The emotional process, weeks 3-12

In a nutshell (oh what a delightfully awful pun! Acorn, you're in trouble if you're not a word nerd!), my emotions over this first trimester have been intentionally controlled. As I mentioned in an earlier post, many dear friends have had miscarriages, and the first trimester is the highest risk for that to happen. So when we found out, the emotional clamp came out. I refused to be super excited, or super stressed, or super planny, or super you-name-it-I-was-not. I was not going to get attached to this pregnancy until the pregnancy attached to me.
That doesn't mean that the emotions don't sneak out from time to time; the hormones take away a lot of my say in that. While driving with a car full of family over Christmas, I played a song for them off of my ipod that I liked, and stunned myself by very nearly crying over it (Fireflies, by Owl City, in case you're curious). A few weeks ago, after a very early, very long day at my internship, S. teased me when he got home about lying like a lump on the couch, and I told him in very short and direct terms with absolutely no mischief in my voice just exactly where he could stick it. (Oops. I apologized later, after he acknowledged the insensitivity of the joke and I acknowledged the abrupt swell of my irritation.) Mostly though, it's Cool Hand Luke all day every day.
We have our 12 week appointment on Wednesday, and if they say it's okay to breathe, then I am intentionally unclamping. I'm ready to be excited, a little stressed, a lot more planny. I'm ready for the bump, the first kick, even the heartburn and the back aches, the list of names, deciding whether or not to learn the gender, picking the birthing method, and so on. I'm ready to swallow this experience whole (along with whatever food may be in the vicinity) and to have full emotions to go along with the ever fuller figure. I'm ready!