Yesterday we felt a foot! Or was it is hand?
It was definitely an appendage of one form or the other, and Lee and I each got to feel it rest right under our hands. I almost felt it in my hand at first! It had edges and definition. He becomes more and more of a little person each day.
Monkey sings Otter a lullaby at night after I sing her one, and he kicks mightily away as she sings into my tummy. He is really going to know who is sister is when he comes into this world. She is so excited that she has really spent a lot of time talking and singing to him.
I am still nesting, the instinct growing stronger and changing form as we get closer to Delivery-Day. This week it is a scrapbook of artistic images of me and my belly to commemorate this pregnancy. I wanted something to remind me of what it looks like for me to be pregnant. It is a pretty neat project so far. I am having fun with my Photoshop elements program and my pictures. Most of them I will not post on the Internet, as they involve no clothing, and once you put naked pictures out there, out there they stay. However, this one is I feel is harmless enough.
I am trying to capture the sense of quiet peace that fills me from time to time. So much of pregnancy is hard, and so many of our culturally supported memories are the hard ones. Nausea, sleeplessness, cramping, feeling fat, etc. I wanted to create memories for myself that reminded me of peace, and beauty, the internal sense of fulfillment one gets when you’re growing a baby. That way, even though I more often look sleepy, or a little rumpled, or tired and grumpy, I will remember feeling beautiful and calm, and ready for baby.
It has been an interesting project. When Monkey was in my belly I had a cast done of my torso, but I have not gotten it from the artist, and recently found out he had passed, so it is unlikely that I will have that memory, in any form other than a memory.
Of course my mom took a ton of pictures of me while I was carrying with her, so it’s not as though I have no memories of that time, they just aren’t full on belly nudes.
I am also making curtains and designing a little book and doing all the other stuff that lends itself to a sense of readiness for baby. We have our first meeting with Ellen, who is our Doula for the grand day, this weekend, and our having our tour and birthing class the following weekend.
I am still anxious about delivery, and a little sad that this is my final time doing this. It is such a complicated thing, pregnancy, I can’t imagine signing up for a life of it, but I am sad to see this part of my life slip into the past. Sometimes I wish life’s experiences were less ambivalent.