I can feel him inside me. He is always with me now, nudging me, a flutter here, a quiver there. It seems surpassingly strange that he was not always with me, from the beginning of my own life, inside my womb as I was in my mother’s, from the thinly breaking dawn of time. When time himself was being born, emerging owl-eyed into consciousness and action, my child was there. All my life, I could feel him, as if he was pressing so soft against the thin curtain of the unseen. I could feel his breath-quiet pushes against the thin film that separated his future from my present, until I could find the seam and meet present and future together.
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My hands always touched my body, my skin, drawn to its own softness and warmth, touching myself because no one else did. My hands know every curve of my arm, where the cool flesh of my upper arm gives way to the firmer, warm skin of my forearm. I know the particular curves and hollows of my jaw and throat. The heaviness of my breast and the sinewy boniness of my ankle. I know the veins that ripple under the skin on the backs of my hands, I know the strength of my fingers twisting around each other. I have always known my body. And I don’t go long without touching my skin. Self-soothing, I suppose.
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So it is no wonder that I touch my body even more now. And it is every wonder to feel what I feel as I run my hands down my belly. I have only ever known softness, sometimes a little too much softness. Only ever knew the specific lumps and bumps and tucks of my ribs, hips, and waist. But that is not what I feel anymore.
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I stand in the dim shower, streaming with steaming water, slick and soft, and marvel at the feel of my swelling belly. Its foreign hardness where there had only ever been softness. I slide my hands from my ribs, still rippling through my skin, and then down and out and back under. And I think every time, this is not a dream. This is not pretend. Just to prove it, I try to suck my stomach in and I just . . . can’t. It won’t go. And even after months of this, it startles me. I can’t get used to it. My belly stays out. And unlike all those times when I pushed my belly out and pretended, but was always aware of the essential emptiness inside, always aware that there was still only and all me in there – unlike all those times, my brain spins at the knowledge that there is not only me anymore. I’ve only ever known just me, but there is another being inside that swollen belly, a being that came from me and from the man I love better than my life, but essentially, this person is his own. I can’t know what that will mean yet. What inklings and inclinations will be uniquely his? What mistakes will he make and shenanigans will he get into, simply because he is himself and could not avoid them? What will his voice become that has a separate timbre and special resonance because it flows from the tiny throat that is forming and swallowing inside my body? Worlds within worlds within worlds.
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My showers take an hour now because I just stand there on aching feet, happily letting my ankles swell with the heat, because my hands can’t stop learning and feeling and writing this belly of mine. And as I get out of the shower finally, all the hot water gone (sorry, honey!) to dry off and put on my bathrobe and lotion my legs, I am always so brittly and beautifully aware that this big, round belly of mine, so smooth and adamantine, doesn’t change. It doesn’t shift as I move around and go away as my stomach muscles tire. It stays hard and full and firmly a part of me. I adjust around it all the time, bending my body and my life around it even before a baby is in the house. Tying my bathrobe high under my breasts, noticing the outward flow of the fabric below the belt. Having to shift the cord of my hair dryer in different ways than before. Getting into bed and pulling up the covers and getting into a comfortable position, all in new ways, ways I never did them before. When I read a book or write in my journal or cook a meal or make the bed, my hands and wrists are constantly bumping into my belly because as I get used to and accommodate one size, my belly is yet growing even more. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve turned or rolled toward my husband and miscalculated and bumped my burgeoning stomach right into him. He laughs and pulls me closer when I apologize, but I can’t really mind it. Every one of these accidental touches only reminds me of where I am. Who and what I am. Wife. Mother. Family. I love every clumsy move, every accidental bump. I’m huge and I want to be huge.
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I wanted this. For so long, through all the changing currents and squalls and storms, this never changed, never shifted an inch, as entrenched in my body, ingrained in my flesh, incorporated into my blood as this baby is now. I wanted this. I wanted my strong, beautiful husband who makes me laugh and makes me breathless with impatience to meet my son to see how much of his father he took. I hope he was greedy there as he took his life and his nature from his father. I wanted this home, so beautiful and warm and inviting and painted with laughter and dreams. I wanted this marriage which makes me stronger, better, softer, richer, which comforts me and teaches me, which gives me diamond-hard lessons in appreciation, compromise, and commitment. And I wanted this child that grows inside me, that kicks me hard when I’m in bed and no longer moving around to lull him to sleep. I wanted this big belly and this warm, flushed skin and the contradictory feelings of delicacy and strength. I love the look of my nightgown sloping over my full body. I love the sheer femininity that charges my veins, and I love that those very veins are rising up under my skin as they pulse with extra blood.
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I love my body, whispering deep in my throat of my pride in its strength, its uncompromised ability to do what it was born to do. My body works perfectly, accepted my baby with all the naturalness I expected one such as me to feel when finally pregnant. I am strong and warm and healthy and soft – all the things my baby needs. I fill with pride to know I can care so well for my child. My body can handle both myself and my unborn child with no strain at all. Oh, I was made for this. Grow strong, I croon softly to my small, moving child. Take all you can from me. I can handle it. I have so much to give you. Take all you need and there will still be more. I love you.
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