The Longest Pregnancy

Due to the myriad of emotions that have accompanied this pregnancy and journey towards birth, due to the fact that the pregnancy and its effects has completely dominated our lives, I am chalking this down as officially the longest feeling pregnancy ever..... We have had that initial amazing feeling of being pregnant, but due to our previous 5 miscarriages that was immediately followed by worried, nervous; we have had first trimester sickness, threatened miscarriage, bed rest, then finally some good news - a good 13 week scan; but then as has been the sequence in this pregnancy, within days Eimhear gets ill with an extremely severe flu, while I am thousands of miles away and she is on her own (well, save her wider family) in Ireland, with Sean and Kai. Then she gets better and is able to bring the boys to Italy where we enjoy a great holiday feasting on the best of local food and wine in Umbria with friends and family. Again, we take control of the pregnancy briefly, but upon our return to Hong Kong, we get the news at our 20-week scan, followed by the anxious wait for amniocentesis results. This pregnancy has completely dominated our lives. Not for us the stuff of magazines and adverts where pregnant Mum hangs out with adoring older siblings to be. Their Mum has been in bed or on the couch and now Eimhear has had the two overnight visits to hospital, with suspected labour, then the dehydration of the vomiting bug. She feels good for a matter of hours at a time, then typically does too much nesting, organisation and not enough resting, so will then feel like crap again for a day or two afterwards. It is like we cannot catch a break and have any relaxation. It feels like the pregnancy has been going on for years at this stage. But, we are nearly there. We are now talking days until we get to meet Bryo and that is really exciting. Relief is one thought, but these last few days while the suspense is building and we head into the great unknown of whether the palate is involved and what the feeding is going to be like are also going to be filled with nervous anxiety.

We can't wait to meet him, we are hoping that his palate is intact. We are preparing for the fact that it might not be and have numerous cleft feeding bottles to try out. Eimhear will talk on this no doubt in due course.

The third wee man in the house is not yet here and I am already knackered and the sleep-deprived nights have yet to start! I think I will head to bed now and try and catch some extra zzzzs before the wee man arrives! Not long now. Thank God is all I can say.