What to Expect: Week 19

September 7, 2009

Mango! Yummy! This week, the baby has got this delightful stuff called vernix caseosa all over her, which is a "slippery, whitish protective coating on the skin of a fetus; believed to have antibacterial properties." Not yummy, but apparently it serves an important function.

If you noticed that I called the baby "her" instead of by her name, this was intentional. I am a worrier. If it can possibly be worried about for even one minute, I will worry about it for hours on end. This is what I do. This week, I freaked out about what we're going to do about the fact that we live in a crappy school zone, which is going to require that we move to a better school zone, which will require that we buy a new house, which will require that we sell the house we have now, which will require that I FINALLY get the bathrooms remodeled like I've been promising Aaron. And the baby isn't even out yet! (Aaron was actually worrying with me about the school zone thing, but probably not as psychotically.)

So, I'm a worrier, and for this reason, I do not feel comfortable referring to the baby by her name. Maybe I will later on in the pregnancy, but for right now, I feel like it's tempting fate to just start referring to her as if she's a human being, out and about in the real world, because I know just how far we still have to go to get her here. I know people who have thought they were home free, with every reason to think they had nothing to worry about, who lost their baby late in pregnancy. I have been a really, really lucky pregnant woman with a really healthy baby, and I don't want to take that for granted. I know I'm weird, but I really, really can't help it.