Letters to Baby | Post 23 | Week 28

Dear Boy,

The last letter I wrote you on the blog was a long and hard one.  But a couple of weeks later, you stopped making me sick, you started showing off yourself to the world inside your growing-globe and you would do the greatest swim-flip-turns that almost tickled me.  And I could feel you.

I went from probably the closest thing to despair I've experienced - nothing prepared me for how hard two months of non-stop, intense nauseation would be.  I not only thought "I can't do this ever again.  I'm not having any more children."  I also told dad and grandma... and maybe a few others.  

But then.

Second trimester came.  And first of all, that came with relief and health and NO MORE NAUSEA.  But mostly, second trimester came with all sorts of signs of you.  Just like nothing could have prepped me for the pain of the first few months, nothing adequately prepped me for the bliss of the next few months.

I want 32 children now.  Maybe more. (wink face)

I catch myself thinking to and convincing myself that no one has ever felt this way, or experienced these things.  I must be the only one.  I just.  Can't imagine.  That.  I don't know.  A sensation so great could have been lived out before.  We're probably setting Love Records, little guy!  I know it!  But then I see a mom in a grocery store, focused on buying the cheapest Cheerios.  And her boy tries to reach out and grab a set of plastic straws hanging from the rack.  And she gasps and throws her pad of paper and pen.  Her shriek makes the whole aisle turn and the boy cry.  "Don't do that, Max! You're going to fall!"  She wraps him up and apologizes for startling home and just holds him in the aisle, kissing his cheeks.  "I just don't want you to get hurt.  And CAN'T stand in carts."  The pen rolls under the rack of colorful boxes.  She pushes her cart away, probably forgetting that she never grabbed Cheerios.

I see the older mama at the Guthrie Library with her probably Kindergarten age daughter.  I don't know who is more excited about Amelia Bedelia.  The girl has her special library tote and is so proud to reach up on the counter and slide her newly stamped books into it.  Mama is just happy.  They hold hands walking out to the car.

 I see my own mom, after chemo, asking who can take her to her middle boy's play-off game.  It's all the way in DC.  At 6:00 pm.  The traffic is going to stink.  Dad has a work meeting he can't miss, the other kids have plans they can change... but to go sit in traffic while it's dark to watch a game they'll probably lose?  No one is jumping at the offer.  Mom gets the keys to take herself.  She is not missing this game.  Her baby is playing, and she is going to be there.  My sisters and I eventually take her, and she's the loudest, cutest, fire-cracker-iest fan in the stands.  They win, and my brother scans for her face in the stands, and beelines to her to hug her after the game.

I know I'm not the first woman to be the factory and the home to another human.  I know I'm not the first wife to just lose it when her husband goes bananas over feeling all the different kinds of baby movements - "That was a HUGE one!" "Whoa, is he, like, doing boxing practice in there?" "I think he just gave me a high-five!" I know I'm not the first one to stand, undressed, in a mirror and just stare for whoknowshowlong at my midsection, tracing its new, funny shape.  I know I'm not the first fiercely protective, or blissfully in-love mother.  I know millions - maybe billions - have experienced these things before.

But you know what?  I'm the first to experience them with you, cool kid.
And that certainly makes it different.
Though motherhood has happened over and over, you've never happened before.
This is the first time.

And I don't want to ever forget the firstness and the one-time-ness of everything about you.  

Thank you for making my every-minute sweet, for giving me brand new reasons to love your father more, and thank you, even, for the swollen ankles, heartburn, leg cramps and muscle pain - it means you here, and I'm so glad.

See you soon, camper.

Love, mom.