I would have been 37 weeks 1 day pregnant today. Yesterday I wanted to quit the cigarettes in preparation for TTC (trying to conceive) next month. As those of you who know me already know, as soon as my fertile days come around I have no problem quitting. All I need to think about is the innocent baby and that is enough to stop me from this selfish addiction.

Anyway, I was going out to the porch last night to smoke one (I have cut down to only a few a day though versus 10 a day). It suddenly hit me that I can walk normally and gracefully; I shouldn't be walking like that. I should be waddling. I also noticed durng the day yesterday when I looked outside something was different. And I DIDN'T like it. No snow. It's one more thing that reminds me of the last time I had Roald that is going to change, to go away. I don't want it to.

Have I mentioned how much I love "homecooking" lately? I have begun watching the 1980s Strawberry Shortcake videos yesterday while I cook and clean like I used to. Those are so familiar and I have them completely memorized, but they make me feel better when I am feeling down for any reason. I also want more sons, but I can't wait to have a daughter to watch them with! We are totally playing Strawberry Shortcake together! I will go eBay crazy when we find out we are having a girl someday!

I miss Roald so much. I wish I was still pregnant with him. So bad. I guess somedays you dig deeeper, but that is really what it comes down to. Grief can be so bitter and so painful, but usually that is all I say or think: "I wish he was still here." Maybe I'm not making sense. We have 37 more days until we are are going to start TTC again! AF (Aunt Flo) is due in 4 days. I know I hate the way I look and have issues with that but ever since May 21, 2008 when I got that first positive home pregnancy test (I was pregnant with Terry), I've secretly loved my body. Loved the way it works...loved it and felt so grateful I don't have the painful issues some other women have. Even after I miscarried Terry, one month later when I got that positive HPT on June 26 with Roald I loved my body even more. After labor and delivery of Roald I love it even more. I guess some people would rather miscarry than have to labor and give birth to a premature stillborn child, but I am glad I got that experience. I'm glad that, unlike with Terry, I knew Roald's gender; I felt him move inside me; I watched him wiggle around on an ultrasound; I have U/S scans of his body when he was living; I got to go shopping for his baby things; I got to name him with Bill; I got to hear his heartbeat. I am also so grateful I got to further that bond with him by having to labor to give birth to him. How I wish I didn't have that epidural for the final 3 and a half hours of my total 13 and a half hours. The pain and work is what a mother must go through to give birth; to me, it is proof to anyone who counts him as less than live babies or full-term stillborn babies that he was a baby, too. That I am a mother, too. I'm glad that my body losing him was not like it was with Terry: in the bathroom at church, at home, sitting in it in an E.R. bed. I had a suite in the maternity ward, the cart with the plastic baby bed. I had a birth experience. Even though he was dead, I am glad I got to have that. Those memories, painful as they are, are precious to me. They seem to validate my being a mother.

Okay, now I am crying. Time to go make stromboli dough...