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.