Lately I’m finding it hard to focus on much else than the Three Major Things that are on my mind: 1) We’re having a baby! 2) We’re selling our apartment! and 3) We need to buy a house! Of course, all three of these Things are inextricably linked, so it’s not as though I can let myself focus on Thing #1 on Monday, followed by Thing #2 on Tuesday. Each Thing is a snowflake that compounds itself into a snowball, morphs into a snowman, and then blossoms into a Sasquatch-sized Snowman avalanche, holy hell, when will life ever again be a series of Surmountable Things like ‘what should my fall wardrobe consist of?’ or ‘what new dishes should I learn to master this month?’ I suppose, given the reality of Thing #1, that the answer to that question is NEVER.
I’m coming up on 20 weeks of pregnancy, and as I look back I realize that up until very recently, I saw my pregnancy as a very exciting, very abstract concept with an ending that I couldn’t really foresee in reality. It was just too huge to be able to imagine it actually happening. I suppose that’s why nature gives you nine months. It just may take that long to come to grips. Now, following an ultrasound at week 18 that showed us our baby’s hands, (carpals, metacarpals and phalanges all look beautiful, thankyouverymuch) face (a little alien-like at the moment, but there’s still time ) and not-so-private parts (IT’S A BOY!!), reality is now fully setting in.
No longer am I carrying around a person referred to as ‘it,’ I am now carrying around a boy. I know what his name will be. In my head, in the shower, I practice saying it to myself, trying it on, seeing how it fits. I practice saying it lovingly, I practice saying it sternly. I wonder what sports he’ll like to play, how many bruises he’ll incur, how often.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the implications of having a boy. I picture him in baggy jeans, shedding grass-stained clothes in a laundry room (provided we accomplish Thing #3 one of these days), playing Battleship, asking for toy trucks, bulldozers, fighter jets. I wonder how many years I’ll have to wait before I can make him take the trash out or haul heavy objects up flights of stairs for me.
“You know what’s weird,” I said to Mike recently, as I amazed over the fact of this boy baking away inside my body, “there’s a penis inside me.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s how we got here.”
Tags: I'm going to be a mom?!
Aw, I do so love your writing!
My sister, also pregnant, must have conceived around the same time as you because we also found out its sex not too long ago. And BOY (er, girl?) was I surprised how, uh, obvious the sex is.
But congratulations!