How it Used to Be

Taking a delicate piece of cloth

and spreading it out large,

examining it,

or pulling up a chair to sort

the beads spread out

to find the just-right one,

or kneeling, hands folded and eyes closed

with lips forming small whispers,

or lying down with foreheads pressed together

just before a kiss.

Come Out, Baby

I'm done with pregnant now. You can come out.

The Giant Panties of Pregnancy

At somewhere around the 25th week of my pregnancy, I realized that my underwear weren't really serving much of a purpose anymore. I'd not wanted to buy new EVERYTHING to accommodate my new figure, and I'd hoped that at least my pre-pregnant underwear would continue to suffice. I toughed it out for a few more weeks, but finally, as my baby-belly hung over an increasingly-uncomfortable red line around my waist from the elastic band, I realized I'd have to do what I swore I never would: I bought granny panties.

I'd eschewed the things for years. Why would anyone ever want to wear underwear that came up so high? How can your belly button breathe with panties touching it? It's shameful! It's not sexy! In all my judgment, I never conceived of a time when it would make sense to have underwear that came up nearly high enough to meet my bra.

That is...I never conceived of it until now. I am in love with the giant panties of my pregnancy. I embrace them. I own them. And at least for today, as I waddle my way through the last weeks of pregnancy, I swear I'm never going back.

Hi Baby.

I am getting excited about meeting you, and at the same time, I am incredibly nervous. I'm huge and anxious and sweaty and happy all at the same time.

Your growing inside of me has made things interesting with your daddy and me. I see him differently, not just in how he's connected to me, but in how he'll be with you and for you. You make us closer. We share you. I love that about you, and I love that about him. You're my favorite people in the whole world.

I hope I do a good job being your mama. I am afraid that I won't do everything right, but I promise you, I'm going to try. Being your mama is the most important job I ever had, and I'm going to try my very best to give you a beautiful life. I promise to surround you with good people who will love you well, to protect you to the best of my ability, and to comfort you when you are hurt or sad or scared. I promise to teach you what I know about God and love and life, and to be honest with you about who I am. I hope you'll trust me enough to be honest with me about who you are.

I hope that you will not know too much pain and darkness, but I also know that pain will make you grow. I hope that when the hard times come, you'll have lots of tools to help you deal with them. I promise to do my best to share with you the tools I've picked up along the way in my own life.

I wonder what you'll be like...if you'll be able to draw like your daddy, or if you'll love words like me. Maybe you'll love art and literature, but have other passions that we haven't imagined. I wonder if your eyes will be blue like his or green like mine. Sometimes, I wish I had a zipper in my stomach that would allow me to take you out, take a look at you, give you a kiss and put you away.

I don't much like being pregnant. I'm tired all the time, and everything seems very, very difficult. But, I love feeling you move. I love imagining you. I take care of myself better because you're a part of me.

A couple of weeks ago, you were kicking and flipping all around inside of me. It was kind of under my ribs, and it hurt, so I pushed down on you to see if I could distract you. Right where I pushed, you kicked. I pushed again. You kicked. We pushed against each other four or five more times, and it filled me with delight. It's the first time I knew you were responding to me. Last weekend, your daddy put his head on my belly to feel close to you, and you kicked him or punched him right in his face...twice. It made us both laugh. You're a feisty little girl.

Really, you're all I think about anymore. I go to work, I come home, I rest and eat and read and pray, but behind it all, there's you. I guess this is how it will be from now on...you'll come first. All my decisions will be about what's best for you. That's a pretty big deal.

I love you so much, and I don't even know you. I can't imagine how it will feel to hold you in my arms.

Until we meet, with love,

Your mama

Chimpanzee Feet

"Oh my God, was that your foot?" I asked the first time my husband pinched me with his toes. He was in the backseat of a car we were both riding in one summer, and he'd propped his legs up in the space between the two front seats. Something had just pinched me awfully hard, but it didn't seem possible for toes to pinch so impressively.

He pinched me again, with his toes.

I'd never really noticed his toes before, but looking at them, they were kind of long and, apparently, unusually agile.

Through the years, he's pinched me hundreds of times with his feet. He can retrieve the remote control with his toes, pick up his dirty socks and toss them in the hamper, quite like a chimpanzee.

The weekend before we went to the doctor to find out the sex of our baby, he'd gotten me really good. I'd exclaimed, "I hope our child doesn't have your feet!"

The Wednesday we went to the doctor's office, the ultrasound technician laughed at us and asked, "Which one of you can pick things up with your toes?"

Our daughter has monkey feet, too. She could tell, she said, by her unusually agile big toe, which she was wiggling vigorously and separating out from the rest of her toes.

He smiled and smiled: A pretty little girl with monkey feet!

The Decorah Eagles and Daddies

I've been watching the live stream of a family of eagles in Decorah, Iowa over the last few weeks. I didn't start watching until the babies had already hatched, but they'd been alive only a few days when I started tracking their growth and progress. I was fascinated by the mother eagle's behavior, brooding and feeding and tending to the nest.

The first day I watched, I empathized with the poor Mama Eagle, diligently brooding over her eaglets as the wind blew her feathers and her eyes grew heavy. I rejoiced when I woke up, uncomfortable with my own growing baby's moving and my body's accommodation of her, and saw she'd tucked her head and was fully asleep.

The first few times I saw the father eagle, he seemed only to show up, look at the babies, and fly away. I wondered if he might not have a few nests with busy Mama Eagles, all somewhat bedraggled by the rigors of tending to their young. I resented him his freedom, his sleek feathers, and his adventurous lifestyle.

But then, after the eaglets were a few days old, I was watching when the Daddy Eagle came and relieved Mama Eagle of her burden. He fluffed up his chest feathers and brooded over the eaglets, just like their mother. He brought fish, squirrels, and other prey into the nest, and just as lovingly as the mother, he fed them, ripping bits of meat up to appropriate sizes for each of the babies. Mama Eagle spent more of her time on the nest, but Daddy Eagle seemed to be responsible for protection, for provision, and for giving the Mama some relief.

At five months pregnant, I'm surely anthropomorphizing these birds, but I do see such sweet parallels to the little family my husband and I are making. One of the first times I saw Daddy Eagle in the nest, he'd neatly stacked a few carcasses that Mama Eaglet had been feeding the eaglets. He'd rearranged some of the nesting material, and he'd provided two fresh fish for food. That evening when I got home from work, I was surprised to find that my husband had painted the walls of our home, freshening it up for the arrival of our little girl. The next morning, he work up early with me and packed a good lunch, conscientiously putting in a bit too much food to accommodate my ravenous appetite, and making sure there were plenty of proteins and vitamin-rich foods for me.

I suppose I should not be so surprised that this is how families work. It's the way my own came together when I was a child, but somehow, the sheer naturalness of these eagles' instincts in caring for their young brings me great comfort. It gives me hope that we can do this, my husband and me. We can grow a baby together. Isn't that beautiful?

My Birthmark.

In the crook of my right arm, there's a birthmark. It's an oval, about a centimeter long and about a half a centimeter wide. It's brown. It's always been there.

I'm 17 weeks pregnant, and about a month ago, I noticed that the texture of the birthmark had raised a bit. I tend not to worry much about minor health problems, but since I've been pregnant, I've had much more of a tendency to catastrophize:

Oh no! It's deadly death cancer! I'm going to die! My child will not know me! My husband will have to raise it on his own!

Etc.

I went to see a dermatologist today, and she's going to biopsy it in a few weeks. The biopsy will require removing a section of my birthmark which is approximately the size of a hole punch, which is pretty much the whole thing.

As I left the doctor's office, I found myself strangely sad. Of course, being pregnant, strange things make me sad, and I weep easily these days. But this birthmark--it's been with me forever. It's a little weird-looking, and as a kid, other children would tease me about it or ask me what it was...but it's always been there, and been a part of me. Even when kids would tease me about it, I always had a fondness for it.

When my little niece first started to talk, she would look at it and ask me about it. She had her own birthmark, and it seemed to make her feel closer to me.

My husband has kissed that part of me. In a few weeks, it will be mostly gone. There will be a little scar and a remnant of pigment around the edges, and that will be all. Like so many things that seemed they'd always be around, it won't be around anymore.

Soon, too, I'll be a mother. The person I've always been, the body I've always inhabited, will be irretrievably changed, and yet the same. I am just beginning to feel the baby quickening inside me, bending and stretching its arms and legs, a feeling soft and subtle like bubbles or feathers. I'm past the morning sickness now, but there are still strange symptoms of the body inhabiting my body, the present changes and the changes that are coming. It's an odd time to be me.

So birthmark, here's to you. Thank you for marking me, for teaching me to appreciate the beauty that comes from difference, for connecting me to my niece, and for changing now when everything else is changing. Thank you for being a sweet, brown metaphor for much of my life.