Dear Davey [week 26]

Dear Davey,

You have been growing for 26 weeks today. You move and somersault about. The quickening has turned into quivering has turned into flutters and now the way you move is discernible by thrusts and kicks and stretches and turns.

To be honest, I haven't always been so sure of you. I've been here before and I'm not quite the romantic about the whole process of growing a baby inside me, of what it means to have a baby outside of me. You increase the fluids in my cells and my carb intake and I don't recognize myself in this expectant, heavy body. There is far less I can do right now and I really like and miss those things that I cannot do. Hot yoga and running and wearing my small and pretty clothes. Tying my shoes and wiping myself.

I'm also aware of the change in time and focus; I know where my attention and energy will now go once you arrive. I've been here before, I recall how exhausting it is, how much it simultaneously narrows and broadens my view. I'm admittedly wary of these changes - I've had so much time to think about and be in and with myself, what with the girls (your sisters!) being with their father half the time, leaving me alone on my lonesome half the time. It hasn't been half bad. I rather like my company.

And now you are soon to appear Earthside and jumble all that up? Rude.

Truthfully, though, you were conceived in love and planned in love. I was expecting you, hoping for you. I just wasn't expecting how much it was going to tumble up my heart and brain to discover you were, in fact, actually real; that this was going to nudge me -and then force me- to take a look at myself and then step outside of myself. Like I said, I've been here before. I know that's what you children do.

I should not have been surprised by this but, of course, I forgot. And though I've been here before it's been a while. And you'll see, us humans are a forgetful bunch. And I've been told (and I do agree) that life is all about remembering.

You'll be so much, so many things. And you'll mostly be yourself and exactly who you are meant to be. But you'll also be a reminder. You'll be a reminder to me of all the beautiful and painful and necessary truths of what it means to get to experience being a parent. And how being a parent will take me outside of myself, again and again. And I will struggle and thrive, sometimes at the same time. But what a gift that will be, Davey, for both of us.

I love you.

Love, Mama.