Baby grew again when I took a nap yesterday. Par for the course.
I’ve known for some time that eventually my belly-button would be under pressure and would become an outie instead of an innie. What I didn’t exactly understand about this is that it hurts, a little. Not in a bad way, but in a bizarre “My bellybutton hurts” kind of way. It’s just nothing one can describe accurately.
It’s so good to feel good. I think that’s the opposite of my common cliche/truism “woe is woe.”
I’m not sure if it’s the fact that Susie is making huge progress on baby’s room (and enjoying it) or that Ian’s working on the bathroom (and seems pleased as well) or that I’ve got spring jobs lined up with some interesting things with potential to happen later this year. Likely it’s all three. The sunshine sure isn’t hurting either.
I feel like I complain and get grumpy so often; it’s important to acknowledge the good stuff.
There is nothing quite like the introspection of pregnancy. I’ve been self aware and, at times, self absorbed before, but it is nothing on the state of plurality. In my own head, I hear myself thinking in a “royal we” grammatical form. As baby sits upright inside me, kicking my sacrum, and I consider the fact of two hearts beating in my singular body, there is no way that someone not pregnant can understand.
In the first trimester, I felt full of words, full of desire to share the scary and amazing world in my mind. Yet I was constrained by fear of miscarriage, by the state of untelling I would have to go through, by my own sense of personal privacy. I also couldn’t always find the medium between my medical terrors and the real life-and-death work my body was up to. My mind spun and swelled, crashing on its own rocks. I didn’t write about it. I didn’t really talk about it much. When I did, to a chosen few, all mothers themselves, I had just enough of a release not to feel so mentally explosive.
I am endlessly busy, and at times, rather put-upon to get through most social interaction. I am distracted at the same time I am fully focused. I lay in bed, in a state of tactile listening to the wriggling inside me. I find I could lose an hour or more if I would allow myself to do so. I sit working at my desk, enjoying my productivity while parts of my brain are wishing I was working on the house, nesting, planning, sitting quietly with hands upon belly.
I no longer have the words I did in those early months. I have a real being inside me that is beyond such tentative, useless things as letters, grammar, description. The royal we returns. We are hungry. We are aching. We are physical. We are best entertained by own company. We are quiet because when we open wide, we will roar. We are saving ourselves for that moment, yet we are ready.
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I have a small group of pregnant women that I talk to weekly who keep me sane, remind me of the person I am beyond the vessel, the worker, the fertile ground, or the one ignoring that fertility just to get through the day. We do gentle yoga together, going around our circle, telling one another whatever may be going on with ourselves, whatever that may mean. We share at a level that would be unwelcome out of its context. Mostly I know if they suffer my heartburn, my hip pain, my abdominal discomforts. I can’t remember their names, but I know their shapes and their approximate due dates. They are each precious to me. That woman is far younger than me, a single mom-to-be with an even younger roommate who does not understand her. This woman is my age, with a very challenging job, and it’s all she can do to make it to class once a week after containing herself and her exhaustion all day. I feel safe in their circle in a way that I don’t have the ability to describe.
Outside of this group, there’s another woman on my mind who ran on an related circle of another circle of friends. She’s young and wisely giving her baby up for adoption, despite her family’s misguided demands of her body and her life. During my first trimester, I read the online journal of another young woman who was planning and carrying out an abortion of a child she had no ability to see through these long nine months. Repeatingly, over the months I have been carrying, I continually say to myself and out loud, there is no way anyone should go through this who does not want the experience. This is beyond the fact of a child at the end of the gestation; this is a state unto itself, between all other states of being. This is a total body experience at its best and worse.
We are vessels, obviously, but we are so much more. Those who will not see it, and demand our actions to be otherwise, haven’t a clue. They’ve forgotten or they’ll never let themselves know this peculiar state of plurality. We are vessels for ourselves as much as for these mysterious children we’re carrying. We all will be reborn soon. We are desperately alone in the company of not only the baby, but of anyone else. It’s a dichotomous state that defies logic. It is great and terrible.
Filed by joy at 10:45 am under baby
2 Comments
Wow, that was stressful, but sooo much fun.
Bonus: Ian wriggling and jumping around on the floor when they ran the gadget play.
Double bonus: leaning out the front door, hearing the people cheering down in the strip to the left and up in Bloomfield. Ambient happy noise is really pleasant. Then there’s the horns honking punctuated with the fireworks going off downtown. What a vibe!