Waiting

39 weeks, 2 days. I feel like we've fought our way here. This last month has been the toughest.

At this point, my nightmares are thinly veiled metaphors including on-coming trains and hanging high in the air from a slanting board with only my bare hands. J.D. and I laughed when I told him my trio from the other night: wolves, tornadoes, and c-sections. Then there's waking every night at 4:00 a.m., sweaty, restless and hungry, my brain full of pieces of nightmares and anxiety. I look forward to once again lying down without lower abdominal pain and the constant flopping back and forth from my right to left sides. It would also help if my knee would cooperate so I could go up and down the stairs without the fear of falling.

I would be a liar if I said I wasn't afraid of delivery. Delivery: sending forth, handing over, giving up possession of, setting free. But I think it's mostly the unknown. Will I be capable? I keep hearing Mina Loy's beginning of "Parturition": "I am the centre / Of a circle of pain."

Her poem about birth continues:

Exceeding its boundaries in every direction
The business of the bland sun
Has no affair with me
In my congested cosmos of agony
From which there is no escape
On infinitely prolonged nerve-vibrations
Or in contraction
To the pinpoint nucleus of being
Locate an irritation without
It is within
Within
It is without.
The sensitized area
Is identical with the extensity
Of intension

I only hope that her other lines will be true too, arming me:

Pain is no stronger than the resisting force
Pain calls up in me
The struggle is equal

Still, now is just waiting. Waiting. Hoping to go into labour naturally. I want baby to choose his time. But I'm limited in how much time I can win for him now. Either way, certainly it won't be easy for him either.

In our time

To my son,

We only have six days to go until you're "full term" little one. Our time wholly together grows short. But I'll tell you a secret: part of me doesn't want to share you with the world. I have a strong desire to keep you all to myself. As you are now, only I can feel your every movement. Only I know your waking and sleeping, and only I have any sense of who you are.

But to keep you to myself so exclusively, while in part a beautiful idea to me, limits you. You must be loved and known by others. You must be separated from me to exercise your individuality, to become a little person, to grow. It's just that now I realize birth is so much more than a physical pain; it is the first pain of separation.

I've actually really loved being pregnant with you. I've loved the doubleness, curiosity, wonder, movement, and importance you've brought into my life. I've enjoyed how you have complicated my being and sense of self. I've cherished how you have made me feel connected to life. Living inside me, you have made me feel maybe for the first time, really not alone. You've also helped me more fully understand the connectedness I have with my own mother, and you've enabled me to return to her in a sense with new found appreciation for what she did for me. In a way we were once all together. Even when I was a baby in her womb, I already had the egg inside me that would, in part, someday become you. It's just further proof that love has a long line of connectedness, even if we must eventually exist apart to obtain our greater potential.

Then I think about who you will be-- of getting to know you. And this part of me is eager to bring you into the world and meet you. I wonder what color your hair and eyes will be, if you will have J.D.'s hairline, his smile, or his facial shape. I wonder which of my features will be visible. I grow excited to feel your weight in my arms and touch your soft baby skin, to smell your baby scent and spend hours amazed, playing with your tiny toes and fingers, tickling you, kissing you, and watching you grow. I think your father and I will find a great deal of pleasure in seeing you become yourself. And I want to see him hold you and love you as much as I already do. Right now you are still only partially real for him, but when you are born you will immediately have his whole heart too. And this is why, most of all, you must be born.

But for the moment, still grow and thrive inside me. The truth is you will always be mine to love. The rest of the world will just have to wait a little longer.

36 Weeks

Song of Your Growing

In utero
the cosmogony--
evolution and formation of you--
from one in 600 million

ovum fallopian eon
galaxy night stars
cervix world womb

An orange-red glow,
supernovae of
blood vessels illuminated
by sun's light

zygote stem bud
cell platelet leaf
vein river root
egg embryo pulse

Our two beating hearts
binary stars dancing,
rhythms from two bodies
orbiting in gravidity

penumbra albedo halo
long-waited comet
birthline accretion matter
spiral nebula resonance

Constant tug at my heart
pulling downward
shifting my consciousness
nothing left unchanged

hair nails eyes
liver kidneys spine
lips toes testes
brain skin tongue

Be comforted
safely wake and sleep
in warm darkness
your first universe

noises, sounds
filtering light
mother's voice
sense of touch
floating buoyant

This is known:
you are held
you are carried
your are that universe's child.