January.

It strikes me that the month of January has much significance in my life.  My mother was born in January.  I love Capricorns.  Much later, I started dating my husband during a cold and snowy January in Amherst.  He's a Libra.

B was conceived in the January in which Obama was inaugurated for the first time.  Once we had decided we were ready to start a family, it took us a while.  If I think hard enough I could probably tell you the day he was conceived.

Last week I realized that last year, in January, I was three months pregnant with W.  At Christmas, he had been just a secret in my belly.  You could probably smell anxiety as I walked... We were having the same tests - the quad screening - that we had had with baby girl.  I forget the date of the first ultrasound but I know the room it was in was where I had an ultrasound of B once.  I also had the blood test. I tried not to tell many of the health professionals about what had happened because, well, I didn't want to talk about it.  But I told the ultrasound technician who of course brought in a doctor who saw some alarming things.

It's kind of a long story but we got a call from the midwife and I cried for who knows how long and thought it was going to be the same.  We ended up going back to the hospital, to see J and Dr. Amazing and we had to have the CVS done again.

It was on Martin Luther King Day last January that J called to tell us that the baby was chromosomally perfect.  And this January, that baby is perfect in every way.

He cut his first tooth on New Year's Day and is working on the second as I type.

XO