Baby baby baby. Something is making me cranky. Irritable. I smell people’s breath and I don’t like it. But soon all I’ll smell is you, your little head, your thin thin skin, in my arms and your smell will bloom everywhere.
I feel you in various ways now—little earthquakes deep within, heavy weight when I bend down, something in the way during stretching, sleeping, being. Looking like a pregnant woman, visibly carrying my round tight future.
5 ½ months. I sleep on my sides and my hips fall asleep. Sheet creases embedded when I wake up to pee two, three, four times a night. Wake warm; feel pressure; sit up; grab robe; dodge cats; pee; return; warm again.
I’m playing music for you everyday; I have an iTunes playlist and I wonder if that concept will be relevant for you when you’re old enough to read this. It has many of my favorite albums on it—538 songs. Joni Mitchell is fading right now, replaced by a spunky jangly Billy Bragg and Wilco. This album—Mermaid Avenue—is perfect for dancing with a baby. We’ll twirl around and bounce and you’ll learn to clap along and bob your head and we’ll show you off to everyone we know.
There are so many people waiting to meet you; you’ll have a slew of aunties, uncles too, but so many aunties. All these women with so much to tell you. Landslides of advice, endless days of stories.
Back to me, because that’s where you are: I want to describe the sensation of your movements. To Jason I said it’s like the briefest private earthquake—a sudden shift in my foundation. And then I said it’s like that feeling when you’re on a plane and the ride is smooth and suddenly there is a blip of turbulence, a quick drop or shake, and you feel it in your gut and then the ride is smooth again. Your big kicks remind me of that. (Now playing: Mirah, and now Ryan Adams) Right now you’re still—sleeping, meditating, relaxing in that hammock that you’ve got there. Other movements are flutters, bumps, hops, hiccups. Sometimes I want so badly to see what you’re doing in there, but I respect your privacy, darling. That’s a wonderful thing about this stage of the relationship—we are so together, but you get to stay hidden. And right now, in moments like this, I’m also hidden. So we’re both alone in this wondrous way. And yet we’re keeping each other alive.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Here’s one I want you to know. We can all sing along. Now Tori Amos singing This is not real, this is not, this is not really happening…You bet your life it is. Sometimes, often, this is how I feel, but not in a bad way you see, but in a very calm and practical and oh my god ok way. As in I am doing something, whatever, standing sitting walking moving and I can—still—forget for a moment that I am pregnant, there is a baby inside me that will emerge fro my body, that will be ours forever, that will alter the course of our every single day and moment. And forget is the wrong word, because it implies some sort of process, some act of un-remembering, and for me, it’s more that the fact is just not in my roiling thought pattern for this one moment of consciousness—and I sit down to pee and I’m thinking of houses and pets and work and the weather and I look down and there is this belly, this round hill, and I think oh whoa. Right. This is…happening.
You bet your life it is.
You bet your life it is.
And how enamored we are of this fact.
I feel you in various ways now—little earthquakes deep within, heavy weight when I bend down, something in the way during stretching, sleeping, being. Looking like a pregnant woman, visibly carrying my round tight future.
5 ½ months. I sleep on my sides and my hips fall asleep. Sheet creases embedded when I wake up to pee two, three, four times a night. Wake warm; feel pressure; sit up; grab robe; dodge cats; pee; return; warm again.
I’m playing music for you everyday; I have an iTunes playlist and I wonder if that concept will be relevant for you when you’re old enough to read this. It has many of my favorite albums on it—538 songs. Joni Mitchell is fading right now, replaced by a spunky jangly Billy Bragg and Wilco. This album—Mermaid Avenue—is perfect for dancing with a baby. We’ll twirl around and bounce and you’ll learn to clap along and bob your head and we’ll show you off to everyone we know.
There are so many people waiting to meet you; you’ll have a slew of aunties, uncles too, but so many aunties. All these women with so much to tell you. Landslides of advice, endless days of stories.
Back to me, because that’s where you are: I want to describe the sensation of your movements. To Jason I said it’s like the briefest private earthquake—a sudden shift in my foundation. And then I said it’s like that feeling when you’re on a plane and the ride is smooth and suddenly there is a blip of turbulence, a quick drop or shake, and you feel it in your gut and then the ride is smooth again. Your big kicks remind me of that. (Now playing: Mirah, and now Ryan Adams) Right now you’re still—sleeping, meditating, relaxing in that hammock that you’ve got there. Other movements are flutters, bumps, hops, hiccups. Sometimes I want so badly to see what you’re doing in there, but I respect your privacy, darling. That’s a wonderful thing about this stage of the relationship—we are so together, but you get to stay hidden. And right now, in moments like this, I’m also hidden. So we’re both alone in this wondrous way. And yet we’re keeping each other alive.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Here’s one I want you to know. We can all sing along. Now Tori Amos singing This is not real, this is not, this is not really happening…You bet your life it is. Sometimes, often, this is how I feel, but not in a bad way you see, but in a very calm and practical and oh my god ok way. As in I am doing something, whatever, standing sitting walking moving and I can—still—forget for a moment that I am pregnant, there is a baby inside me that will emerge fro my body, that will be ours forever, that will alter the course of our every single day and moment. And forget is the wrong word, because it implies some sort of process, some act of un-remembering, and for me, it’s more that the fact is just not in my roiling thought pattern for this one moment of consciousness—and I sit down to pee and I’m thinking of houses and pets and work and the weather and I look down and there is this belly, this round hill, and I think oh whoa. Right. This is…happening.
You bet your life it is.
You bet your life it is.
And how enamored we are of this fact.
1 comment:
Thanks for the comment! I love your writings to your baby...nice to get a sense of what pregnancy can feel like.
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