My due date is
May 24, 2001

Today I am
31 weeks, 6 days
pregnant.

I've gained 40 pounds thus far.
Oh, the shame.

 

We are having a
girl, and her name is
Isolde June.

March 21, 2001

I've found a motherlode of Berry Kix (the store right down the street from me stocks it, as a matter of fact) so life is good again. This cereal obsession is not abating; in fact, it's gotten worse. Now I must have not only the Kix but also Wheaties. Soggy Wheaties. With lots of honey. No other way will do.

So, I'm finally starting starting to realize that I am having a baby. Yeah, just now, nearly 8 months into this. See, I'd been thinking of this more along of the lines of 'I'm pregnant' than 'I'm going to have a child'. It's like focusing so hard on just getting pregnant for so long made me kind of lose sight of the ultimate goal. But this pregnancy is going to be over soon and then I'll be.... a mom. Wow. I can't even imagine how different my life is going to be.

She's with me all the time, of course, but I can't wait until she's actually here. I want to see what she looks like. I want to know what she's like. All I really know about her now is that she enjoys knocking remote controls off my stomach (this is quite the party trick, let me tell you) and wedging her feet really hard under my right rib. Beyond that I'm clueless.

I go into her room and look at all these things that she'll be using soon, but I can't really visualize her. She's a vague baby-shaped blur in my imagination. I can't see her when I think about nursing her in the glider or putting her in the cradle. I watch as many reality shows as I can about birth (TLC and the Discovery Channel are my channels of choice anymore), but those babies on the screen don't seem to have much to do with my baby. I study them closely, these babies. I look at their size, at their chubby fists, at the way they screw their faces up when they cry. I take all these little things from all these different babies and try to form a vision of Isolde, but it's useless. I just don't know what she's going to be like. I don't know what motherhood is going to be like.

I'm not scared, I swear I'm not, I just feel so.... odd. Like I'm on the verge of something huge. Like some mystery is getting ready to unfold. I feel like I did when I was 16 years old and I'd stay up until 2:00 in the morning just so I could stare at the moon while the rest of the world slept. I felt something big approaching then and I feel something big approaching now. Then it was adulthood. Now it's.... parenthood. The ultimate adulthood, I guess.

I can't describe how this makes my nerves zing; I just don't have the words. It's a strange edgy feeling, down in the pit of my stomach. It's a prickle on my neck, a tingle along my spine. I can feel it in the air, like you can feel a thunderstorm approaching long before the first flash and rumble ever show in the sky. Something is happening in my life over which I have no control and there's nothing for it but to succumb.

 

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