Growing

Praise the doppler gods- it came, it works, and oh! the magnificence, the truly humbling awesomeness of hearing that little racing heart.

I am crampy and still spotting brown stuff with no fun to show for it-- just me, growing. And I think that is really what this is about, expansion, rampant capillary growth and minute damage, little traces of blood...

I hate it. Hate both the cramping and the brown scary stuff but I hope/know/feel that things are ok. I have to believe they are. I have to.

My belly is tight each evening, big and stretched tightly-- I can see that this will be an issue, to be this big, this early. No weight gained, no luscious breast growth, just me, and my biggering belly. Each morning it is smaller, so I know this is probably a trick of the slow moving bowels to maximize nourishment. But gosh darn, at night, it is mammoth.

When I lie down, and stay still a while, I can settle into normal. I do not feel the cramping as much sometimes, sometimes I do not feel the pull of taut skin. I just can be with the wonder of it, lie with my hand on my belly and talk to the little one, are you really in there? please be ok. there is much checking and imploring, but always with whispers as if I am afraid to ask too loudly. Now that I have seen it move, I imagine that. And now, now I know what the heartbeat sounds like, I lie there and imagine it. Mine? Snare drum. The little one? Maracas.

I woke in the middle of the night to the big big moon shining in so brightly it was a spotlight, an interrogation light, a searchlight... sharp shadows on the floor. I awoke when it was exactly south, exactly. All light and shadows pointing north as if they were painted on the floor by someone much more exacting than me....

then this morning, I woke to snow falling- big slow flakes, small ones, falling in no real rush, no crazy half rain, just snow. It collected for a while, then started melting as morning truly came, but I drove to work in snow, then into rain, and felt so sad I had not taken the time to catch snowflakes on my tongue, the last time this season probably, like I'd missed out, like I'd missed something important.