My belly is becoming a thing.

A thing I have to breathe around.

I lean back when I sit because otherwise my lungs seem to squish one atop the other. And my stomach is stuck in between, compressed.

If I eat, I have to lean way back.

If I’m sitting normally, the right set of ribs start to feel like they’re falling asleep — too much conflated into one spot — like an over-edited poem.

It’s a belly I touch because it’s where my hand can rest. And because part of me feels as if I can hold it up. It doesn’t feel heavy, it just feels vulnerable out there.

I’ve gained twenty pounds. I make the floor creak.

I can’t slide by people anymore. I try, then I remember.

And part of me still feels that it’s my secret. When strangers ask when I’m due, half of me is surprised that they can tell. From up here above the bubble, it doesn’t look that big. All I know is I can’t see much of my legs, and my arms feel like T-Rex arms.

Looks like you’re really packing it in, someone said recently. She ran over and tickled my stomach. She is usually more sensitive. I am usually less so. I think I glared.

A friend of mine told me what her partner said after he’d seen me: Is she going to get any bigger? She looks like she needs a cart. Sometimes I wish my stomach obstructed my hearing instead of my lungs.

October 20th, 2009 | Category: the baby thing | Leave a comment

I’ve been looking for discounts on baby items on craigslist, and I found a co-sleeper for sale for half off. And better yet, it was just down the street, so I didn’t have to drive very far or have it shipped.

We’ve decided that the system that perhaps might work for us is to start with the baby in the co-sleeper — a small crib attached and directly in line with our bed — and for naps the baby could be in a crib in its room or else in a pack-n-play that floats around the house. I may even be okay with the baby sleeping right in our bed, but because we have dogs who are slowly being trained to not jump on the bed at night, I want the baby to have a place that is safe from them and from our semi-conscious selves.

I don’t feel any particular desire to push the baby into its own room too quickly — it’s harder for me, and a swift transition from nine months inside to a room on its own seems unnecessary. I don’t think there’s any prize for putting the baby in his own room the fastest — in fact, I actually think I may feel that the opposite is true (though I’ll have to see, I don’t know from experience).

Last night I drove down the street to check out the used co-sleeper, and what I found was this beautiful young family, our age and in a house that was simple and uncluttered and with a huge piano that took up most of the main room. The husband showed me the co-sleeper, taking it out of its bag and showing me how it worked and pointing out where it was worn from use. Then the wife came in and helped him disassemble it. They talked of their three-year-old, who has slept with them for most of his life and decided recently that he’s ready for his own room. No tears, no difficult transition. He was ready when he was ready.

So $75? I asked.

Yeah, does that sound right to you? the husband asked me.

Actually, the wife started to say.

Maybe less, because of the worn spots? the husband finished for her.

No, actually, I was thinking that she could just take it, she finished quietly.

The husband was quiet but seemed relatively indifferent. The wife helped me bring it to the car. She said she was just grateful that someone could use it and that it wouldn’t have to be in their house anymore.

Sometimes giving looks so easy. She just wanted to give. We were neighbors, and I was entering a life phase that she had just finished. She was sending me off into mine with a gift, from one family to another. I tried to offer to pay perhaps too many times, and I assured them that they had my contact information if they changed their mind.

It made it easier last night to give. To jump up and get Steve his tea, to take the dogs out, leaning over my obstruction of a belly to deal with their muddy paws. It made it clear that I also have to give like she gave. I’m already planning all the things I can give to a new mother once the baby or babies are grown.

October 20th, 2009 | Category: happening, the baby thing | Comments (1)

Long legs collapse in my lap.
First an empty cove and then a precise buckling.

A thunderstorm, a ball that won’t bounce.
Velvet weight. A toy I never got to have.

His legs not sticks but coral, thin with hollows,
sprouting like spokes from the waist.
A nose lifts my wrist: he would not assume love or beef or plentitude.

Up, up. Come.

The house creaks by the fireplace, which is not on.
Then by the stove the floor is cold: some vent unfastened.

Dog claws like teeth chatter elsewhere – loud typing on the bamboo mat.

You can hear his Velcro breath when he’s thirsty.

Then a tap on the glass like birds do. More typing then a high-pitched
bird accident, a dog whine, more tapping, typing adagio.

The whoosh of the door and real birds outside
as if I yawned and could suddenly hear.

October 19th, 2009 | Category: house | Leave a comment

wake at 8, make waffles from Alice Waters’ “The Art of Simple Food.” put out some bananas and thawed raspberries and local syrup.

shower, go to church, Rosie to church school.

Rosie meets a friend downtown for homework time. Steve visits his brother. I buy pet food and two 50-foot-long leashes and take the dogs to a park to run around and explore.

Rosie and Steve dig two long trenches and plant bulbs. I accompany a friend to look at a house she’s thinking of buying.

I sort laundry and fold clothes and clean out two closets downstairs, plus I search through craigslist for any deals on baby items (found!). Steve and Rosie go to see a scary Halloween movie.

Steve makes homemade soup — pork, noodles, cheese broth, plus some Chinese spices. I continue looking on craigslist.

now Steve and I are going to watch a Netflix before sleep.

October 18th, 2009 | Category: house, right now | Leave a comment

October 18th, 2009 | Category: photograph | Leave a comment

October 15th, 2009 | Category: photograph | Leave a comment

I love the calligraphy here, at neither snow. Graceful and a little sad and also a touch shaky, allowing for imperfection, the lines not perfectly straight. and a new sense of how to fill the outer space of an envelope.

Sometimes I think that this space could be more beautiful if I wrote everything I wanted to say and then posted it in my handwriting.

October 15th, 2009 | Category: overheard | Leave a comment

After a week in Seattle and four days with family, two days ago (after I came home from teaching a quick workshop) Steve asked if I’d like to go for a walk. I didn’t, but I went. And I shouldn’t have, (there is a lesson in there about intuition) because on the walk I felt a pull start in my right pelvis and back. I almost asked for a break, but we were almost home. I spent the rest of the day in bed.

But the next morning, which happened to be the morning we went to the midwife, I felt great, and the heartbeat was louder than ever, my goodness it filled up the room with its strength and volume.

The midwife said that if I feel any pain like that I should hit the floor, lay low. It means I am overworking, or have lifted something too heavy or moved too much. Allow the body to repair.

And I realized that yes it was too much, I had spent a week and a half doing too much and here my body was telling me so, my baby was telling me so. I am trying to be still.

Yesterday I stayed in bed as much as possible, which is hard to do, and I was up taking the cats to the vet and up making dinner and up doing whatever little thing the house asks so loudly to have done to it after a busy and beautiful weekend family storm. But I hit a wall, I felt it, at 8, and Rosie and Steve felt it too because I got cranky. I was up until midnight anyway, but sitting down, and my pelvis and back hurt loudly.

So today I am laying low. Hard to type this way. On my side (do-not-lie-in-your-back-do-not-lie-on-your-back). My menagerie like a star touching any part of me they can. Right now Joon is at my right knee, Moby at my left toe, and Lucky at my left thigh (there is some grumbling between those two). (Roxy, the black cat, has not ever been a shadow to me, good girl). Steve pops in and says it looks claustrophobic, but for me I feel contained, unable to fall.

Being down like this is hard. I’m not the most productive person I know, but certainly I have never sat in bed all day. The menagerie is thrilled, but I feel like I have had thirty sodas and my teeth are rotting and I have no way to burn any of it off. I need a fairy to come in and clean the house and comb my hair and take the sweater and sheet patterns off my skin.

October 15th, 2009 | Category: house, the baby thing | Leave a comment

I was looking up solutions to raccoons and found this awesome story on the Berkeley Parents Network.

We also had raccoons who came in through the cat door. Not only did they eat the cats’ food, but they played with our son’s stuffed animals. We didn’t know why the stuffed animals started losing noses and ears until the middle of one night when we were awakened to the sound of Tickle Me Elmo laughing his little head off. Upon investigating we found Elmo stuck in the cat door unable to stop laughing and vibrating. The raccoons had abandoned him when they couldn’t squeeze him through the door. Elmo’s mishap started explaining a lot of strange toy problems in our house.

October 13th, 2009 | Category: overheard | Leave a comment