Wednesday morning, 9:30 a.m.

Wednesday morning we have our 20-week ultrasound. A lot of people treat this as simply the gender ultrasound, which it is, but it's also the one they do to just generally look over the kid's anatomy and make sure everything is basically there and in place. For those of you who follow Joe's blog, this was the one where they first learned that Ira had CDH. So, while all I really talk about is yes, we do want to know, and yes, we will tell everyone, I also have in the back of my mind the knowledge that this routine check up doesn't always go routinely. It's not really something I want to talk about, and really, I don't have much more to say about it here than just the simple fact that it's on my mind. I don't pray about it, or even go so far as to hope that everything scans "normal." It's not like that. Whatever is there, is there; it's a matter of knowledge--Wednesday we'll know more than we do now about what already is the case. It's more like the feeling you would have about anyone you know and love--you just want things to be as good as possible for them, you don't want them to hurt or be sick or have trouble. You just want things to be perfect, because you love them. It's weird to talk about loving something I've never seen and (up to a few weeks ago) really had scant evidence was even there (sore boobs and amenorrhea are pretty indirect after all). But, there it is. It is love, even if the person loved has yet to make an appearance or even yet to become a person (a matter of some debate, especially since defining "person" turns out to be pretty damn slippery). I mean, how else would you describe giving up coffee?