Why I love November

A year ago today, I was just over 13 weeks pregnant with Lulu and things were looking up. We'd survived the tumultuous first trimester, which included one daily dose of Prometrium, two subchorionic hematomas, three weeks of bed rest, and no fewer than five middle-of-the-night E.R. visits.

A year ago, I was moving into the very brief sweet spot of my pregnancy, which consisted of the month of November and no more. The hematomas went away. I was let off bed rest. The nausea had abated and I felt suddenly, voraciously great. I felt so great that I tiled my kitchen. I found out at 15 weeks that I was having a girl, and J.D. and I wrote her name on the old linoleum floor before we laid the last tile, sealing her into our lives forever. We announced my pregnancy to friends and I basked in the glow of a thousand well wishes via loving Facebook comments. We rented a cabin in the Shenandoah Valley and made plans to spend Thanksgiving there--our first Thanksgiving alone, together, in seven years of marriage.

By December, it had all gone to shit again. I was diagnosed with cervical insufficiency and put on bed rest again, for the duration of my pregnancy. There was suddenly all this talk about cerclages, prematurity, birth defects, underdeveloped lungs. There was a lot of worry and heartache and stress. But man--November was awesome. I wish it could have been November for nine months straight.

Last November, I saw my baby's face for the first time. It was pretty much the awesomest November ever.


Except for this one.