This post is from July 10, 2012 and was originally written while on vacation, so it’s appearing almost two weeks late.
25 weeks finds us at the cabin, surrounded by solitude and with more free time than we know what to do with.
25 weeks was when you met the sun, the icy-cold water of Goat Lake. The Week where belly butter was exchanged for sunscreen and we found you lulled to sleep – your kicks subsiding into stillness- by the rumbling roar of the little aluminum boat’s outboard motor.
Lying awake the morning before we left for the cabin, I felt a rhythmic tapping below my belly button. Still in that dreamy sort of half-state, I lay there for a few moments just feeling it before I realized that you had the hiccups. It was the cutest, most bizarre sensation I’ve ever been lucky enough to feel. A real little person, with real hiccups, inside me.
I lay my hand on top of my belly and lay there, staring out the window feeling those little hiccuping thumps until they stopped as suddenly as they started. Ever since it’s been an almost daily occurrence, you strange little creature.
At the cabin we met your butt. Adam put his palm over my belly and drew back almost immediately, “Woah” he exclaimed, “What’s that?”I moved my hand to meet his and there, riding just beneath my skin was your unmistakeable rounded form. We feel around its contours, trying to piece together a shape, a body part, eventually agreeing that this is indeed, The Butt. Your butt.
We also agreed that it was the cutest butt ever, obviously.
The Butt made strategic appearances throughout the week. Long days stretched longer without work or other obligations of home meant more attention directed inwards, more time to notice you moving around and more time to play with you as you press parts of yourself up towards us through this thin divide.
It’s this week that you became somehow more real to me. More than a heartbeat, a grainy image on an ultrasound printout.
I feel as though I’ve been saying this every week. I feel as though I will go on saying it in each of these updates as I conjure you ever closer until one autumn day three months from now I will finally get to meet you face to face.
And what a funny thought that is. A real you to play with instead of this strange mess of body parts; thumps and hiccups.
25 weeks is the week I fell in love, sitting here thinking about you. 25 weeks is when I first impatiently wished you were here, here outside.
25 weeks is the first time I had any desire to write this to you, instead of just about you.
In the past when I read other writers’ letters to unborn children I always felt some small part of me rolling my eyes – “Cheesy, cheesy” whispered my inner critic. But that was before I knew that we all do this, all of us women waiting to cross that divide and become mothers. We write these letters hundreds, thousands of times a day.
Dear baby, what on earth are you doing in there?
Is that your back I feel?
Dear baby, it will all be alright. I promise.
25 weeks down, 15 (Or less. Or more.) to go. I hope you are healthy, I hope you are happy and strong.
Dear baby we love you.
We love you.
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