Notes from the Trenches

22 Jan 2014

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13 WeeksI was wondering what to do tonight since I feel a tiny bit better (better than Netflix and the couch, not better enough to…attempt any real adventures), and Eric suggested that I write a blog post. It’s getting close to two weeks since our baby announcement (and thank you so much for all your sweet sweet comments!), and I am still sick (womp womp), BUT I am undeniably getting better. And that is worth celebrating! I am (no joke) playing “Eye of the Tiger” as I type this.

The picture above is from 13 weeks on the dot, and even though I think most of my bump is actually the aggressive waistband of my pants, I’ll take it! It has been so exciting to see even the tiniest of suggestions that there is a living and kicking masterpiece of preciousness in there.

I’m now about 13.5 weeks, and I will spare you all the boring details of my minor improvements, but I will say that now I have HOPE that I’ll be able to function normally (well, the new normally!) within the next month or so (or weeks? or week? I would accept that too).

I was lying in bed last night and thinking about having our little one here with us, and I flashed back to the happiest memory. I was about 10, and we were visiting my awesome aunt Ellen, who had just had her first baby. Wesley must have been six or seven months old by then, and I loved holding her. One evening we fed her, bathed her, changed her, and off she went to sleep while it was still light out. I remember helping fold diapers and tiny onesies on the couch while someone put dinner in the oven–spinach quiche. The grown-ups and the big kids gathered around the table, and I think some soft classical music was playing, and I think the adults had some wine. I remember the joy of soaking up the quiet, which was suffused with an overwhelming joy: we talked about the funny faces and gurgles my cousin had made and which parent she looked more like, and we all knew that soon we’d be able to hold her and kiss her and watch her tiny smiles again. It was a profound quiet, a profound joy.

I have babysat and nannied and babysat some more throughout my life (I once had what I referred to as a babysitting empire), and I know the silent euphoria of naptime: a chance to sit quietly or finish the dishes or check email or read a book. But this was something else entirely. It’s something I am so looking forward to: the knowledge that your heart, your whole heart, is breathing peacefully in the next room, and that the next day you get to do it all over again, with tiny changes in gummy grins and laughs and games. I can’t wait. To hold my heart, my whole heart, in my arms.

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