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.