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.