February 12th, 2006Lately
The other day, Josh and I were taking Ava on her nightly constitutional, when we discussed interracial adoption and legislation pros and cons related to that. Before I knew it, I was holding onto Ava’s leash, and I burst into tears. As we discussed the topic - quite rationally and sanely, I should add - I started imagining what I would do if we had to give our baby up for adoption (we don’t, but my mind sometimes goes off in tangents without my consent) or if we didn’t have enough money to feed the baby (we do, see note re: mind & tangents), and suddenly, I felt so sad. It was as if that moment someone had come up to me and shaken me, demanding that I give up this child.
The same thing happened a few days later when I was in a waiting room and leafed idly through a copy of People or Time or somesuch magazine and came across a story where an adoptive mother was tried for severely abusing her charges. Putting a water hose in one of their mouths and turning the faucet on full blast. Making a child swelter in the middle of summer in a southern state, nose pressed up against a window pane. As I told Josh about this story I’d read, I burst into tears again. I made Josh promise, which he’s done a thousand times before during all of our discussions about child rearing philosophies, that we would never do that to our child. I worried aloud about how I can tend to get impatient.
Josh pulled me close to him and assured me that I would be a good mother. I wonder how he knows. I wonder why he’s so confident in me.
Lately, and this is going to sound dorky, probably, as a part of our nightly routine for bed, the two of us lie in the darkness and talk about our future, and how it’s going to change. “I wonder what Ava will think of the new person we’ll bring home,” we say, and anticipate her reactions. “We should think about moving the bookcases out from the bedroom to the living room,” I say (Josh moved them all this weekend!). And then Josh puts his head gently on my belly and has a conversation with the baby, who at this point I’m not entirely sure has developed the ability to hear yet, but I can hear, and that’s what counts so far. He talks softly to the baby and pats my belly gently. Occasionally, I toss in a remark or two.
I mention this because this has been Josh’s way of connecting with the growing being inside me. I told him a few weeks ago that I didn’t feel as connected with the baby as I thought he did. Right now, I am connected to it in a very peripheral sense, it seems. I know it’s there when my doctor puts the doppler jelly on my belly and we listen to the heartbeat. Or during the first few months of the pregnancy, where I felt like throwing up all of the time. Right now, I’m in the second trimester, and feeling great. I feel chubby, and my belly is slowly, slowly starting to develop, although I am more critical of its shape than I probably ought to be. But I hadn’t felt connected to the baby, not until I cried outside thinking about adoption.
I have so many questions I want to ask our baby, and even when our child will effectively be able to communicate with us, s/he won’t be able to give us the answers I want to know. What do you think about every day? What is it like growing so quickly? What do you hear when you’re in there and we’re out here, besides the rumblings of my internal organs?
Slowly, I am starting to feel more connected to this child growing inside me. If I think too hard about it, it creeps me out that there is another human being inside my body. So I’m not going to think too hard about it, and instead revel in the joy of the female reproductive system in the ability to create (of course, with assistance from the male reproductive system) and sustain another human life. And if that means crying from time to time (cried at a Six Feet Under episode tonight), pass me the tissues.