It's For Real. And It's A . . .

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
-The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams

The whole concept that there is something alive in there is still very surreal. Mysterious-GI-Illness has since morphed into State-of-Constant-Fatigue, but even that is wearing off now, and I’m feeling nearly normal with the exception of feeling stouter: there’s a rounding thickness to my belly and waist that feels more like being fat than being pregnant. I miss pulling on a pair of jeans and feeling slim—the rubber-band trick doesn’t quite cut it. For some reason this seems invisible to everyone else. I get weird looks when I say I’m into my fifth month. Which D tells me to be grateful for while I can.

At any rate, that’s what made yesterday’s ultrasound all the more marvelous. Despite my not showing yet, the baby was right there! And huge! The resolution of the scan was incredible. We watched the mouth open and close, the fingers curl up next to the chin, the legs kick and bend. It’s a unique window of time: later, and the bones ossify too much for sound waves to penetrate, and the baby becomes too difficult to move for various views. Right now all I had to do was cough and it flipped over. We could see each vertebrae, the cerebellum and ventricles, the stomach and kidneys, each toe. We could see the globes and lenses (score).

The amazing thing is that the baby is there, having somehow formed all its parts, without my least regard or effort. While I’ve been going about the rest of life, it was in there being transformed from a few cells to a miniature anatomical wonder. It’s a good reminder that there is nothing about this process that I own, nothing about this life that I take credit for in the deepest sense. Somehow this being has been gifted us to steward for a time, but that is all. Something I can repeat to myself fifteen years down the road.

Oh yes, and we found out: it’s a girl.

Week Eighteen