collage
My brain goes in and out of working order. Swimming through warm and cool spots in an ocean, hormone spike here that makes me forget what I meant to say–
then exhaustion — the kind of exhaustion like in the beginning, that turns my brain to jello and makes every stair a chore. And crankiness, which makes me less lovable. This collage has circles in it. I’m getting close to the end, I can tell, because it feels like the beginning.
And fear. The what-if-I’m-not-good-enough / what-if-sleeping-on-my-back-has-damaged-the-baby / fear-fear. That’s returned. Waking last night at 3:30 in the morning, so wide awake it seems best to just get up and do some writing or clean the kitchen. Instead: ruminating (cyclical theme). About money, about all uncertain futures, about what on earth to name this baby and if I’ll know when I see him like I tell people I will, about IVF and how much I hated it and why (you mean she’s not over that already?), about the dogs and if they’re okay–
the dogs have been moved to Jack’s room for the night now. I realized in one other ruminating middle-of-the-night session that dogs in the bed with a newborn baby is a deal breaker (I’m beginning to love 30 Rock). It would be stupid, and my training sessions to try to keep the dogs on the floor would fail in the middle of the night because they’d crawl back up as I slept and I wouldn’t notice, and by morning all our training would be lost. I put the baby monitor in their room so I can hear if they’re choking or vomiting or all the dozens of fears I conjure in this transition. The first night one of them chewed up a pencil. No other incident since.
Are you going to snap right back to your old shape? That’s what happens to my Sims. (– Rosie)
You’re walking like the pregnant people do in my Sims game. (– Rosie)
Hormone spike: everything smells bad again. Even me. On our walk this morning we passed a man who smelled like airports and vodka. Coffee-breath smells like death-rot.
An hour walk still each morning. Even when it’s 11 degrees. My wool coat buttons except for around the waist. I can walk a dog on the way downtown but on the way back Steve kindly takes both leashes — tackling the meek Ann Arbor hills plus a dog plus a hot chocolate puts too much pressure on my back and shins.
I just woke from a midafternoon nap. In the studio. I turned off the lights and the room glowed dark winter gray. On the chaise lounge, barely the width of my body, especially now, both dogs crawled up there with me, the heater oscillating between all three of us.
I have no control over so many things. My parents and brother and sister have planned a trip the week before the due date, but they have to double-pack their bags in case they end up on the plane to Ann Arbor with one phone call about contractions. I am worried about ruining their plans and about the expense of sudden airline tickets during the holidays.
Just squeeze it in. ( — my sister)
Just squeeze it in. ( — Steve)
Just go over a bunch of pot holes if you want to have it early. ( — neighbor)
But I can’t even get the baby to turn or not turn. The baby’s kicking, Steve puts his hand on my stomach, and he abruptly stops kicking. I get apologetic, as if I could help it. The boy is not a performer.
I want to know what exactly the dogs know about the baby. Do babies only give off their baby smell once they’re born, or is he giving it off right now? Do the dogs smell, as the handicapped man at church in his wheelchair said to me on Sunday, that I’m walking for two? They don’t treat me any more gently. Can’t the dogs see that I swallowed a basketball or a watermelon seed or any other metaphor that I’ve heard recently?
What part of this baby is human and what part is still in a sort-of purgatory between human and upside-down blue bat? I asked Steve once on a walk if the soul/spirit/personality/essence/character of a person comes at the early embryo stage or when the baby breathes his first breath, and Steve thought that maybe it came in between, or maybe even later.
We are visual people. Or I am. Like doubting Thomas, I need to see the baby for myself before I believe that this is real. The turning in my stomach, I can only abstractly identify it with a baby. I don’t even know which part is his head. Once I thought I might have felt a foot. After nine months, the better part of a year, it gets hard to believe that this will end with a prize. Though I read this yesterday and I know it’s true: I love you more than sleep.
