Illumination

For the past many months, I have had a check list in my head. Christmas, check; Ellie’s b-day, Guy’s, then Tessa’s and Ethan's, check-checkedy-check; last day of classes for Guy, yeah!-check, and then for the kids, check.

Vacation… check.

Guess what is next on the check list?

Baby.

There are six weeks left. I am in the phase of pregnancy when everything starts to loosen up, and the connective tissue threatens to allow all inner organs to fall on the ground. My waddle has transformed into a full-on lumber. I am a turtle on it’s back, completely helpless to right myself when ever the couch swallows me up. Heartburn is my new BFF. By the end of each day my feet look like latex gloves that someone has blown up to use as balloons to distract a crying child, my back is stiff, and my brain is utter mush.

It is a perfect system.

We get this way because we need to reach a point when we are willing to consider the possibility of pushing a 9 pound bowling ball through a donut hole. If pregnancy were comfortable at the end, we would all still be pregnant with our first. Pregnant women feel beautiful for the most part. No reason to suck in a full belly, breasts that stand up all on their own, and that wonderful feeling of secret mystery that you are connected to a divine force that needs you like you have never been needed before. Who would walk away from that?

I suppose it is time to get ready. In past pregnancies I have scurried around getting items together for my births; scented oils and calming music for labor, clothes in the right colors for the naked one, the whole nine yards. I usually read and read and READ everything that I can to prepare for birth. My mind is normally a humming beehive of activity as I prepare for the event as though it were a wedding.

Not this time.

I have no lists.

I have no agenda.

I have no stuff.

The baby clothes wait in their bins in the garage. The cradle, still dusty, sits in the rafters. I have ordered my birth kit, as that is pretty important in a technical sense (a birth kit has all of the medical items that are needed for the birth like cord clamps, gauze pads and sterile gloves). But to be honest, all of the rest of it seems silly to me at the moment.

I have done this several times now, and each time I have re-learned the lesson that a new baby doesn’t require much. All of the fancy do-dahs are really for the parents. As long as I have diapers, (check) and milk (double-D-check), I am ready.

It has taken a long time to realize that we are probably going to have a live baby at the end of all of this. Over the vacation I somehow got there, and now there is all I need or want to be. It's like someone opened the curtains on my mind and let the light stream in.

For today, I don’t need anything but the kicks I feel inside.