We bundled up Sunday afternoon for a drive in the country, which is somewhat of a family tradition. Although we didn’t get much accumulation, the snow highlighting the trees was beautiful. The girls had been cooped up a wee bit much (myself included) and Caitlin was excited about the hubby’s promises that we would see horses. Amelia started to cry about 10 minutes into the drive. I think she finds wearing her winter coat while buckled in her car seat about as comfortable as a diaper wedgie, although she looked like an adorable purple Eskimo peeking out from the backseat. As the hubby drove, I fumbled through my pathetic CD collection as at one point I had the radio tuned to an Eminem song (not so comforting music for an 11-month-old!) I found this CD and knew it would do the trick. It’s a wonderful compilation of mostly classical music and it really is the proverbial soundtrack for my entire pregnancy with Caitlin. I listened to it daily while pregnant with her and we even listened to the opening song, Reverie by Debussy, en route to the hospital at 3 a.m. when I was in full swing labor and about to break the hubby’s fingers with my death grip. We listened to it while we watched Caitlin’s ultrasound video for the first time. We listened to it at Caitlin’s first birthday. To this day I can’t hear Reverie without remembering that special time when Caitlin was someone I had yet to meet in person, yet someone I felt like I’d known for an eternity. I popped the CD in Sunday afternoon while we drove through the countryside and as Reverie began to play Caitlin proclaimed from the back seat, “That’s Caitlin’s song!”

Any woman who has birthed a babe and had their breasts balloon to frightening proportions knows that the ole mammaries just ain’t what they used to be after such stretching and eventual deflation. The 2006 model of moi is a bit more relaxed, shall we say, and I don’t mean mentally. For weeks I’ve been eyeing these colorful bras in my dresser drawer that I bought in the last months of my pregnancy with Miss A. They were on sale at Target and well, you know, I can’t resist a sale and I needed a little color in my life and Lord knows a pregnant woman needs colorful underwire bras that could double as pool flotation devices. Seriously, I could use them as chip and dip holders. I just can’t seem to toss them but there is no way in heck I will ever be able to fill those puppies out again. After two pregnancies and breastfeeding two babies, my breasts may disappear into my ribcage when I lie on my back, but by God they were workhorses back in the day!

This week I made my weekly trek to TJ Maxx (because I am a closet TJ Maxx addict). They had all these lacy pretty things on clearance and I picked out about 60 bras to try on thinking at least one would fit. I found one I really liked that was comfy to boot. I wore it last week and it was like my girls had gone from riding in a VW Bug to a jacked-up monster truck…they were so perky! If my boobs were a passage in a book it would have BEEN IN ALL CAPS! Of course part of the illusion of perkiness was the fact that I was wearing one of those fitted lycra blend shirts (you know the kind…a size women’s small would fit my 3-year-old). Any way, all day I was self-conscious about my chest and its newfound perkiness. I felt like everyone was looking at me and wondering where the heck those came from. Yeah, right.

I went for my annual OBGYN exam yesterday (as if giving birth this calendar year wouldn’t have somehow cancelled that out) and it was a reminder that this is a year of closing chapters. For one thing we have decided Amelia is our grand finale baby. And yes, I realize that making this public knowledge is setting us up for a third “surprise.” I’m on the downhill stretch toward 40, however, and both Alan and I agree our all girl review is plenty to handle.

As I took the familiar crosswalk to the doctor’s building I thought about the many times I shuffled my burgeoning belly in and out of the parking garage for appointments over the last four years. My doctor told me that he delivered his last baby a week ago. He’s still practicing gynecology, but his baby delivering days are over. He’s also changed offices this summer, which only further reminds me that I’m entering a new post-childbirth phase. I glanced around the waiting room looking for a magazine to read and saw the new “Conceive” magazine (yes, it is a magazine focusing entirely on the art of conception). Won’t be picking that one up, I thought to myself. I actually read a fashion magazine first and then picked up a parenting magazine, completely bypassing the glossy pregnancy magazines with the fashionable pregnant mamas and their perfectly small baby “bumps” on the covers.
(Read on …)