Journal Excerpt

I'm at this awkward stage of pregnancy where it's no longer fun being pregnant, but I'm not feeling so bad I want to face the prospect of labor, the memory of which seems to become sharper the closer the date approaches. Soon enough, the baby will descend, the pressure will move from my lower abdomen to my pelvic floor, I will stop being able to sleep through the night, and moving at all will become so uncomfortable that my desperation to get the baby out will blot out those memories.

But not yet. Right now it just feels like I'm living with a contortionist. There's a seismic inward shift that occurs every time I turn over in bed, or get elbowed by the kids, wherein my intestines, bladder, stomach, liver, and every other peritoneal organ twists and resettles. My skin contorts as his head rolls from one side to the other; it stretches as he kicks out on one side while pushing against the other. It's getting tight in there, and he and my body knows it. Sometimes the kicking becomes so severely rhythmic that I have to take my pulse to make sure it's not just my heartbeat.

I'm not sure what about this saps my energy, but it does. I think twice before getting up or bending over. Rising from bed in the mornings is the hardest. I feel like I've slept four hours even though I've slept eight-- I know, what could be worse? I get testy whenever anyone pushes against my belly as that induces the contortions, which is hard to explain to a twenty-two month-old who thinks everyone's belly has a baby in it, including his own. Our nearly-four year-old gets it (I think she got it when she was two years old too, not that we're comparing), but her response is typically mercurial. Sometimes she'll purposely lean her elbow into my belly in whiny fashion. Other times she'll follow me around with a hand on my belly as we walk, to help support the baby, she informs me. She's become quite handy with the stethoscope that I haven't touched since internship, and informs me every morning she can still hear the baby.

Maybe if I knew for sure this was the last time-- and it could be-- I would be filled with greater reverence for this increasingly independent life for which I have become an ambulatory incubator. There is something startling about it all, about the extremity of movement. It surprises me into remembering that change is coming. That life as we know it will end in two months. Sometimes, when I look at the camaraderie and obvious affection they have for each other, I feel sad that anything would spoil it. But then I think about how I can't imagine our lives now without him. She's told me she can't remember her life before him either. I suppose it will be the same when the third comes.