Insonmnia

I can’t sleep. I have been up since 2 am and am still hoping I can get some shut eye before my week in the hospitol. Yes, a week, because that is what they do here in Germany.

Tomorrow I get admitted for a planned c-section on Monday. I know. I should be much happier about the birth of my child, and I am to some extent. I am nervous as all hell. Surgery does not sound fun. My last child died from a massive strep B infection and so I am freaking out about all the stupid possibilities and uncertanties and wracking my brain for anything that might happen that I haven’t thought of yet. I know. Useless waste of energy that one is.

Oddly enough I have been mostly calm leading up to this, with only a few manic days peppered in here and there. I am not really thinking about it. If I do I change my thoughts to more pleasent, positive, and productive thoughts. But tonight I can’t sleep so I think I just need to get my worrying “out there” and be (somewhat) done with it.

So here I am. 5 am. 3 cookies and a bottle of water later, and I still can’t sleep. There isn’t anything worth watching on TV. I don’t feel like investing time in a book. Mom is here but well, it’s 5 am. I wonder if now is a good time to clean out the old towels and sheets from the linens. That would be a quiet task. See? Total avoidence of what is about to happen. I’m good at it. I don’t know whether it’s survival instinct or good old fashioned denial, but I am good at it.

I WILL bring this child home. I will.
I have to go cry now.

Thank you

It was a normal morning, like any other.  Andy and I were wondering what we should do with our day.  We did a quick clean up on the house, nothing exciting at all.  Andy went to take the garbage out (yes, that’s how mundane this day really was) and nearly fell into a big bag of goodies.

We weren’t expecting anything from anyone.  Neither of us have a birthday.  We were completely stumped about this mystery package.  We thought maybe it was for one of the neighbors instead.  Regardless, we started going through the bag to see what was in it.  There was: a bottle of wine, 4 bags of highly addictive German christmas cookies- now dubbed the crack cookies, and a very soft, white stuffed moose.  At the very bottom of the bag was a thank you card.  (In German of course.)

Andy opened the card and started reading.  “It was almost a year ago now and I never have thanked you properly”, it read.  None of this was making any sense to us.  “You flashed your lights and made us pull over.  Just a couple more meters and our wheel would have flown off, causing an accident”.  Ah!  Of course!

Almost a year ago Andy and I were driving home down our 2 lane country road.  It was dark and cold at the time and mildly rainy.  There was a large van, full of people in front of us, and Andy noticed that one of the rear tires was wobbling horribly.  “What should I do”, he had said.  “Should I stop them”?  I remember answering with something like we don’t want anyone to get hurt, when all of a sudden one of the bolts went flying off the tire and across the road.  Andy flashed his lights, and after a few minutes got the driver to pull his van over.

Turned out this man was taking his wife and a bunch of her friends to some holiday dance show.  After a quick explanation he was in the back of our car and we were on our way to his shop to pick up a new van.  We never told him our names, only that we lived in Verlar and that I am an American and Andy is German and works on windmills.  And almost a year later he tracked us down and surprised us with a thank you bag of goodies.  We never expected anything, and yet were so touched to receive it.

Isn’t that cool?