normal" amount throughout the day. The fear settles over me like a cloak. For a baby whose movements I still feel only sporadically, and which have only recently become pronounced enough to notice when I'm not holding absolutely still {thankyouverymuch, placenta that is smack-dab front and center in my belly}, determining what's "normal" seems like an impossible task. And the stakes are much, much higher than anything I've dealt with before. I am not adequate for this task. Comparatively, not being able to help move furniture or paint the nursery, and that baby registry I've barely started but which overwhelms me? It all seems ridiculously inconsequential.

On Sunday, I didn't know how pertinent Pastor Mark's words on fear would be for me this week: "Fear is not something to be explained, accepted, or accommodated. It is a sin to be repented of." This is not one of those pretty, I've-had-a-bad-week-but-here's-how-I-pulled-through-it posts. I'm still in the midst of the mess, much as I'd like to tack a nice resolution on this. And I know a lot of it is hormonal...but that doesn't make it any less real when you're the one working through it.

So there you go. Hopefully I'll be back soon, more at ease and ready to tell you about birthday fun and spring in the Northwest.