End of the Fourth Trimester

At three months, you enjoy books, you musical penguin, and a hand-me-down corpulent zebra named Clarence. You love kicking and babbling and baths and second breakfast and Ella Fitzgerald and Old Macdonald with silly animals and you grandmother. You sleep much of the night. You dislike tummy time and loud noises, and get socially exhausted like his mother. You have Dad's face with Mama's eyes. You smile while eating, you eat in your sleep. Leggy, with delicious feet.

A Quiet Day

Today is the last day that all four grandparents are in town, and your dad has planned to make a video for you, for your eighteenth or perhaps twenty first birthday. Right now you are awake from your morning nap and Manamana is playing with you while you are in your bouncy chair. You are smiling at her, and I don't think I have ever seen someone so happy. Do I mean you, or do I mean my mother in law? Maybe both.

We all agree that you seem to have grown visibly overnight. Your hair is getting thicker, and your eyelashes are long pale brown fringes. You fell asleep on my chest at seven last night, an hour earlier than usual, and I think it was because you are growing, but also because you - like me - get tired out by too much socializing. You have had days on end of grandparents and friends, and you were warm and personable to the last. But tired.

When you are excited you waggle your arms and kick your feet all at once, and you say OOOO and WOO and HOOO! You sometimes drop your wubanub because you are smiling around it. For Christmas you were given many board books and from our friend Claire in the UK some darling clothes including a Harry Potter onesie complete with cape. I have to write some thank you notes for you - I'll try to do that today. You love your giraffe wubanub and your weird secondhand fat stuffed zebra (we call him Clarence) and this tall giraffe who looks over your baby pouf, and you get super excited if I sing Old Macdonald to you with your stuffed animals for illustration.

You loved looking at the candles we lit for Hannukah, and you enjoyed watching me open holiday cards and put them up on the mantle.

We just sang You are my Sunshine for you and I did my best to harmonize. Your dad and you and I am Milo dog and Uncle Eli all have matching red plaid jammies, but we haven't been organized about wearing them, so you are in your soft camel jammies today while dad and I are in red plaid flannel.

And that is how things stand today, after your first Christmas and Hannukah, and a few days before your three month birthday.

Eleven Weeks Eve

All the grandparents are in town, and tomorrow your uncle the Ward arrives, and then you first Christmas will begin in earnest. Last night we did the first Hannukah candle, and you were fussy because it was your bedtime, so I got a picture of your dad beaming while you squirm in his arms like a fish.

You are asleep, and I am tired, and watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which I enjoyed in high school, and which funnily enough is making me reflect on how lovely the Griswold marriage is as represented in this film. Clark sets his expectation sky high, and Ellen, despite knowing it's going to happen, seeing it about to happen, waits to pick up the pieces anyway.

Your father and I agree. You are the most wonderful and amazing baby who has ever lived. Tonight, as I was holding you in Nana's chair with the lights of the avenue below us, I whispered to you that I loved you more than anyone in the whole wide world, and that I would always love you, no matter what mistakes you make, or what you do, or what you say, and even when you are grown up and have a family of your own, some part of you will always be my little baby who I love more than anything or anyone in the whole wide world.

Then I started to cry, of course, and you yawned your tiny baby yawn, and that is how things stand on the eve of your eleventh week of life.

Ten Weeks

You are asleep on your Manamana on a rainy cold winter day in New York City. In about an hour I will change you and wrestle you into a cute sweatshirt with a dinosaur on it and then wrap you up in your bunting at pull on your soft gray hat with little bear ears - all children's outerwear has animal ears now, I don't know why - and strap you into your bassinet stroller and then I will wrap myself up in scarves and socks and puffy coats and gloves and after all that we will wheel our way through the rain to meet my editor for lunch. Your first high powered editorial meeting, and my first tentative step back into my professional life.

Much of my job pretends to be social, which as an introvert who is quite possibly on the spectrum, albeit subclinically, I find baffling and exhausting. But I genuinely like my editor, and I think she genuinely likes me. She has sent you two baby gifts so far, a sweet towel set and an unexpected shipment of clothing, including the aforementioned dinosaur sweatshirt. This is why you are wearing it. I can imagine gestures that will appeal to other people, sometimes. Let us hope she likes me - you, let's be honest, you're the big draw here - well enough that it matters less that not so very many people bought my latest book.

You are sweet and chubby and definitely look bigger than a 2 1/2 month old baby. You are in baby clothes sized 3-6 months, and the last couple of nights you have fussed more than before at bedtime, which might spoil my parents' hopes for a dinner on boxing day involving you. But you are you, and you are growing, and right now you are in a rather large developmental leap, and you will not be rushed. Nor should you be.

You are in the midst of the first chapter of your life, with your first big editor lunch only an hour away.

And that is where things stand on this, your tenth week of life.

Colic

For the first time, last night we could not figure out why you were crying, and were powerless to help you. It started around 6:15, as you were nursing. You seemed to get frustrated, bopping your head and flailing your fist against me - a newly acquired skill, this flailing baby fist. Your face turned red and your mouth opened and you screamed.

You screamed for almost three hours.

You weren't wet. You weren't hungry (or if you were, you were too upset to eat). You weren't hurt. You didn't have a fever. At one point I stripped you naked on your changing pad hunting for secret torments - a sharp pin, an itchy patch, a bug bite, anything, anything at all - and you stopped your crying and smiled gummily up at me.

We soothed. We walked. I started to freak out and stepped out to talk the dog around the block. When I got back you were still screaming. You dad stepped out to take a break and I pressed you naked to my chest and wrapped you up in a Moby and that helped a little, and you caught your breath for maybe ten minutes before you started squirming and the scream wound up again. I started to cry. Your dad got angry at me for crying. We were both exhausted and surprisingly terrified, because even though we both knew, intellectually, that babies do this sometimes, and crying won't hurt you, and you were safe and healthy and warm and dry and fed and maybe this was just due to overstimulation, or maybe an earache, or maybe you were just at a developmental moment of stress and you had no other way to cope, even though we knew all these things we - certainly I, I assume your dad too - were unprepared for how much actual pain your cries would cause us.

I realize, of course, there will be many times over the course of your life that you will be in a mysterious state of distress which I will be unable to soothe. You might have a tantrum, or later on, you will have your heart broken by some thoughtless young person. You will fail to get into a college you really want to attend, you will lose a job. These disappointments and pains are an important part of life. They help you recognize the magic of when good things happen - when you fall in love and it sticks, when you get a different job you like better. Today, you spent the early morning nursing and dozing snuggled up next to me, quiet, occasionally squirmy, mostly relaxed, just as long as you screamed last night. Right now you are dozing in your baby pouf after playing for a bit with your grandmother. The dog has just sniffed your hands to make sure you are safe, and you are. I am grateful for it.

Maybe that's one thing I can take away from your inconsolability last night - gratitude for the moments when we know exactly how to give you what you need to be happy.

That, and a sense that the pain shows me how much we truly love you.

Sleep

You are half-dozing in a bouncy chair which I keep moving with the pressure of my knee while I write a bit on a laptop on our coffee table. Last night you slept for five straight hours, most of which I wasted by being awake for no reason. Then after your three am feeding you wanted to be held all morning.

Awhile ago on Twitter some stranger posted that if he could go back in time and tell himself one thing, he would go back, tell himself to get some sleep, and then his present self would stay awake holding the baby all night. I now think about that whenever you drift off to sleep on me. I remind myself to notice it, as it is happening. I try not to jump ahead to when it won't happen anymore, because if I do that I will be sad, and I'm getting better about not thinking back to when I was sure you would never happen, because I was sad then, too.

You are here, right now. Half awake in a secondhand bouncy chair, with your dad asleep in the back and your dog asleep on the sofa under the window and I am awake and writing, just a little. We are here, together, right now.

Two Months

You are asleep in our bedroom, where we moved your bassinet after the Duraflame smoke log fiasco of Thanksgiving 2019, but which wound up being a good thing. We are slowly figuring out how to help you get onto a sleep schedule.

It's hard, when you are asleep. I miss you, and find myself looking at pictures of you even though you are just in the next room.

You have started looking in our eyes, and smiling when you see us. You hold your head up, but you still wobble back and forth and sometimes while rooting plant your face in my neck, or against my cheek or my lips, a wild baby kiss.

I sometimes tear up reading you board books as we camp out on our whale-patterned blanket.

You are chubby of chin and kicky of feet, and you find tummy time frustrating because all you want to do is move and you can't quite, yet. But you will.

Very, very soon.

And that is how things stand on this, your two month birthday.

The First Thanksgiving

We are up early, you and I, as you didn't fall asleep after breakfast this morning, so we are now on the floor of the den, you in your baby pouf batting at crocheted dinosaurs, I drinking coffee and writing quickly at the coffee table. The light is thin, and the puppy is still asleep. Before too long we will take him around the block on streets emptied of people. Everyone is either home, or three avenues over readying to watch the parade.

The winds are high today, so they may not have giant balloons in the parade. I went once, in college, and I mainly remember crowds and very cold feet. But today I am happy, thinking about years to come, when we might go the night before to watch them blow the balloons up, and then you can ride on your dad's shoulders to get a better view as they pass by.

I don't know how to express, even to myself, how thankful I feel today.

Thankful for close friends, both those coming to my house to cook this afternoon and those far away, in other states, on other coasts. Thankful for my health, and for my parents being alive. Thankful for rewarding work and a happy marriage.

But thankful most of all for you.

I think if I try to express how thankful I feel for you, I will fail so abysmally that it will be worse than if I hadn't tried. Maybe I will try again later.

Right now, you are babbling in your pouf and I have just given you a wubbanub, and in a moment I will put you in a bouncy chair so you can watch me make cranberry sauce while I narrate what I'm doing. I never thought a baby would be watching me make cranberry sauce.

My own amazing baby.

Seven Weeks

Happy seven weeks old, Succotash! You are at present napping in your baby pouf after a hearty morning's several breakfasts. In a little bit I will change you out of comfy pajamas and into comfy pajama-like clothing to go up the street for lunch with a friend you have never met, who just got a new job at Penguin Random House. And then while a team of professional woman cleans our apartment you and I will find a way to amuse ourselves, as it is sunny and sixty degrees today. Will I have the energy to walk you in your stroller all the way to Central Park zoo? Will we go back to Madison Square and watch the big kids play on the playground? Will we go to Bryant Park and watch the ice skaters and avoid buying Christmas-themed tchotchkes? Only time will tell.

You are getting chubby. You have round cheeks and almost three chins. You have started smiling at me, and the world in general. You no longer flip out when having your diaper changed, and when you are especially poopy, you find it intriguing when I rinse your personal bits under the kitchen faucet, which seems faster than going through a whole box of wipes.

On Thursday you will have your first Thanksgiving, with your two godless parents, who you will be meeting for the first time, and your friend K, who is expecting a baby friend for you. You will smell cranberries cooking on the stove, and taste them faintly when you nestle into me at the dinner table.

I miss you when I sleep.

And that is where things stand on this, your seventh week of life.

Six Week Fairytale

Once upon a time, about six weeks ago, in the goblin underkingdom far away, a tiny prince was born. He was little and pink and perfect.

One day his nurse carried him to the riverbank in a basket made of woven vines. She laid the basket on the riverbank and then she lay down to take a nap under a knotty rooted tree.

The nurse slept for a very long time. Night was beginning to fall on the goblin underkingdom. The goblin prince awoke and opened his eyes and looked around, but no one was there. He was too little to climb out of his basket made of vines, so he waved his arms to get attention. The goblin prince was hungry.

Fortunately, his waving arms caught the attention of a passing dragonfly. She saw that the baby prince needed help. So she buzzed down and picked up the basket made of woven vines and carried the goblin prince up into the night sky, dodging among the twinkling stars.

She flew for a very long time.

Then finally, the dragonfly laid the basket to rest at the back door of an old apartment building in midtown Manhattan. In this old apartment building lived a man and a woman who had wanted a baby for a very long time.

The doorman found the basket of woven vines with what he thought was a human baby inside. "I know just who this delivery is for," said the doorman.

He took the goblin prince up in the elevator to the thirteenth floor and rang the bell.

And that's where our baby came from.

Growth Spurt

Greetings from the couch, where I have finally tricked you into sleeping on my chest. You are burritoed up in a swaddle blanket patterned with tiny rocket ships. You are fed, you have a dry diaper, you have been shown yourself in the mirror, put on the floor, given a pacifier, picked up again, danced around the den, swung low and up, low and up, low and up, entertained with a rattle, entertained with black and white cards illustrating African animals, snuggled, held, your back patted and patted and patted and patted and now, at long last, you are asleep.

For the moment.

It's hard work, being a baby.

Later I might walk you over to the playground. You are too little to play, but you like being strolled out in the crisp air, and your eyes might be developed enough to see the other children playing on the jungle gym and begin imagining that soon enough, sooner than I think, you will be one of them.

Snapshot

You are asleep in your baby pouf on the floor of the den, your Manamana is doing dishes in the kitchen, we are listening to John Coltrane on Spotify, and when you yawn and stir I rub the soles of your feet, and then you drop back to sleep.

Five weeks

Today's firsts:

Smiling and babbling at my old stuffed rabbit, who supervises you on your changing pad

Meeting another baby! For lunch. This one was Zuzu, daughter of Amanda. They and I and you and your dad all met at Park Avenue Tavern amidst a heap of strollers and diaper bags and carriers and also coats and scarves, as there is an unseasonable cold snap seizing the eastern seaboard today, and temperatures are getting down into the twenties tonight. You were bundled up in Zuzu's hand me down snowsuit, which makes you look like a stuffed animal, with paws and bear ears.

Seeing art. After lunch you and I went over to the Morgan library, to check out the exhibition of Sargent charcoal portraits. You were pronounced unusually cute by all the women in the ladies' room who came upon me changing you, and I had nursing solidarity foisted upon me by a father of twins who was about my parents' age. Sargent's charcoals are truly remarkable. I especially enjoyed his renderings of dour Bostonians, but also one of a handsome progressive Jewish leader whose first time was.... Charles.

We are now home. You are making semi-wakeful squeaking sounds from your boppy lounger, and I am having a glass of wine. Your father is at his office, the cold air is bearing down on us and leaking in around the uninsulated sides of the window unit air conditioner, and the dog is relaxing in his dog bed, wishing someone would take him on a walk, but knowing he has to wait.

And that is where we stand today, five weeks after your birth.

Morning routine

We have developed something like a morning routine. It goes like this:

Me: *gets up to feed baby on the couch while Mr. G sleeps, as he took night shift*

Dog: Guac I have to go out.

Me: We can't go out right now, I'm feeding the baby.

Dog: BUT I'VE GOTTA GO I'VE GOTTA GO I'VE GOTTA GO I'VE...

Me: *sigh* Okay, hang on.

Baby: *eventually finishes eating, passes out asleep on my boob*

Me: *sneaks baby back into bedroom in total silence, suits up, harnesses dog, takes joyous dog out into world*

Fifteen minutes pass.

Me: *arrives home to squalling frantic baby and awake husband*

Baby: WHERE DID YOU GO OH MY GOD I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD I'M STARVING GIVE ME BOOB

Mr. Guac: I'm going back to sleep.

Me: Okay.

Dog: *sulks*

One Month

Today you are one month old. At the moment you are asleep on your grandmother, and what's most remarkable about you is your voracious appetite. You would be like a barnacle on my boob 24 hours a day if I could handle it. Alas, I can only handle about 20, so the rest of the time you are being given bottles. You have become expert at transforming milk into rolls of chub under your chin. Today you are zipped into the soft onesie patterned in little fishing boats that I bought to take you home from the hospital in. One month ago it was loose on you. Today you fill it out with a round little belly and kicky little feet and legs that are at least an inch longer. Your grandfather, my dad, tried measuring you yesterday and theorizes that you are now about 21 inches long. We will take you back to the pediatrician on Thursday for confirmation of this theory.

I am starting to go stir-crazy in the apartment, but your father is very worried about recent measles outbreaks in New York City, and so gets panicky and obstinate if I suggest taking you to an event more contained or precise than a stroller ride to the park until after you have had your shots. Today I will take your grandmother - she has recently switched from wanting to be called "Oma" to wanting to be called "Manamana," which is much cuter, and inspire by what your friend Christopher calls one of his grandmothers, from a song by the Muppets - and you in your stroller bassinet thing over to the baby Gap, where we will spend the gift certificate that the co-op board of our apartment gave us when you were born. We will obtain larger baby clothes, as last week in what felt like the span of two or three days you abruptly outgrew nearly all of your newborn sized clothing. They have been given to Ultragotha, who is set to arrive in January, who is probably going to be named Peter, and with whom you - we hope - will spend your childhood sailing in the summers.

My parents brought some family photographs. You can see a picture of me going to preschool if you want, carrying a lunchbox nearly as big as me, and a half a head taller than the other girls in my carpool. You can see a picture of me at around six, with my parents, taken for church, my mother in a plaid skirt and slim and smiling. There is also a picture of me at the moment of moving from babyhood to toddler, about 1 year old, in a dress and bowl haircut with a toy mushroom with bells, smiling.

"See?" I wrote to your father as I forwarded an image of the old photo. "I told you he looks like me."

Today's firsts

First time having brunch with friends.

First Halloween costume (a skeleton, that glows in the dark).

First walk in the rain.

First time hearing someone play David Bowie on the guitar.

First time wearing socks.

First time sleeping through Spaceballs.

Today we actually managed to leave the apartment

Damn, but do I ever love this baby.

Due Date

Today would have marked 40 weeks if you were still inside my body. Instead it marks two and a half weeks, the amount of time you have been out in the world as an autonomous being.

You do not yet entirely understand that you are an autonomous being. We had the doula come back to help us get you to sleep in your bassinet, and I discovered that I cannot stand having you sleep in the next room without me. It was the worst night of sleep I've had since the hospital. An annoying way to spend $500.

I have historically considered myself to be a pretty cerebral person, and so it has been a surprise to discover that I am an animal. But there is no way to do this without being an animal. There is blood and sweat and smells and milk, and you and I smell like each other. I have put a sweaty t-shirt of mine into your bassinet, under the fitted sheet, to help you feel at home there. In the night I hear your every gurgle and sneeze, and I open my eyes and see that all is well, and that makes it okay for me to go back to sleep. Sometimes I have to touch you. Like a mother elephant softly draping her trunk along the neck of her calf, just to check and make sure he's still really there.

You are asleep on my chest right now, on the couch in the den of the apartment, while your Oma walks the dog and your father listens in on a faculty meeting over the phone and pads around the house.

I love this new animal life we are leading together.

Two weeks tomorrow

The days run together somewhat, but I have noticed that you have started filling out your newborn sized pajamas. And you definitely have more of a double chin than before.

I am amused that someone gave me the very serious advice to take pictures of you every day - as if I need to be reminded.

One week old

Today, you smiled in your sleep.

Yesterday, you went in your stroller for the first time to the pediatrician, where we learned you are perfect. Which, of course, we already knew. On our walk home we got tired and stopped at a wine bar and you napped in your stroller bassinet while we had glasses of wine by an open window on 34th street. When you fussed I fed you under a light wrap patterned in bright blue anchors. A motorcycle went by and backfired and you startled under your wrap but weren't fazed.

Yesterday you met your first friend - Amanda, whose son's pajamas you are presently sleeping in, in the arms of your Oma. You slept in her arms. Amanda and I went to high school together, and she updated me on the Astros attempts to return to the World Series, and she brought you a Baby Bjorn bouncer, and happily told me that you will be the fifth baby to use it. When you are done with it we will give it to Kett for her son, tentatively to be named Peter, who is due in 15 weeks, and who you will undoubtedly come to know very well.

Yesterday you also learned how to suck your thumb.

Your Oma and I are spending a lot of quiet time in the den, trading off holding you and watching "Turn" on Netflix, a show about spies during the American revolution. As I watch I keep wishing whoever designed that show's interiors would come and redecorate our house in Marblehead. You don't know about our house in Marblehead, and won't for several months. But I hope you will love it as much as we do. I like thinking about the fact that I can leave you that house now. I bought it after my first book sold, when the housing market collapsed and it was owned by a bank, empty, unloved, with frozen pipes. It intimidated me, owning a house. It was too much space, and though it has morphed and changed over the years, it was first built in 1750, with the oak bones and pine plank floors to show for it. I love it because I know we are only its custodians for now, as a 300 year old house feels all the souls that travel through it, but continues being itself as we pass by. I am excited to bring your soul into our house, for it to feel your presence as you grow and change and breathe within it.

Your Oma gave me a push present yesterday - a cocktail ring from her mother, in a flower shape studded with diamonds. It's not my style, but it makes me happy, and makes me feel loved, and so I am wearing it. It snags your muslin wrap while I change your diaper. You pretty much only scream like you mean it when your diaper is being changed. I wonder if it's the cold air on your tender skin, or being on your back on the changing pad, or having your little baby feet free and naked in the air that does it. I love your feet. I love cupping them in my hand while you nurse, or running my fingertip down the soles of them. They are as soft as every other part of you, just as delicate and new. But I know those feet so well. They were a conduit to your moods, sometimes pressing, sometimes kicking, sometimes asleep. I like checking in with them now.

And that where things stand on this day, one week after your birth.

Birth Story

Okay. Everybody ready? Got popcorn? Coke? Comfy? Here we go.
TL/dr: Birth was a shitshow, but Succotash is perfect, and we are all home safe.

Sunday, 10/6: After a solid couple of days of blood pressure readings in the 140s and Erika presumably still on a beach in the Caribbean, I call the OB answering service. I am told that yes, those BP readings mean we need to induce today. Today! We are excited! We go out for a tasty brunch, we get MIL squared away with Dog Guac, we assemble our hospital supplies, we dance to "Sweet Child of Mine" on Alexa, and we get in an Uber. At the hospital, we skip over triage and are shown into a labor and delivery room. There is a baby warmer in the corner. It all feels very real. We settle in.

Sunday night: My cervix is tight as a drum. We are given cytotec to get things started. We order in Tex Mex. My BP is constantly monitored, and so is Succotash. He is great. We watch a TV program in which I appear as a talking head, which is a weird thing to do in a labor and delivery room. Then we both sleep. Not too bad.

Monday: I forget when the foley bulb is introduced, if it's Sunday or Monday. Upon reflection, probably Sunday. Regardless, there's a foley bulb. It sucks. And it goes on for a very long time. I text with doula, and we decide she will join us after bulb comes out, when they start Pitocin.

Around noon, after 12 hours of foley, they pull it out with a disconcerting pop, and start Pitocin. Doula arrives. Contractions intensify, but I can still deal with them. Doula is godsend, really helps with pain control. Spend time with peanut ball, spend time sitting on yoga ball. This goes on for many hours.

Monday evening: Doula heads out to get a bite to eat. I continue on yoga ball. About five minutes after she leaves, I feel a sort of downward thump. "I just felt a thump," I say to Mr. G. I climb into the bed and find myself sitting in puddle. Mr. G brings me paper towels, because my water just broke. I inform the nurses and text doula. Exciting! OB comes in to check on me, and I am seized with a simply astonishing contraction. Holy shit. I vomit. Yes, I would like an epidural please. Thank you. We have passed the 24 hour in labor mark.

It takes some time for the anesthesiologist to come. I am stunned by how painful the contractions are. I vomit over and over and over again. Doula does her best. Then we get it, it's much better. More hours pass. I try to sleep and fail. Incredibly, I am still vomiting. My body knows it's in pain even if my brain doesn't.

Monday night: Mr. Guac asleep, I keep begging doula to hit the pain med button on my epidural. Tremendous pressure moving through my body. Epidural feels like it's doing nothing. Doula tells me not to fight it. I twist and writhe and push on my side. Eventually OB and nurses turn up. They hold up my feet, they shout encouragements, warm compresses are applied to my perineum, I scream bloody murder, they ask if I want to feel his head and I shout "NO I JUST WANT HIM OUT I WANT HIM OUT." After thirty minutes of hardcore pushing, Succotash is put on my chest and I am amazed and stunned and the doula takes very graphic pictures and Mr. Guac is beside himself and everything is wonderful. It's 3:42 am Tuesday the 8th - about 36 hours of labor. OB stitches me up (secondary tear, not too bad) while I hold the baby. He's a real baby. We have a real baby. After six years, all those shots, all that heartache, he's real and he's here and he's amazing.

Tuesday morning: We are transferred to maternity by maybe 8 am. Succotash nuzzling my breast, I'm desperate for a shower, etc. People keep coming by to check my belly, check my pad. Everyone seems to think everything looks fine.

Tuesday 10 am: I mention to a nurse that I passed a clot. "How big?" she asks. I don't know. She says if I pass another one, to show it to her. I'm soaking through pads at a steady clip. At one point, I get up to go to the bathroom and my socks fill with blood. I throw them away in the bathroom and hobble back to bed. I'm lightheaded. I ask the nurse if I can take a shower as I still have vomit in my hair. She isn't sure, helps me to bathroom. Blood streaking down my legs. I pass several clots with wet thumps. She tells me I have to get back in bed. "I need a second," I say, leaning on the bathroom sink. She gets me back into bed, Mr. Guac is holding Succotash, nurse looks in toilet bowl. Shit hits fan.

Tuesday 11 am: Twenty people mob the room. One doc is barking orders. I'm told to relax my legs, open my knees. An OB puts her hand inside my body without epidural or any kind of pain relief and manually pulls clots out of my body. I scream. Everyone is talking all at once. She does it again, saying "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I have to." I scream, more clots scooped out of me. It is the worst pain I have ever known in my life. Worse than labor. Worse than pushing. Someone jabs my leg with morphine, it makes no difference, she does it again, I scream, Mr. Guac shouts "WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?" OB who is doing manual sweeps tells him calmly what's going on.

I've lost 1.4 liters of blood, which I learn later is about 1/4 my blood volume, and I need a transfusion. It's possible I have retained a piece of placenta and that's why I'm bleeding so profusely. They take blood, type it, another IV is put in, my body is swarmed with people, the transfusion is hooked up, and then I am wheeled away to the OR for an emergency D and C, Mr. Guac running after me, Succotash left with nurses.

Tuesday noon: Before being put under I tell OB if necessary hysterectomy is okay, but please leave ovaries so I don't go into instant menopause. She assures me that won't be necessary. I am knocked out.

Tuesday, sometime later: I come to. D and C went okay, they removed what they think is a piece of retained placenta from behind my fibroid, the one I used to joke Succotash liked to use as an ottoman. I am shivering uncontrollably. I don't know if it's from shock or what. Mr. G has had to fend off my parents and his mother and everyone who wants to know about the baby.

Tuesday night: Mr. G and I collapse in exhausted and terrified sleep around 8 pm. Succotash is in the nursery being cared for by nursing staff, and is fine, though I am distraught that I haven't seen him in hours, and we haven't started nursing or anything. I feel like I abandoned him, even though I know it's irrational.

Wednesday the 9th: Our first real day with Succotash. I am still shivering and have periodic uncontrollable crying jags from, I assume, a lethal combo of hormones and PTSD. But the baby is perfect, and we work on getting my colostrum going. My parents come in the afternoon and want to make pleasant small talk, but I am unable to do it. We hope to go home Thursday. Mr. G sleeps at home Wednesday night to be rested, I am brought Succotash to feed him during the night and rest very little, but I'm okay with it.

Thursday morning the 10th: My blood pressure is 164/94. What the everloving FUCK. How is this possible? I am kept past checkout for observation.

Thursday afternoon: Deep breathing exercises to get BP down in between crying jags of desperation to go home and just be with my new baby.

Thursday night: Discharged. At last. We take an Uber home. Doorman takes picture of the three of us in the elevator. Succotash angelic and asleep in his car seat, Mr. Guac looking beside himself with joy, and I look like I almost died on Tuesday.

But now we are home. Succotash's name is Charles Gage Hyman Howe, he weighed 7 lbs 6 oz at birth, he is a champion nurser but is also cool with some formula on the side. MIL is here helping out, which has been amazing, I only flipped out at my parents once, and tomorrow we venture out into the world for our first pediatrician appointment.

I did not think it was possible to love a human being as much as I love Succotash.

144/93

That's my blood pressure this morning. After most of yesterday over 140.

Well, kid. What do you think?

I've walked the dog, and we're having some coffee, and your father is doing a load of laundry, and then I'm going to shower and have some breakfast and double-check my hospital bag, and then I'm going to take my blood pressure again. And if it's still high, I'm going to call the office. And then the office is almost certainly going to send me to L and D, which I will almost certainly begin the induction.

Today.

Today.

Today.

Today.

37 Weeks

And I'm on the couch. Ordering dog food, window shopping little sailboat mobiles. I turned over a sack of maternity clothes to my friend who is one trimester behind me, who wants us to have regular dinners on Saturday nights with the babies when they are both here.

The puppy is looking out the apartment window, watching for dragons.

We are all waiting.

Home Stretch

Back on the couch after our last OB checkup, which is a relief as I spent yesterday in Labor and Delivery - again - being monitored for preeclampsia.

All looks well.

We are a go for induction on Monday morning.

I am heading into the last weekend of my life without Succotash. My imaginary baby. My imaginary baby is about to be a real person.

On Monday.

Maybe Tuesday.

Less than a week to go. Then I get to see those little baby feet that are presently digging into my right side. See them and smell them and kiss them and tickle them and they will be real human feet that belong to a real human person who has newly arrived on earth, and will - God willing - live on it much longer than I will. A pair of feet that will walk into the future, beyond me.

Dreamed Beginnings

36 weeks yesterday, and last night I dreamed about the Tex Mex place we used to go when I was a kid. It opened in the 1920s, in a faux-Spanish fort style building in a neighborhood in Houston that by the time I was born had become the center of gay nightlife. It was up the street from a leather daddy bar called "Mary's," which a painted mural on the side of men in police caps with curly hair on their chests. The man who opened the restaurant was a major figure in Houston Tejano politics, albeit a conservative, a proponent of assimilation and civic engagement. He died in the 1960s, and there were pictures of him in the front turret-shaped room of the restaurant, black and white with that perfect smooth skin of pictures taken in the 1940s. His wife continued to run it, a tiny Mexican woman, less than five feet tall, and we would sometimes see her outside under a giant umbrella, shooing people out of her parking lot who weren't customers. It never occurred to me to wonder how she could tell who were customers and who weren't. Maybe it was the leather.

The restaurant closed about a decade ago. Reportedly, is the first restaurant I ever visited in my life, placed in a baby carrier in the center of the table like a flower arrangement. We sat in the smoking section, because my father smoked and it was 1977. Another thing I accepted as fact without questioning: Anglo Texans have Tex-Mex restaurant affiliations that are non-negotiable, as engraved in stone as college football affiliations. You are either a Longhorn or an Aggie. You cannot be both. And your family either eats at Molina's or Felix's, or the Ninfa's on Navigation. You are welcome to visit these other places, of course, but you always pick one when given the option, and usually it's not up for discussion. My best friend growing up was from a Ninfa's family. My first boyfriend in seventh grade was from a Molina's family. But I am from a Felix's family. Are we still a Felix's family, now that Felix's is gone? Hard to know. Some of their recipes, and the imported Mexican chairs - bright colors, bolt upright, scratchy rattan seats, mismatched - that used to be in the dining room, pulled up to tables with white tablecloths topped with glass against the encroachment of glops of greasy queso and hot sauce, are now in a throwback restaurant up the street called El Real.

I go to El Real sometimes. But it's like a museum of Tex Mex, rather than a Tex Mex restaurant. The staff wear ironic t-shirts that refer to lard. The menu is winking, and has cute names for stuff. On top of the menu, in quotes, it says "hot plate," which is a nod to the warning usually delivered in the past by an exhausted Mexican man in a white waiter's jacket, sliding a platter of refried beans and rice and tacos with iceberg lettuce in front of you with a napkin on the edge, because the plate has been sitting under a heat lamp for who knows how long and the ceramic will burn your hands. El Real is the closest I can get to Felix's queso now. It's almost the same. Maybe it is the same, and I'm the one who has changed. The city has changed. All is as it should be. Mrs. Tirinja died years ago, around the same time as the AIDS crisis decimated Mary's and there was less jockeying for parking in the Felix Mexican Restaurant parking lot. I'd have liked to have taken Succotash there, put him on the center of the table like a flower arrangement and wafting queso under his tiny nose. But his life with be studded by other nostalgias that, in time, will rightfully pass. It will be his life, he is leading. Not mine. He won't even be Texan.

Mr. Guac and my doula have agreed that it would be pretty boss to bring me a fresh lime margarita with salt rim in the hospital after Succotash is born. I hope they do it. That would be amazing. A tiny nod to the power of memory, and of change.

Stressball

Well, Succotash, I fear your mother is being a stressball today. Partly it's a holdover from Tuesday, in which a nurse practitioner delivered point by point rebuttals to all of my concerns outlined on the birth plan that she refused to read, and then sent me to labor and delivery for another several hours' monitoring for preeclampsia. Overall, just not a great day (though you looked lovely on the ultrasound, it must be said. I have appreciated not having to worry about you during this otherwise dreadful process). And then last night we had dinner with your aunt, which technically went well, but among other things she expressed approval of your arriving early because then your birthday won't "compete" with hers. She is almost 40, Succotash, and you are a baby. I don't even know where to start with that one, so let's just leave it aside for the time being.

I never thought of myself as someone who was particularly wedded to having one kind of birth experience. But apparently I had very clear ideas of what I wanted to have happen. I wanted to go into labor naturally, and then stay at home for as long as possible. I wanted to spend early labor on our comfy sofa, or in our nice carwash-level shower, or snuggling your elderly dog, or eating cheese. I even thought I might go get a foot rub at the cheap Chinese foot massage place around the corner. I wanted to be at home until such time as the friendly doula told me yeah, we really ought to be going now. I was open to pain relief, but had this idea that the more calm and comfortable I could be, outside the grip of medicalization, the happier I would be.

Well, that's not what's happening. My hypertension means that they want to induce me, and bring you forth three weeks early. I'm not worried about what this means for you, as you strike me as a hearty individual, you with your high percentile scores and your insistent little baby feet. But I am worried what this means for me. It means pushing my body into doing something before it is ready. It means a lot of monitoring, and medicalization, and those things spell pain, and pain spells stress and anxiety, which makes for more pain. I tried to write up a birth plan that accepted this new reality but still spoke to some of what I think of as my core needs, and the nurse practitioner wouldn't even look at it. I felt dismissed. Unheard. And more afraid.

What am I afraid of? I'm not sure. Pain, of course. Lasting bodily harm. Death, if we're being honest. I know the odds of that are long these days, fortunately, especially as I am an upper middle class woman in a major metropolitan area. But I'm also afraid of loss of control. Of being seen not as an individual person, but as an abstraction, to be dealt with in platitudes and scripts. The tremendous depersonalization of modern medicine. I am afraid of being a statistic.

So today I wrote to my OB expressing these anxieties and sending along a copy of my birth plan, helpfully converted to PDF. I don't know if it will make any difference, but at least I have said - hey. I am a person, who has fears. I have needs. Please listen to me.

Scheduled

We have an induction date.

October 7.

Almost there.

Arg

Every day, in every way, I grow more spherical and enormous. Today I am beached on the couch like an exhausted walrus, except instead of sunning myself I am hiding behind translucent shades against an improbable 88 degree day in New York City. It's the first day of autumn.

My baby will be born this autumn. Probably in about a week and a half.

My blood pressure keeps veering wildly between the low side of normal and worrisomely high.

And I am exhausted. Some days I'm not. Today I am. The dog keeps staring at me with moist needy brown eyes, and I try to explain to him that I cannot walk him right now, I just can't, he went out already this morning and he will have to wait until L gets home and can do it, because I am exhausted and waddling and my blood pressure is through the roof and it's 88 degrees outside on the first day of autumn.

Dogs don't know about autumn. Or blood pressure. I don't blame him.

Even the veins in my forearms and hands are standing out.

Soon, Succotash. You are winning this war of attrition between our bodies, my old one and your brand new one. But we are past 35 weeks. You are in there, pretty much fully yourself, absent some extra layers of chub and fluff. I am happy to work on your chub from outside my body instead of inside.

We will see what they say at our appointment tomorrow.

Some People

Scene: In the elevator taking Dog Guac out for his morning constitutional. Dramatis personae: Me, elevator operator, Dog Guac.

Elevator stops and a couple get on. I know the wife, as we tangled on the lobby committee last year. She has been snooty to me. I decide to take the high road.

Me: Hi! So did y'all have a nice summer?

Snoot Wife, brightly: Hi! Oh yes, thank you! How about you?

Me, polite laughter, gesturing to round self under large college sweatshirt: Well, you can see what we were up to, ha ha.

SW: Oh yes! You must have had a fun summer.

Snoot Husband: Or a very fun spring!

thud

SH: You know, cause.... I mean....

Me: shocked, deadly silence

SH, clapping elevator operator on the back: All right, thanks Victor.

End scene.

What I wish I'd said: You know, I've been a woman my whole life, so I'm used to men I don't really know making jokes about my sexuality. But I'm here to tell you, there's nothing fun about IVF, and it was actually a pretty tough spring. Have a nice day!

In other news, 35 weeks today. Two weeks to induction. Almost there.

Developments

Today I have:

1. been diagnosed with gestational hypertension and told I can no longer travel and also - ta da! - I can expect to be induced at 37 weeks, which is two weeks from Friday

2. Canceled the talk I was supposed to give Thursday in a different state, together with the train tickets and misc other stuff I was supposed to accomplish whilst there

3. Informed all grandparents of accelerated schedule, and made inquiries for a guest room for my parents as their usual place is full

4. Not decapitated my husband over the telephone as I explained why yes, it is imperative he attend the last OB appt before my induction so we can ask questions, and yes, he must cancel the talk he is scheduled to give in a different city the day after that appointment, because I COULD BE HAVING A FUCKING BABY AND WHO CARES ABOUT A STUPID TALK I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GOING TO MURDER HIM IN HIS SLEEP

5. walked the dog

6. made myself a healthy and delicious dinner

7. announced cancellation of talk on professional social media outlets

8. informed collaborator of new situation and shared various in-process chapter drafts with him so he may work while I am out of commission if he so chooses

9. informed editor of progress with collaborator and of change in schedule due to high risk pregnancy situ

10. hoped desperately not to be fired from collaboration, which they have the contractual right to do even though it would be tacky as fuck

11. pointed out to self that stressing about getting fired is PROBABLY BAD FOR HYPERTENSION

12. said "fuck it"

34 weeks tomorrow

These baby feet are starting to drive me absolutely insane. Which feels terrible to say, as I worked so hard to make these baby feet, and to keep these baby feet safe, and the more I feel the baby feet the safer I know they are, and if I suddenly stopped feeling the baby feet I would panic. But even so, last night I actually dreamt about baby feet. In my dream I looked down at my midsection and shined a light on my belly which revealed a spreading bruise somehow underneath my skin, and within the halo of purpling bruise I saw two absolutely distinct baby footprints. I tried to take a picture, but I couldn't hold the camera and the light at the same time. The feet pressed out and I saw their outline, and the bruise rippled, and then the feet disappeared and were replaced with the outline of hands.

It real life it's not quite so uncanny as that. The feet emerge as lumps rather than outlines of feet. But as I sit here in the library trying to get work done a foot lump emerges under my arm, pressing out from under my ribs, like he's eager to step out into the world but doesn't know which way to go.

Tomorrow is 34 weeks. Our next scan and appointment is on Tuesday, and then we will enter the weekly appointments stage.

You can be early if you want, Succotash. I share your eagerness. I have blankets and little footie pajamas and beanies and a changing pad and a diaper bag and a couple of swaddles and I've signed up for diaper delivery and we have a formula machine just in case and I'm ready. I mean, I'm not ready. I'll never be ready, any more than you will be. Being born is going to be appalling for both of us I feel certain, as neither of us will have done it before, and it might be loud and scary and weird, but then your father and I will be there holding you and it will be much like when you were inside, except that you can stretch your baby feet out as far as you want, and use them to take you places other than under my rib and into the inner curve of my elbow. You will be free.

Good Morning, 33 Weeks.

Yes, thank you, good morning Puppy. No, I didn't want to sleep in. Yes, I'd much rather commence my 33rd week by hauling my round ass downstairs and letting you out two hours before my alarm. No, you're right, you are the first baby, and you get to go out when you want to. Yes, I know, I love you the mostest. Yes, a little bit more than L maybe. Yes. Okay. Say hello to the garden rabbit for me. Tell him I love him, too.

Oh hi there grumpy Succotash

Emotional

I just broke down weeping during the final scene of The Muppet Movie, which I was watching with your father and your friends Will and Irina and their baby Clara, who had never watched a whole movie before, and Adam and Jon and Annie.

Your father knew it was because I was imagining showing it to you for the first time.

Only seven more weeks and change.

32 Weeks

And I think it's starting to get crowded in there. Lately I've been feeling a human foot pressing into my diaphragm, digging under my rib cage. I'm not sure how this is going to last for two whole more months, Succotash.

Can you believe that after six years, we are down to the last eight weeks of no Succotash?

Eight weeks. That's nothing.

Had an anxious day yesterday for reasons I can't entirely explain to myself, but it involved waking up from a dream that I was in a rock band playing bass and we were about to go onstage and I hadn't practiced. I didn't know any of the songs we were going to play, and the guitarist wouldn't even show me a set list. I awoke just as I was begging her to at least tell me what keys the songs were in so that I could try to fake it.

A pretty transparent anxiety/lack of preparation dream, though it's funny that I should be so upset by dreaming about something so unimportant in my life. I mean, who listens to the bass line in rock songs anyway?

Birth Dream

Had my first dream about giving birth. I felt zero pain, which is probably a result from reading an internet discussion about epidurals before bed, but I remarked on it to myself in the dream, that it was strange I knew what was happening but couldn't feel anything. Then when he came out I couldn't hear him. There was a long period of silence, and I was very afraid. Then I looked over and saw him being cleaned off on a little table nearby. He still wasn't crying. I said his name, and when he heard my voice he turned is head and looked at me and smiled and then I knew he was okay. Then he somehow crawled over to me - in the dream he was huge, more of a one year old than a new baby - and climbed into my arms. He was fat and pale and had a mop of curly dark hair and pale blue eyes. I couldn't understand how he could be so big and I didn't have any pain. He was dense and heavy, like toddlers are.

And then I woke up.

Rainbow

Hello Succotash. I'm on the Amtrak regional train home to Boston from New York, and outside the window arcing into the water is a huge rainbow. I've tried to take pictures of it, but what I really want to do is hold you up to the glass and say look, little baby. Look. There's a rainbow touching the water. That's called a rainbow. You are inside me right now, and your eyes are starting to open, but you can't see the rainbow yet, you don't even know there is such a thing as a rainbow that can touch the ocean. You are warm and safe and bundled tight and secure, and you probably think - if you are able to think - that you want to stay in there forever, but I know that there are wonderful things out here waiting for you. I am so excited to show them to you. Even if it's something as simple and fleeting as holding you up to a train window so you can see the rainbow that is touching the water outside.

Only nine more weeks, and then there are so many rainbows waiting for you. It will be worth it. I promise.

30 Weeks

Last night we went into Somerville and hung out with grad school friends over fancy pizza and cocktails. We ended up at a friend's apartment, and at one point as a few of us lay on pillows in a window seat I had four hands on my belly waiting for Succotash to make himself known. He obliged with a flicker and a kick here and there.

Rarely have my twenties felt as far away as they did last night.

Though we did overstay our welcome, past midnight on a school night, and laughed hard over Halloween parties attended years ago. There's a lot to be said for consistency over time.

You will be arriving into some pretty longstanding patterns and relationships, Succotash. I'm curious how that will feel for you. I suppose you will have nothing to compare it to. My hope is, it will make you feel known, and seen, and even waited for. Because you are.

Unmotivated

I have so much work to do, Succotash. And it is nominally work I enjoy. So what's the problem?

The problem is, all I want to do is lie here on the couch staring at the calendar until you get here.

Is that so wrong? I want to watch TV and stare at the weird shapes moving around under the skin of my belly and consider that soon enough, you will be here, a real person, and I will have to figure out what your deal is, and cope with your needs, and that will entail physical and emotional and mental challenges, and I just want to save up for those challenges and not deal with doing any of my job at all whatsoever.

I want all the people who want me to do my job to leave me alone. I want to explain to them that this is fucking mindblowing, the fact that I am having a baby. Do they have any idea how fucking mindblowing it is? Of course they don't. And they don't care. And I don't care that they don't care, but because they don't care, I want them to leave me the fuck alone, because I care enormously.

Motivate me, Succotash. Point out to me that I am an intellectual woman, with interests, and curiosity, and that I am qualified to do my job, and that it is important to demonstrate these qualities to you so that you grow up to be a man who respects strong and independent women, who is drawn to them and supportive of them, and who has a feminist consciousness. I owe it to you, not to just lie here on the sofa watching TV and waiting and avoiding my professional responsibilities.

Right?

Optical Illusions

Who's 28+3 weeks pregnant in this picture? Not me!

Oh, wait.

Shit.

It's totally me.

Yawn

I saw you yawn today. Measuring three pounds, 30 weeks, even though you're just past 28, your head down, facing back, and little feet and fists bumping me at your passing whims.

And then, I saw you yawn.

I gasped and started to laugh, and the ultrasound tech said "Oh you saw that?" and then printed up a picture.

It's in my handbag right now.

I'm not surprised you're tired. You kept me up much of the night and morning with flickers and rumblings and other strong opinions.

I may have teared up, when I saw you yawn.

May have.

But I won't admit it.

Cusp

Tomorrow begins my third trimester. And today, I am flattened on the couch.

I was supposed to be meeting an ambitious book deadline today. Yesterday I wrote to the powers that be and confessed that that was not going to happen. I am not meeting the deadline. I'm not even approaching meeting the deadline. I am so fucking far from the deadline that I can't even see the deadline. I'm so far from the deadline that I am not even all that stressed about not meeting the deadline. Who could possibly meet such a deadline? I'm not making any progress negotiating peace in the Mideast either. So why worry about it?

Am I flattened on the couch because it is my third trimester tomorrow, or because I am lazy? Or because it is hot, as L suggests? More importantly, does it matter? The point is the flattening, one could argue. Here is me, on the couch. I'm swollen in the middle. Inside, my fish-friend swims back and forth, back and forth. Fins flickering. He settles down when I am in or on the water. Seems appropriate. But I am not on the water, I am on the couch. Fin, fin, fin.

Things I could do: shower. Put on clean clothes. Eat this yogurt on the couch next to me. Have a smidge more coffee. Read some stuff that will edge me at least in the right direction as the deadline. Blog (what I am doing now, in fact). Or I could just slump over and turn on the TV, which is what I want to do. I shouldn't do that. I should at least pretend I am doing something worthwhile.

Something other than what I'm doing, which is knitting a new human out of my own flesh.

26 Weeks

Everyone is invited to the new Braxton Hicks party in my pants.

Pitch

In Order for me to get Pregnant, my Protagonist had to do it First

Historians of witchcraft agree about one thing: writing about witchcraft will make you more superstitious. Strange coincidences, weird family connections, and odd outcomes abound. I thought it was weird enough when I discovered, years after the fact, that I was directly descended from a real life accused witch about whom I'd written an entire novel. But that was only the beginning.

I was three years into hardcore infertility treatment when it came time to write this novel, the follow up to my first witch novel. Like most first-time novelists, I wrote my first protagonist to be just a tiny bit too much like me. I wrote that book in grad school, and she was a grad student. We both are descended from executed Salem witches. We both spend a lot of our intellectual energy on the history of witchcraft and women in America. We are both brunette and kind of awkward. We both drove old beat up Volvos and we both had shaggy animals trailing along behind us wherever we went.

But our lives went in sharply different directions after that first novel came out. She become a professor, and I became a novelist. And when it was time to continue her story, for various narrative reasons it was imperative that she find herself pregnant at an inopportune time. Inopportune for her in her personal and professional life, and inopportune for me in that I was injecting myself four times a day with high octane chemicals amid ever-diminishing odds of success. At a moment in which much is being written about the challenges of being a writer and a mother at the same time, I faced the silent, invisible challenge of being a writer and a not-mother, and not by choice. I could give my protagonist what I wanted, whether she wanted it or not. But I had to face the truth that I probably would never have it for myself.

I wrote the book slowly, piece by piece, my protagonist grappling with the consequences of my choice for her personal life and her career, while I started yet another round of IVF, with its own consequences for my personal life and career. In the back of my mind, I thought maybe it would work in time for me to change the dedication of the book. My protagonist got more desperate. So did I. The manuscript went in, the dedication made, but not to a baby, as that round of IVF failed too. Things work out okay for my protagonist, though in ways shockingly different from what she expected. I told myself that they would work out for me too. That my life was good the way that it was, and that I could dump my invisible sadness on my protagonist as long as I wanted. If I couldn't control the outcome of my own life, I at least had some kind of say in hers.

It was after the manuscript revisions were all done, after the book was typeset, after the cover was picked, the acknowledgements written, and the dedication set in stone that my fifth, last ditch, hail Mary pass at IVF worked. I am about to leave on book tour six months pregnant, trying to come up with a way to talk about writing stories of witchcraft without succumbing to superstition.

Kick

I'm in Martha's Vineyard, and I should be going to sleep. But instead I am lying on my back staring at my belly.

This is because in the last two days or so, Succotash has been kicking hard enough for me to actually see it.

I sat for awhile, poised with my phone, trying to capture proof on video. Every time I was ready with the record button, he would settle down.

I'd try to jostle him, but like me, he is stubborn, and will only move on his own terms.

I finally got him. One weird ripple. Not my breath. A glimmer of life, or will, or something, but not mine.

I am 25 weeks. 15 to go. Which doesn't seem like all that many, when you get right down to it.

Exhale

Everything looks fine.

You. You look fine. You are "a beautiful fetus," says the MFM team at NYU. The ultrasound tech doing the fetal echocardiogram agrees. You do not have to see the pediatric cardiac specialist again unless your pediatrician hears a heart murmur after you are born.

You are fine.

Everything is fine.

I am so relieved I could cry.

Maybe I will? Why not?

Why not.

Only a few more months. It's summer now. You arrive in the fall.

Not too long at all.

I can't believe it. After all this time. All these blog entries. Years. Years and years and years of hypothetical consideration. You are really in there.

You are on your way.

And you'll be here very, very soon.

Worry

I read a post from an internet stranger who is ten days ahead of me. She got bad news at the anatomy scan that I am scheduled to have on Tuesday, and she had to terminate at 21+2. Today I am 21+1. I feel him moving, like a fish.

Yesterday, I stepped out of the shower and wept all over L. I do not like responding to someone else's pain by being afraid for myself - that feels selfish, unempathetic, even cruel. But I have known in the back of my head that nothing is guaranteed, that nothing is under my control, that all I can do is take my vitamins and get enough sleep and hope and hope and hope and realize there is no reason for anything, nothing is fair, none of the good things or bad things in my life are a reflection of my worth as a human being, and seeing the worst thing, the nightmare thing, happen to someone - not someone I know, exactly, but not a stranger either. It reminds me of how tenuous everything is.

Everyone who is a sailor knows someone who was lost at sea. And this is true of people trying to have children too, it seems - in my own small group of maybe 50-odd people, we have had two near term losses, one early delivery that seems to have worked out okay, and one late termination. It's like dodging a swinging pendulum that will knock down whatever tiny pin happens to have the misfortune to be standing in the way. A half an inch to the left, and the pin still stands.

I hate not having control. I hate having no say in any of this.

I hate that this stranger I know, moving in near lockstep with me, is now in indescribable pain.

And I am afraid.

X-Files

Last night I took over the sofa and made a girl nest with a plate of cheese and ice water and a small glass of wine with ice cubes and a huge wool blanket because it was fifty degrees and raining even though it's summer and a dumb show called "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce" which L hates and I hogged the TV all night with impunity. The Ward made me macaroni and cheese. I rolled over. I texted with my friend. I rolled over again. I felt you inside, swimming back and forth like a goldfish. I felt your fins. It's a strange feeling, having a goldfish bowl for a belly, and I put my hand there and enjoyed the faintest flickering, which has only just solidified in the last couple of days to be undeniable. The puppy dozed on the floor by the radiator, oblivious.

After a few hours L balked at being disallowed from the sofa and climbed under the blanket with me. He rubbed my sore back and hips and we put on "The X-Files," a now-vintage 1990s science fiction show that we both enjoyed. In 1995 the internet was still all in DOS. It's weird that we will both remember a time before the internet and you never will.

I rolled onto my back and made L rest his hand on my tummy, as you were in peak fish, flipping your fins.

There was a muffled blip.

"Did you feel that?" I asked L.

"No," said L, but his expression was uncertain.

We watched a bit more X-Files. It was the one where a small town in New Hampshire is secretly controlled by Satanists, and Satan himself appears in the guise of a substitute teacher to punish them for their lack of faith.

Another muffled blip.

"What about that?" I asked.

L's eyes opened wide. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah!"

Late last night I texted your honorary Aunt J, who is expecting Mini two months before we are expecting you, to tell her the news.

"That little five cell embryo," she texted back.

"I don't know if he was five cells. They just told me he was grade B/C. And today, I'm 21 weeks."

"I'm going to call him Wonder Embryo," J said.

And this morning you are still there, swimming with your little goldfish fins. Every day, a little more.

Bon Jovi Day!

We are halfway there.

When I lay down to sleep last night I felt tiny imaginary butterfly wings trilling along the inside of my abdomen. And a sore spot far own on my lower right quadrant, which when I reached down to touch it, felt like a hard lump.

A skull?

A foot?

Something. It was something.

All in my head?

As I lay on my side in bed last night, tired, thumbing through stupid articles on my phone since that's what I do before bed instead of reading now, I imagined I felt the faintest of faint flutters. Somewhere deep inside my flesh, well below my navel.

"Is that real?" I asked myself as L snored next to me. "Will I look back on this and think, that's when I felt him? Or am I lying to myself?"

I lie to myself a lot, it seems.

I asked the girls on the internet. The girls are wise. May of them think that what I felt was real.

My friend J, who is expecting her own hard-won IVF baby two months before I'm expecting mine, thinks it could be real. She says she feels it most when lying down to go to sleep.

Now I am very curious to lie down and go to sleep tonight.

When Will I Feel it?

The internet says Succotash is the size of a mango, or just about, as I am still a few days way from 19 weeks. The internet also says I will start feeling him soon. Little flutters. Gas bubbles?

The funny part is, in the novel I have coming out next month, the protagonist feels a quickening at a crucial moment in the plot, and it's so surprising and distracting that it changes something that the protagonist is in the middle of doing. In the book I describe it as butterfly wings, or as the flickering of a fish.

I am very curious to learn if I got that part right.

I am very curious about all of these things.

Back in New York, unpacking my sailing bag, I tucked a tiny regatta sweatshirt and a regatta hat signed by all the crew into the top drawer of my dresser, where I have been hiding miscellaneous things. It used to be mostly swimsuits and long gloves, things used seasonally or for special occasions. But it also contains a stuffed rabbit in an apron that I had as a child, and a big stuffed lobster with "Boston" on the claw, and a pacifier and binky from some friends, and a few other sundries. Baby presents, perhaps.

Last week my father brought up his silver porridger with his name on it, polished to a high sheen and lovingly dented from his own babyhood. L laughed at our family tendency to use things that are "perfectly good." I have my mother's silver baby spoons, and my own silver baby cup, and my own silver baby rattle, and I imagine tying these things with ribbon to Succotash's high chair and letting him use them too. Because why wouldn't I? They are perfectly good.

I wonder if feeling these butterfly wings that I have imagined into a literary person already will bring this story I've been telling myself, this hypothetical baby I have been trying to conjure out of thin air for the past six years, into a sense of reality. He's only four months away. How is that possible? That's no time at all! Four months!

Four months.

Waiting for the kicks that tell me it's really happening.

Regatta

A report from my first ever regatta party as a pregnant person, with apologies to the Harper's Index:

Number of people who said "And is this your husband?" in reference to my friend Alex, who is handsome and Italian and decidedly not my husband: 2

Number of dudes I have never seen before who said "Hey Guac" and smirked on their way to the men's room: 1

Number of Canadian regatta skanks trying hard to pick up my very shy, somewhat elderly skipper: 1

Number of baby sweatshirts purchased by me at the swag table: 1

Imagined conversations taking place 17 years from today, when Succotash excitedly tells me he's invited to do foredeck on a boat doing this cool regatta, have I ever heard of it, and I smugly inform him that he's done that regatta already, and in fact I was helming on the delivery in 30 knots of wind and he didn't even help: one thousand

Present

Today I took my mother to a graveyard and made a rubbing of Succotash's middle name in different fonts to hang in his room.

I think about him all the time.

You.

I think about you all the time.

And my belly is sore.

Achievement Unlocked

Achievement unlocked: getting woozy at a dinner party during hostess's account of her C section, and having to excuse self to lie on the cool tiles in the guest bath with feet propped on toilet until fainting spell passed.

First Anatomy Scan

Scan report: Succotash was curled up deep in my pelvis, but when I jostled him a little and said "Succotash - SATs" he stretched out his little legs and we got a good look. All is well. Six ounces, growing right on schedule. Nose. Spine. Heart. Umbilical cord. Nads. A good shot of a hand. He seems to be using my bladder as a pillow and my fibroid as an ottoman. Elbowed me a few times and the tech said "Oh boy - you're really in for it with this one."

Also - we settled on a name two days ago. I wrote it in the baby book.

It's starting to feel real. 

Berf

Dude.

What are you *doing* in there? All the internets say that the second trimester is easier. Oh, it's sooooo easy, they say. It's like you forget you're even pregnant at all, they say.

And yet here I am, parked on the couch, having gotten in the shower at 4:30 in the afternoon and then changed directly into fresh pajamas. I did get a decent chunk of work done today.

But I'm also slowly sipping a glass of grapefruit juice in the hopes that it will help me stop thinking about barfing.

Because I am thinking a lot about barfing.

Like. A whole lot.

It gets worse at night.

Cut me some slack, Succotash.

I mean, I love you, don't get me wrong.

But I could use a little slack over here.

Daydreams

I have started fantasizing about you. Who you might be, and what you might do.

I have looked up summer camp in Marblehead. Short day camps start at 4. Childrens' Island starts at 7, where you head off on a boat with a packed lunch and run wild on an island with a swimming pool and an arts and crafts shed.

Intro youth sailing starts at the Pleon at 8. Last night your father dreamt about us sailing with you as a little boy, so by the time you go to Pleon you'll have already gone out afternoons with us on the Ensign. I am imagining buying you your own Opti when you are seven, wading out into Little Harbor and watching you muck about in it when the tide is low and going, so there's no chance of you getting in over your head.

I became very focused on thinking about names with your father this weekend, and made a large spreadsheet, and bounced several names off of him. Some he liked and I didn't (Abner), some I liked and he didn't (Adonijah), but we have a couple lined up now that I think could be good. I have a strong preference for one over another. It comes with a good nickname. I wonder if it's the name of a boy who is tall and confident, or the name of a boy who is bookish and shy. Or of a boy who is maybe a little bit on the spectrum, as I always suspect I am, who has to be cajoled to look people in the eye and who talks too long and with too much focused interest on obscure topics without understanding the boredom of his listeners.

A blue eyed boy? A brown eyed boy? Your father's are blue. Mine are brown. But three of my four grandparents were blue. I'd be lying if I said I didn't always want blue eyes. Internalized racism? Anti-semitism? Colorism? I don't know, but I'm still pleased to think that you have a 50/50 shot.

I'm already puzzled by the assumptions other people are bringing to you, as if mine aren't bad enough. Your step-granddad planning to buy you Astros onesies. Wondering what sports you will play. Because you're a boy, I guess. Never mind that your father hated sports, and still does, and of the two of us I'm the one who likes the World Cup and America's Cup and half-heartedly keeps up with the Red Sox just because I feel as though I should. Gender is a prison, little male person who is coming into being inside my body right now. I don't know how I'm going to free you of it. I probably can't. I can try to help you. Listen closely to what you tell me. Pay attention to your passions as they bubble into existence.

"We will have this kid for the rest of our lives," L said to me the other day. "This kid. Our son."

Our son. Succotash, still, for the time being.

You.

Pressing the Coffee

I had just gotten back from walking the dog and giving him some fresh kibble and I was pressing the coffee when the phone rang, and it was a 212 number from an official-looking place.

It was NYU, calling with our NIPT results.

They said that Succotash was at a "minimal," i.e. 1 in 10,000 risk for chromosomal abnormalities, and that they had information on the sex if I wanted it. Did I want it?

"Yes please," I said, still pressing the coffee.

"You ready?" said Olga, the nurse on the other end of the line.

"Yes," I said.

"It's a baby.... boy."

"Oh. Oh my gosh," I said, and I immediately started to cry. I think she congratulated me, and I know I thanked her for calling, and then we hung up and I was done pressing the coffee and I had to call L immediately and tell him that not only are we having a baby who is healthy, but he's a boy, and he's going to be a real person, out in the world.

This is really happening.

You. You are really happening.

Dream

Last night I dreamt that I had a 1965 Pontiac Firebird that I forgot I owned, that had been sitting in a garage for ten years. It was covered in tickets and one of its tires was flat, but when I got in it was perfectly shiny and clean, and I found two pairs of sandals and a couple of bras of mine that no longer fit. Small, delicate, and lacy. The car started right up when I turned the key. A convertible.

When I woke up I wasn't sure if there was such a thing as a 1965 Pontiac Firebird. I looked it up, and there was, and my dream reconstructed it with complete accuracy. 

It's not unusual for me to dream detailed architectural dreams, but they are usually rooms I discover in my house that I didn't know where there, or alternative arrangements of basements in apartments where I no longer live. Sometimes I dream about boats. But this is the first time that I know of I have had a detailed car dream.

It makes me wonder what other things I don't know that I know. And what these forgotten and rediscovered spaces might mean.

Outing

Well. Here we go.

Today in discussions with editor and agent about revised delivery deadline for a second novel, I had to out myself as someone who will need an extra year on the deadline because lo and behold, but I am having a baby come October. I had reasons for wanting to keep the news to myself, but keep it I could no longer.

And because my colleagues now know, I have told my parents that they can tell their friends and family if they want to.

You are very shortly to be a secret no longer, Succotash. God help us all.

Seeing You

I can't believe you're in there. Just chilling. Lying on your back, with your hand up by your head, which incidentally is how I sleep. I start on my side and wind up on my back with my arms over my head. It is also how your grandfather sleeps. And presumably your great-grandfather. And everyone else.

You don't even exist yet, and yet you do. In there. I look down at myself, and I can tell, and people who know me well can tell, and my pants are getting snug, but if you are a stranger on the street you are a secret.

I'm at the library today, and I bumped into my friend W, who you will come to know, because you will follow his daughter around and crave her approval every Christmas when they come to visit. I had your ultrasounds in my handbag and so I showed him, spreading them out on a cafe table in the lobby of the central research building, which you will come to know when I bring you to activities in the basement. I pointed out your hand up by your face, explaining that's how I sleep, and a somewhat unstable woman one table over hollered "Are you pregnant?"

"Yes," I said.

"How far along are you?"

"Ah.... about three months."

She eyed me, and then said "Good luck."

"That was inappropriate," W said quietly when she had turned away.

"Yep," I agreed.

Then I told W how during our scan when some pressure or something disturbed you, you punched me. I didn't feel it, because you are too small and weak. A little silkworm in there. But I saw it.

Last night I dreamt that I was in my father's parents' house, at a luncheon crowded with old people I didn't recognize. I understood it to be a family reunion, but everyone was old, and I didn't know anyone. I got into a heated argument with a woman who was trying to talk to me about patrimony and New England, and I shouted something like "There were people here first! We stole their land! That's nothing to celebrate!" And then I stormed off in a huff to sulk in a study with a huge fireplace, high ceilings, lined with books and portraits I didn't recognize either. I understood that the house belonged to me now, though I couldn't understand what I would want with a house in Conroe Texas (which is where the house this dream is based upon was), or what I was supposed to do with it.

Your father thinks I had this dream because I am thinking about names, and heritage, and what family means. If I were a more superstitious or magically minded person, I would wonder if I weren't at the center of some ghostly confabulation, a discussion amongst the dead over where our family should go, and what it should mean. These strangers, haunting us, in ways seen and unseen. Both of us asleep with our arms over our heads.

Moody

I don't know what's going on. But I'm in a mood. A deep, intractable, immobile, dark mood.

Part of it is pain. I am running out of places to stick myself with progesterone in my haunches that don't hurt. Sitting down hurts. Walking hurts. Sticking myself hurts.

Part of it is boredom. I am preoccupied with my body, and how it feels, and how it is changing, and managing the parts of it that don't feel well - my nausea, my fatigue, my soreness. These things crowd into my brain and crowd out everything else, like creativity, curiosity, attention. And then I soon grow bored with myself. I can no longer stand how tedious the inside of my mind has become, which is to say a catalogue of symptoms instead of a person, or a collection of ideas.

And then, because I feel like I am losing a part of myself that matters, I grow despondent.

And I worry this is who I am going to be now. A suffering body instead of a mind.

10 Weeks

A brain. Little waving arms. And two itty bitty stub feet. A beating heart.

Crazy.

I can't believe three months ago I was just doing this for the myth of closure.

Waving arms. Waving!

Freakout

My tummy is sticking out. Just a little bit. It looks like I had a really big meal, or I'm really constipated, and I hate it.

"You don't look fat," L tried to reassure me. "You're pregnant."

"I hate it!" I wailed to him. "Everything hurts. My tits hurt. My ass hurts. I hate feeling tired, and sick. I nicked my nerve with the PIO shot this morning and now my entire left leg hurts, even my knee. And if I hate it this much now, how much am I going to hate it later?"

He urged me to stay home, and it just made it worse. "I want to go to work! I want to use my brain! The answer is not to lock me up in this tiny apartment!"

Poor L. I have tried to assure him that just because I hate being pregnant doesn't mean I regret doing all this. I tell myself that this will actually be over pretty quickly, all things considered, and I never have to do it again. And when it's over I'll forget about it.

But I knew I would hate it. I hate being out of control. My mother hated it, too. She said the only other time she felt so out of control was when she had cancer. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

People keep telling me it's different in the second trimester. I hope so. But I have my doubts.

8 1/2 Weeks

Which makes me think of "9 1/2 Weeks," the erotic thriller starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke back when he was still hot, and that taught a generation of Boomers that they should consider smearing food all over each other erotic. Spoiler alert: it's just sticky.

Succotash looks "perfect." Heart beating, little fish body, floating around in there. It's very mysterious, because though my breasts have outgrown their bras, and I have had persistent nausea, I haven't gained any weight nor appreciably changed shape. It's hard to believe he's really in there, drifting about on the tides of my body.

I read somewhere that our body is the same percentage salt water as the face of the earth. I wonder if that's true. I like thinking about it, so I hope that it is. It speaks to a pre-Scientific Revolution understanding of how the world is put together - suggesting that there is some kind of divine proportion between the heavens, the earth, our bodies, our souls. It's alchemical thinking, is what it is, and feels true even when it isn't. Then again, maybe we give science too much credit.

"I think this happened just because I challenged you to beat Dr. Big Guns," I said to Dr. Small Guns.

She smirked, pleased with herself. "They get those reputations, at Fancy Ivy League Research Hospital," she said. She dropped her voice and added "But they aren't any better."

Dr. Small Guns has the good magic. She understands the tides that we are now drifting on, together.

Seven Week Scan

Saw a heartbeat.

This might be real.

Our First Difference of Opinion

Me: I'm going to order fancy and delicious udon noodle soup with lots of fresh veggies and maybe a couple of pot stickers from that place that is so good and delicious.

Succotash: I want chilaquiles.

Me: Who said that?

Succotash: Me. I want chilaquiles!

Me: You don't even know what chilaquiles are.

Succotash: Yeah but you do, and you are looking at a new Mexican delivery place, and it's got a coupon and they do chilaquiles all day. Get us chilaquiles!

Me: But....

Succotash: And guacamole.

Me: But.....

Succotash: The large one.

Me: Okay.

Shock

I spent so much time worrying over our appointment today that now that it's over, and all is well, and everything looks wonderful, and there's a yolk sac and even a faint faint heartbeat (whaaaaat?), I now am unable to process how I feel.

Relief, certainly. Also, shock that this process actually seems to have worked. Also, anxiety over logistics.

When I am stressed I typically turn my mind immediately to logistics.

Right now, I am sitting in a ball on the sofa, numb.

Moments of excitement burst through, but they are too much to process, so when I feel them, I shut down again.

"I need to crate myself," I told L. Who, incidentally, started to cry at the end of the appointment.

"I know that," he said. "You know why?"

"Because you've lived with me for twenty years?" I guessed.

Probably.

Holy crap, Succotash.

In between all this storm of unimaginable emotion, I have time to wonder who you are. What kind of person might you be, stewing in there. Tenacious, in that you didn't let being graded only b/c quality stop you. I admire that. I like to think that you, like me, don't like being told the odds on things. That you might be the kind of person who says, who are you, to grade me, and think that means anything? You don't know. Just you wait and see.

Hurry Up and Wait

Six week scan is Thursday.

Today is Tuesday.

There is an eternity, yawning open between today and Thursday. I cannot entirely imagine how that Expanse of time, that chasm, can possibly be bridged. I know that some of the time will be filled tonight, as I go with a friend to a potentially important professional event. I will be distracted by nerves and networking and the foundation garment that I have to wear under my restrictive, but very flattering, cocktail dress. That's six hours, give or take.

I'll spend another seven or eight sleeping tonight.

Then maybe another seven or eight on top of that, sleeping Wednesday night.

But even so, even with all those hours accounted for, I struggle not to try to force Thursday to arrive sooner, simply as an act of will.

I read my body for clues that everything is all right. I have had no spotting. I have had pretty consistent nausea that seems to worsen later in the day. My breasts are starting to feel slightly sore. All of these are good signs. They point to good things.

But I won't be reassured until I'm told to be reassured, and probably - if I'm honest - not even then. Then I will just have another new benchmark over which to fret. New impossible chasms of time to cross on a ferry of my own fear.

I hope you're okay in there, Succotash. Feeling warm and safe. Growing. Drinking up those vitamins and chia seeds ad whatever else filters its way in there. I hope you aren't afraid. There's nothing for you to be afraid of. I'll be afraid for both of us, okay?

Worrying

Anxiety is the future stealing from the present, somebody told me not long ago, and even though he has a point, knowing that isn't quite enough to make me stop worrying today. I have no concrete reason for concern. Everything is the same. Mild cramping, which I am treating with rest. I ordered Chinese food. My appetite isn't great, as it hasn't been so far.

Maybe I'm worried because I've told a couple of people and I am worried about jinxing myself. That could be it, even though I am an intelligent, highly educated woman who by all rights out not believe in jinxes.

I would rather be at the library.

I would rather be deep in my work.

Instead, I'm on the couch, with a heating pad, simmering in sexual frustration and preoccupied with forces wholly and completely out of my control. I am in the present, fully, because my body is trapping me in it, and yet the present is being stolen from me by my fears about the future.

The mind can be a duplicitous thing. Or place in which to dwell.

Second Beta

"I have a couple of embarrassing questions."

"It's okay. I'm a nurse."

"Well, just one."

"Uh huh?"

"So. I know I'm not supposed to [drops voice] have sex. But can I [drops to whisper] orgasm?"

"You mean...."

"You know. Orgasm."

"Like, outside, not inside?"

"Yeah."

"Um. I don't see why not. But let me check with the more senior nurse."

"Great. Thanks. Cause I was all set to make myself feel better for this cycle failing by getting high and having sex with my husband, and then it was positive."

[Laughs]