Week twenty

Here we are at the halfway mark. In some ways I can’t believe it’s here already, but then I remember how slowly the time passed early on, when I had to keep this delicious secret to myself. And while I’m still worried about the ultrasound issue (we had a follow-up yesterday and the bowel is still bright — although to my lay eyes not nearly bright as bone, which would indicate a more severe problem, I’ve read — so we are waiting for some signals on that front), I am at the same time not worried. Not because I believe in radical optimism’s ability to fix things, necessarily, but because no matter what, we are going to love this baby and care for him as best we can when he gets here. That, I am sure of.

Of course, the odds are still overwhelming that this baby is perfectly healthy. So that is comforting.

The latest ultrasound showed that he has flipped and is sitting breech (he was head-down last time) on my left side. This explains, I think, the funny little pangs I’ve been getting down low in places I’ve never quite gotten sensation in before. Those legs must be in there stretching out, especially in the evening, because I feel little thump thump thumps pretty regularly between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. He wasn’t terribly active on screen, although we did see him squirming just a bit and moving his arms around. He sits in there pretty snugly curled up, which makes his belly look big. He put his left arm up to his face once, I swear to suck his thumb. (That’s my boy!) It was adoooorable, despite the skeleton face. We saw him open and close his mouth, too, in profile. I suppose getting worked up over these tiny, mundane movements seems insane to some people, but to us they are endlessly fascinating. There is a living creature inside of me, moving independently of me, and not too long ago he looked like a bean-sized alien. Eventually he will talk and be embarrassed by me. Wild.

He’s still measuring on track, and they’re estimating that he’s at 11 ounces now. That is almost a can of soda! And our fruit equivalent this week is a small cantaloupe.

The name search still continues. All the other people expecting children right now seem to have publicly declared their intended names. I find this bewildering. What’s it like to just know you’ve got the right name? I’m sure eventually we’ll get there but for now, nothing doing.

I’ve found myself starting to watch those I didn’t know I was pregnant shows when I catch them on. For one, I enjoy the overwrought re-enactments (right now some actress who looks like Rebecca Romijn is wailing and squirming all over the bathroom floor), but mostly I just enjoy trying to envision how I feel now — swollen belly, fatigue, constant peeing — and trying to convince myself that I wouldn’t notice these things or how I’d convince myself that they were normal or nothing to worry about. I’m amazed at these women who booze it up and smoke and hump blazing hot jacuzzi jets all during their pregnancies and give birth to perfectly healthy babies. Sometimes this shit truly doesn’t make sense, but neither does anything else in the world, so whatevs.