Preparations

My due date is 6 weeks from yesterday. My baby daughter in the making has been flexing her legs and arms, and I'm pretty sure over the last few days she's dropped even farther down into my pelvic area. I think she's gotten bigger too-- I can feel her head and shoulders move now, and not just the adjustment from side to side of her booty and legs.

I wonder how I'll feel when she's not in here anymore. She is so literally close to my heart, and consideration of her well-being is ingrained in every move I make, however conscious or subconscious. Even the shape of my hugs have gone from a sturdy H to an A-frame. On the one hand, I've grown very accustomed to having a person occupying my body, and on the other hand still find it so alien. What my body has done and is doing and will do completely amazes me.

I'm in this phase of arming myself with stuff-- reading books and taking birth classes and trying to demystify the whole thing so that I can approach the birth without fear. I'm hoping that the more I know about what's going on with my body, the less I'll associate the pain with fear, and the more smoothly it will all go. Given that we don't even know what hospital we'll be delivering at, and thanks to the closing of St. Vincent's, won't really know till it's time to deliver, all of this preparation is helping as much as can be expected.

Baby Long-Legs

I think this bean has long legs. It would make sense because her dad does. She is stretching all the time now, and pushes her booty into a lopsided mound on my left side, which gets really pointy. And then she presses against my other side with her feet. So I'll have this pointy mound to the left, with a straightened out stomach in between, and then a protrusion on my right.

I can also feel her hiccuping. With her booty to the left, below is her back, and the hiccups originate from that left side. Tiny rhythmic hics from her swallowing practice. I'm trying to stay hydrated ("watering the baby", as I like to think of it), and hope it's helping to keep things flowing in there.

Next acupuncture appointment soon. Birth classes start next week. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines...

The Space Between Us

Weeks are speeding by. The birth of myself as someone's mother is on the horizon. Sometimes I put my hands on my belly and think about how there is no space between us. There are layers of skin and flesh that surround her body, kept some distance from my head where the wondering happens, but really she is me. And I am her. The outside of her body is bathed in the insides of mine. The inside of her body is created from what I am, what I think about. We are each other.

In creation, I want to add ingredients like dancing and pragmatism and compassion and genius. The spinach I eat for our bodies contains calcium and iron, and that part is easy, but I can only hope that the joyful tremors shaking my body from my laughter will be used in the fabrication of her light and elated heart. I hope the love I feel for simple things like hugging and cooking and springtime help to form the blue box of her mind, help to shape her ability to understand that she is a gift and a light. I want her strength to shine, and when I look at her, I want to be reminded of serendipities and synchronicities and ephemera, of lucky stars and worthy challenges and a love-filled life whose brilliance is unmistakable.

I like to think of her practicing her smiles in secret, grinning in my torso. She presses her little feet against my belly and I press back and dance her around when she gets very squirmy. I know this is the beginning of the awe I will feel for having participated in creation on this level. I hope I will always be able to remember, with gratitude, the visceral, ecstatic force of our inter-nestled lives.

Hunger is Much Less Endless...

Crazy eating has leveled off. And therefore so have my ruminations on the topic. Rounding out nicely, still wearing normal pants, tai chi twice a week, long walks home over the BK bridge mixed in. I can't believe there are only 9 weeks (give or take) left.

On Endless Hunger, Part 1

Like a lot of women, I fluctuate in my struggle with eating too much as a normal, non-pregnant person. In non-pregnancy, I have a full, cognitive understanding that maintaining a healthy weight, stamina and muscle tone is essential, and I try to keep the cumulative result of overindulgence at bay through regular exercise and balanced diet. I've worked very hard to to cultivate the discipline required to keep up a decent regimen. For the most part, I've been successful. Even still, the balance has been known to shift towards laziness and non-healthful eating on its own. And then I get back on track. And then comes pregnancy to add its share of boat-rocking.

I was pretty nauseous during the second half of my first trimester, and eating seemed to help. So I ate through it, and ended up gaining a lot of weight in those first couple of months, which was pretty alarming. On top of it, I've read that you're supposed to gain the most weight in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters. But I'm hungry! And doomed! The numbers on the scale keep going up!

Being pregnant is tiring (I recently read that a pregnant woman's body is as active at rest as a person engaging in mountain climbing). Because you're tired, you exercise less. Exercising helps curb appetite. So less activity plus an unchecked appetite results in spiraling lethargy, continuing the pattern. And this isn't just ANY unchecked appetite-- it's this endless hunger that comes and goes, but mostly comes. It has a mind of its own (the control center for which is located in my belly), and it's relentless.

I've had a lot of varying and conflicting thoughts on all of this-- it has always been a struggle, after all-- the fact is, my body gains weight more readily than it loses weight. In my response to that there's resistance and nervousness about being able to get back in shape, particularly in the face of what you read and what society and people ominously tell you. On the other hand there's a resignation and a stubborn unwillingness to beat myself up over something that is natural-- of course I'll lose the weight and regain my previous level of fitness. Ultimately it's the balance I'm after-- the goal of achieving optimal weight gain to support the growing little bean while keeping the excesses in check.

Pregnancy and Parenthood as Abstractions

When I'm sitting at my desk, working, or walking briskly somewhere, I can forget I'm pregnant. When I first wake up in the morning, I'm still somewhat taken aback by the large belly passing by in the mirror. Reminders include the usual suspects-- heartburn, totally forgetting what I was about to say (or do), leg cramps, baby kicks, etc-- but these are all here and now, and merely involve my present self, embodying this new state. The new state, of course, has required adjustment for sure, but not that much more than embarking on a new diet, exercise, or sleeping regimen as a normal course of personal growth would entail. The new state doesn't REALLY foretell the drastic ransacking that my life as I've known it is about to endure.

Making the cognitive leap to being someone's mother has been slow. It comes in gentle waves-- like the recent one in which, as I stood in the middle of our newly empty, former-bedroom-soon-to-be nursery, a vision of my new life flashed before me: the waft of sweet baby smells; hearing a gurgling and happily awake little one; seeing her stand, eventually, against the bars of her crib. What I can't quite do is piece everything together into the whole it soon will be.

But, I will savor living this transition-- enjoy the space between my old life and my new life, and relish this unique perspective, this entire experience, as much as possible.

Things I Miss

There are the obvious things I miss, like a glass of wine or a pint of beer (I know it's okay to drink a glass of wine or beer, and I have zero judgment of others who do so while pregnant, but for me it feels best to abstain entirely. Just a personal thing.).

Missing alcohol is the least of it:

I miss stinky cheese-- like a nice blue cheese or some far-out unpasterized goat cheese concoction from a lovely foreign place.

I miss eating a nice piece of raw fish or several-- like yellowtail or tuna sushi. I really really miss a good deli sandwich. All I want is a turkey and cheese sub with oil and vinegar.

I miss flopping on my stomach for a nap, training kung fu with boundless energy, being able to tie my own shoes AND breathe at the same time, bending over without feeling like a giraffe (you know how they splay their legs all awkwardly? That's my functional but ungraceful strategy), and I miss cuddling without fidgeting.

I miss being able to breathe while I'm laying flat on my back. I miss not feeling protective of my stomach when I'm on a crowded subway. I miss my firm booty and being 25 lbs lighter, not becoming winded from climbing a flight of stairs, and being able to see and/or maintain my own nether-regions.

But! Writing this has made me consider what I love about being pregnant, and as I round the corner to being 6 months pregnant, it might be fun to focus on that a bit.

Kicking: The Good, the Bad, and the Weird

I keep telling myself: Getting kicked is okay! Because in our world, kicking and getting kicked usually implies some kind of unhappy aggression, and unless you're a Rockette or David Beckham/Mia Hamm, or a football, it's not that awesome.

The little lady in there, whom we sometimes refer to as the baby kung fu panda, likes to kick. When she kicks a lot, it triggers these insecurities I have about how good of a mom I'll be. I fast forward in my mind to some knock-down, drag-out fight we're having when the baby panda is a teenager and she really hates me-- especially when it's 4.30 in the morning and the kicking lasts for 45 minutes.

Getting kicked in the vagina from the inside out is also really weird. It feels very science-fiction-- like she's found the exit and wants to make a run for it. But, I also know that really she's just flexing and stretching in there, and that for the time being she still has plenty of room, so that's why I can feel it so much.

Just for the record, the sci-fi weirdness and the perceived aggression are not the predominant feelings I have about the kung fu going on in my abdomen. I take great comfort in feeling this little one, obviously strong, making herself known. She's in another dimension right now, in her microcosm of evolution, a fluid-breathing bundle of instincts and reflex. I want her to be strong and joyful, smart and aware, graceful and gracious. So maybe I'll just think of her dancing instead-- her happy-hour celebration before she comes out and we can dance together for real. Shake it, baby panda! Just not right on my privates.

Being Pregnant at Work

Being pregnant at work is kind of like being a Jr. High School kid all over again. Your body is changing. Your boobs are getting bigger. You're looking very womanly. It's hard not to be self conscious of your enlarged booty, or chestier sweaters, and of course, the belly. After all, these are people with whom I share a workplace handbook and sexual harassment policy. I shouldn't even be thinking about them thinking about my boobs getting bigger, or about HOW I got this way to begin with. Probably people are thinking about it all a lot less than I imagine, but it's all just so OUT there-- there's no hiding it.

Mostly the experience is pleasant-- I really do appreciate the regular acknowledgments that I'm going through something monumental-- but at the margins it can be weird. Maybe that's why people want to direct their comments towards the baby-to-be in there, and the cute belly I have, because we all know that it would be way too easy to cross the line into the gooey, hormonal, anatomical world of what it's really like to be gestating.

Nothing New

Billions of women have been pregnant before me, and billions more will follow. I recognize that I'm just a cherry in the giant pie of women bearing children. But that doesn't make my experience of pregnancy any less interesting or noteworthy (to me).

Perhaps our little panda would like to read these thoughts some day, and in doing so, see her mom as an actual human being, and not just a nudge (whom she loves very much, of course).