It’s official: baby has a name. We were really torn between two, but to be honest we’ve both been coming back to this one since the onset of the baby boy name game, so neither of us is at all surprised. I like rolling it around in my mouth and referring to his room as

X’s room

.

Baby furniture got here today and seeing a crib in that room, waiting for him, settles my heart and stomach a bit. We had our furious prep window and are now in this weird

hurry up and wait

frame of mind that leaves us unsettled all the time. The phone rings and we jump. Still, 33 weeks!

I realized we know NICU, but we don’t know it this way. Deuce isn’t going to weigh 2 pounds. He’s not going to have skinny, wrinkly little legs and arms attached to feet and hands that look like a baby bird’s stubby wings. He should already be twice the weight that Tess was, so this is a different NICU experience and I can open my mind to that. He’s already made progress in the womb that we had to encourage Tess through in an isolette. Who knows? He may even be able to breathe on his own or with low-flow. One of our NICU nurses told us yesterday that if he makes it to 34 weeks, he’ll probably only be in the NICU for two weeks! That wouldn’t even make us blink.

Managing our expectations and aligning them with his age will silence the nasty voices in our heads and hearts. The idea of seeing our son in my mind’s eye as a smaller and skinnier baby but more full-term is wondrous. Will he have a little fat? Will his eyes be more alert than Tess’ were? Will we be able to hold him the day he’s born? These are fragile hopes, hopes that grow as the days go by. We’ll fan the flames and try to be optimistic, which is getting easier by the second.