Week 35

This has not been an easy pregnancy for me. Or Dean, who is kicked out of bed at 2 a.m. because I need to turn the light on and read for the next four hours and then am ready to go to the bed for the night before the children are. Or my parents, who get up at 6 a.m. to let me sleep a few more hours or make us supper which I am often too nauseated to eat. Or sister, whose own major goings-on in life are ignored while I list a long litany of pregnancy-induced miseries. Or my friend Carley, who patiently endures details of GERD, my rubber leg, my nausea, my raging insomnia, my fear that my stomach skin is going to explode.

As I have always feared, I am not an inspiring disabled person.

But, it's temporary, even though, in the wee hours of the morning for the eight month straight, it starts to feel strangely permanent.

I forget that there is a baby at the end of this road; she has become lost in a haze of fatigue and nausea and lack of ankle definition. Only lately has it become more real to me that there is a tiny daughter in there, wreaking havoc, but soon to abandon her proclivity for sitting on my sciatic nerve and instead to take up residence in my arms, milky-breathed and intoxicating. It's impossible to ignore her reality these days as my belly contracts and her vacuum-packed shape becomes solid and clear, a huge rump emerging on the upper left side. She inserts herself into conversations with strangers, tiny feet stretching my belly and tracing wide arcs so obvious that eyes are drawn there nervously and there are soft wondering comments, "I can SEE her kicking."

Only five more weeks, little girl. Sooner, if you keep making my blood pressure climb. I'm getting ready for you, starting to expect you, edging toward eager for you.