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.