Happy Due Date!

Depending on the calculation method, either yesterday or today was Carter's due date. I'll take the average and say he was due around midnight last night. It's so strange to finally be at this point, after which he would likely have been here if he'd been full term. He's several pounds smaller than he probably would have been. I weighed him Friday and he was almost exactly 6 pounds, which is in the range of a full term newborn. He'll be in newborn sized clothes in another week or so, and it will be time to pack away the preemie sleepers I've become so used to.

I still haven't quite gotten over his birth, I have to say. Every now and then something will remind me of how harrowing that experience was, and I'll be taken back to the feeling of loss I experienced. In a lot of ways, I felt like I'd lost Carter then, and it took several weeks for me to really believe that hadn't happened. Maybe now I'll be able to start to let that go a bit. It's hard to hear women talk about how huge they got at the end of their pregnancies, or tell the stories about how long they were in labor and how huge their babies were. During the years of infertility I got used to tuning those kinds of things out, and I thought I'd be done with those feelings of loss once I finally had a baby. I guess not.

We went out to dinner last night and Carter got lots of attention, as usual. When I wear him in the Moby it must really show how small he is, because people always comment on his tinyness. And then they ask how old he is, and I have to explain that he was a preemie. I remember reading somewhere that some parents of preemies get tired of telling the story and start to lie when asked that question. I haven't gotten there yet, heh.

Now that his due date is here, I'm not sure how I should expect him to develop. In some ways, he's ahead of where he would have been, and in other ways he's behind. I'm tempted to just not worry about those milestones and just watch him develop. Of course, if you know me, you know how much I like to do my research and know what's going on.

I thought we were making progress on breastfeeding for a few days there. I've been weighing him before and after feeding once a day, and for three days he was getting .7 and .9 ounces. But the last two days he was back down below half an ounce again. I know it's just a matter of time, but sometimes it feels like I'll be triplefeeding forever. I want to breastfeed more than anything, and I know it'll happen. But man, this is hard! It's just another thing in all of this that makes me shake my head and wonder why I have to do it all the hard way. :-P