Waiting

I go into your room periodically. I look around. I run my palm over the changing table and often there is a cat there, purring for a pat. The only thing missing are curtains, which I have ordered, but have not arrived yet. Hopefully you don't come out demanding curtains, but if you do, you are outta luck.

I know you'll spend approximately zero time in your room at first, except to have your diaper changed. That's okay. I mostly set the room up for me. I look into your crib (which looks enormous, by the way, I feel like I could sleep in it if I weren't so hugely pregnant) and I can hardly fathom when you'll be a chunky toddler, sprawled out from corner to corner with your bum in the air. 

I tap your bum a lot these days. It's one of my favorite parts of you. When you're shoving it into my ribs, I call it your squishy tushie and your dad laughs at me.

These last thirty-nine weeks have (mostly) flown by. I can't believe you will be here so soon! (Incidentally, any time you want to come out would be just fine. I'm getting a little tired of hefting you around, and having heartburn, and not sleeping, and peeing every hour.)

I watch you move inside me, and it never fails to make me smile. My belly jumps and bulges from your little knees and I'm not going to lie, it's not always comfortable. I told your dad that babies don't have kneecaps and it blew his mind. Don't be surprised if he inspects your knees when you come out.

I have dreams that you'll never be born. 

The other night I dreamed I was a very tired bird who couldn't take off from the lake where I'd landed, and instead flapped and flailed in the water, waiting for some hungry creature to come make lunch out of me.

I texted your auntie about it the next day and she told me I was breaking her heart. I wish you could see what everyone who loves you sees. You're going to birth your baby, I swear it. Have some faith in yourself.

I try to visualize you settling into my pelvis and labor starting and progressing and me not needing an induction and you eventually making your way into the world and despite my extremely overactive imagination, there are some things I just can't fathom. Maybe that's how everyone feels before they do it for the first time.

So I eat my dates every day, and drink my tea, and gently quell the anxious thoughts about induction and Cesareans, and I press my palms into your knobby bits when you're trying to stretch out in there and there's just not room for that.

You'll come out eventually, I tell myself. And then the real adventure begins.

The Before

I waited weeks to feel you move. Weeks turned into months. I thought I didn't love you enough to feel you move. I thought it made some sort of cosmic sense, that I was too self-involved to be a mother, that I couldn't even know you were there.
I didn't know you were there.
I took a blood test at work before my period was even due, because I thought I had the flu and would make my decision about medication use accordingly.
I called your dad from an empty patient room, told him quietly. We both were cautiously, measuredly happy. yay, we said, in lower case. No exclamation points. A month earlier I'd been bleeding your brother or sister into my pants at a Bon Iver concert. Life had marked us, casually, with one of its petty cruelties.
I saw you on the ultrasound at six weeks, a tiny pulsing blob. I felt like I was watching someone else. I heard your heartbeat at ten weeks. I knew the risk of miscarriage was still 2.5%.
At twelve weeks, I considered trying to love you, to believe you were real. I said a few words to you in the bathtub. I told some people at work about you.
The next day, a patient came in at fifteen weeks along with her own baby dead inside her, and I pushed you out of my mind again.
There is nothing there. It rang in my head as I'd try to fall asleep.
I had to buy new clothes and borrow my friend's hand-me-downs. I told everyone else at work because I couldn't hide you anymore. It still felt like a lie.
Are you excited?! people would say, Yes, yes, so excited, of course, I'd answer robotically with a fixed smile on my face.
There is nothing there, there is nothing there, there is nothing there.
At seventeen weeks, I started expectantly laying with my hands on my belly at night. Well-meaning people at work insisted I "must" be feeling you by now. I felt nothing.
We saw you on our ultrasound at nineteen weeks and your nose looks like mine. You tucked your arm behind your head, lounging.
I let it go. I tried to stop worrying about you.
Instead I worried about work, and my awful boss, and I argued with your dad about getting the living room painted.
At twenty-two weeks exactly, I lay on the couch moping, and suddenly there you were. Unmistakably. Poking me from every which way. I laughed to myself. Watched my belly jump as you did one more spin, then settled down again.
I texted your dad, and your aunties. I almost convinced myself I'd made it up, but you seem to enjoy your acrobatics now, so I don't stay convinced for long.

I love you enough, by the way. I love you more than you'll ever know what to do with. I will go to the ends of the earth for you, turn myself inside out and break my heart in two for you. Just like every mother before me, and every mother since.

Hang on, little boy. We can't wait to meet you.

January

I have a crack on my thumb, by the nail, on the right side, it radiates pain like a just-bumped bruise. In and out of lukewarm water, I wash my hands ten, fifteen, twenty times a day. Put lotion on, it starts to heal, wash my hands again, it opens up. It is miniscule. The tiniest annoyance. It feels enormous. I cradle my hand against my chest, thumb in, while I sleep. By morning it has healed. By lunchtime, it is red and oozing again.

He lifts the electric kettle off before it has boiled. You know, it shuts itself off when it's boiling, I tell him. Isn't water for coffee better just before it has boiled? he asks. I look back blankly, a beat, two beats. I don't know, I tell him. Do whatever you want.

The patient starts yelling at me the second I open the door - I saw what's written in my fucking chart! What the hell do you people know? You think you know me?! You don't fucking know me. I'm going to sue whoever fucking wrote that.
My heart pounds. I oscillate - fear, rage, panic, despair. Hi, I say calmly, same as I always do. My name is Caitlin, I'm one of the midwives.
Nice to fucking meet you, she says. Get that fucking thing out of my chart.
This continues for five minutes. I stand up. I'm the picture of serenity. Inside, I am seething.
You can either reschedule this appointment, or you can work on calming down. I understand you're upset, but it's not okay for you to scream and swear at me.
Miraculously, it works. She takes a breath. Apologizes. We listen to her baby. I'm forty minutes behind now. Later, her therapist calls our office - what happened in her appointment? The patient is threatening to sue.

I wake up every few hours all night long. Everything aches. By morning, my nose is running like a faucet, my lymph nodes are tender, and my throat is so sore I can't swallow. He gives me a hug as he leaves for work, kisses my forehead, tells me to feel better. Don't leave, I whisper. Stay with me. The lock clicks on his way out.

My dad is sick. Again. An infection gone haywire. IV medications at home for two weeks. Something wrong with his left kidney, nobody knows why. Each day, a new complication and a change in plan. I walk the dog in the freezing cold, my words garbled because my cheeks are numb, I talk to my mom, What can I do? Do you want me to come home? Seven hours away is too far. There's nothing I can do. I shiver in the bath, my heart pounding while I grit my teeth and will it to slow down. Fear, rage, panic, despair, rinse, repeat.

January is the longest month.