Astonishing

I’m 16 weeks pregnant.

There is a little person inside of me, about the size of an avocado. My stomach is growing and my clothes are starting to not fit. My body, and my life, is changing in every way. Astonishing.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I had been looking for it to happen, hoping it would happen. Still, we were stunned. For the first few days I was vividly aware of what was happening inside me. Aware that there is a person who exists as part of me and part of my husband; aware that somewhere deep inside me, there is someone still too small to see, without a face or body or limbs, yet already containing everything necessary to become herself (himself?), to become someone that someday I will know and love as deeply as I know and love myself, someone who is as critical to my understanding of life as anything or anyone I have ever known. Yet I have never met this person. In fact, this person does not really exist, but is being built…inside of me. Astonishing.

A few weeks passed and, to my astonishment, my child continued to grow. We saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound. I read each week about the “critical developments” going on inside of me. I stared at passing strangers thinking “look at your ears! Your hands! Your eyes! They developed ok! How did that happen?!” I watched people light up a cigarette and wanted to slap them, saying “do you know how hard your mother worked to give you those lungs!”

Now, we’ve heard the heartbeat twice, and cried each time. I look down at my growing stomach, poke it, and say “is there a person in there?” I soften my voice a bit, in case he (she?) can hear me. I eat more vegetables than I’ve ever had in my life.

I worry. I think of all the things I want to teach and show my child, and wonder if there will be time in the short years we will have together. I wonder what school she (he?) will go to, what friends, what perspective, what personality. I worry about the sleep I’m going to lose, the money I’ll have to earn, the changes I’ll have to make.

I hear friends say things like “when I was pregnant with Olivia” or “when I was pregnant with James” and that makes sense to me. I know Olivia; I know James. Then I realize that someday I will look at a person whom I know by heart and say “when I was pregnant with…” and I will be referring to the same experience I’m having now.

I am astonished.