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.