The thing is, I’m pregnant, and it is not what I thought I’d be. I didn’t (don’t?) have a built-in baby meter, or a hole in my life that needed one. Life goals: simple living, contained adventures, flowers, a bird feeder, happy husband, good books. There wasn’t BE A MOM on the list. Though I’ve always been the person to not want (or claim to not want, out loud) the big things in life until they were falling on my lap. I said to everyone (except that one friend who got under the me vs. you barrier) that I wasn’t totally sold on the idea of getting married, but then S popped up and patiently wormed his way into, well, everything. I can’t imagine anything better than being married to him, forever, now that I have it. I am banking on the same thing happening with the little being swimming in my womb.
Pregnancy switched from a maybe someday it would be ok thing to a well I’ll give it a try but won’t mind if it’s not in the cards thing to a yeah, let’s do this thing over the course of last summer. I think a turning point was my grandfathers funeral and the subsequent family reunion in July. Something in the combination of a revered generation blipping out of earthly existence and the new generation of children turning uncles into grandparents was stark enough to fix my place in the family tree into place in a way I’d never really understood before. I’m an archivist by nature, and I want to pin these things down. The times, the relationships, the stories, the photos. And that’s what brought to the forefront a desire to add to the story, if I can. I want to validate the existence of my grandfather by continuing his line. I want to give a gift to my parents. I want to solidify the fact that I exist, and here’s a way to do it. Are these good enough reasons to move forward? It’s too late to check myself now.
After a few months of discussion and bargaining and assuring each other that this won’t happen overnight, we pulled the prevention plug. And it happened overnight. This is why when I found out, I cried, and I cried for a week. I need time, so much time, when plans change to let my heart catch up, and I was banking on time between starting to try and succeeding to let that happen. S was sanguine and calm, I was convinced that I’d made a mistake and not-calm.
There is time built into the pregnancy process, and I’m very glad. There were the first few weeks of disbelief and buyers remorse and doubt and niggling joy when it was almost as possible that the pregnancy would fail as that it wouldn’t. And then another few weeks of nausea and exhaustion and apprehension and audible bursts of joy when it seemed that the pregnancy would stay real, after all. And recently, besides audible joy there have been audible heartbeats and calm and almost wholehearted excitement and almost wholehearted certainty that we’re actually going to have a baby. I can’t possibly wish to rush this process along (yet), because I still need space to get on board with my body and the body it’s holding. I still need space to just be me, to just be S + me. And I’m so grateful that there are still 5+ months left to have these things, and time.
I think all is well, so far. Check ups have been normal, bodily wholeness seems granted. My stomach had a few rocky weeks but not much since then. There are odd aches and twinges and sensations that I’m not always enjoying, but that I accept. There’s a curve beneath my already curvy belly. S palpates my abdomen at night and says, ‘woah, that’s your uterus.’ It’s ballooning up like a bottle, and what’s in it now is the size of a fist, or an apple. I can almost tell myself I feel a flutter from time to time but I won’t be sure until it’s more than from time to time. We’ve picked out names and are sitting on them patiently. In a month we’ll know which to give it.
I have a web of worries about the baby’s health and safety and a web of worries about the timing of things (this summer is going to have to have a graduation, a job or else, a new place to live, a baby, within two months). I have a head cold that won’t die and hair ties fastening my pants, and no impulse to buy baby clothes or baby things. So far I’m nesting only with books. There’s a lot to figure out. But in the meantime, I’m also finding myself able to soak up the reality of the situation bit by bit, and to revel in the fact that without my knowledge, without my input, my body is able to just do this. Uterus, how do you know how to make a placenta? How?! I’m in a whole new room of the house of my body, one that I didn’t even know existed.
I’m feeling loved and supported, most by S, who has sworn off raw onions, though he loves them, because the smell of his breath after onions is enough to make me want to smother him in his sleep. He buys me milkshakes and cooks solidly nutritious and comfortingly bland food when that’s what my stomach needs. He holds me and reassures me and dreams with me and refers to me in the plural. He practices kissing without letting his beard scratch, for the baby. He reads books on fatherhood and can answer almost any pregnancy question I hit him with using his maternal and pediatric nursing textbook. He’s going to be such a wonderful, strong, engaged father. I have never for even a millisecond doubted this. I’m incredibly lucky. Beyond our marriage, I’m supported by excitable, cheek-kissing, hopeful families. Grandmothers, aunts and uncles who will babysit. Gifts of time and money. Tangible elation, encouragement, and love. And this other gift, which may be my favorite thing about being a proto-mother: I find myself in the middle of a whole cloud of other expecting mothers. This is the year of having a baby, and to be sharing the process with an unusually vast number of others I love who are going through this adventure at the same time is such a treat. My phone is full of messages about babies and prenatal checkups and symptom comparisons, and my arms are always full of hugs from or for them. This is another thing I couldn’t have planned, and I can’t always comprehend, but it’s easier and easier for my heart to catch up with my own situation, when there are just so many other woman for whom my heart is bursting.
That’s where I’ve been--in the weird middle between doubt and certainty and between concept and reality. I’ve been eating a lot of fruit.
