I’m sitting in the middle of what I am sure my mother would label as chaos, otherwise known as my office slowly turning into a nursery. I have a baby due in about 33 days and a major report about the same time. The room is this green color that I think someone thought would be sage, but came out a bit brighter towards the lime side. I have never liked it, I ran out of energy before I could paint it. I do spend some time in here, but not the same amount as in other places in my house. I had to paint my bedroom first – two shades of bright purple/blues layered on top of each other. I found that I love purples several years ago by accident when I noticed that all my backpacking clothes fell into that color scheme. A few years ago, my friend told me that purple was healing – now I’m even more attached to it.
Sitting all around me are piles of paper – organized chaos I would say to my mom - related to the evaluation report that I’m doing for the non-profit that I founded. I’ve been working on it on and off now for months – just over a year longer than I have been working on creating Mateo – this little baby boy that has grown from two cells to a being that stretches inside of me moving my belly from left to right and back again. I can feel him often. He stops me in the middle of whatever I’m doing. “What are you doing in there?” I say out loud, while I sit on the couch, while I’m driving, in meetings.
I have ultrasounds weekly because I’m so old – or at least the medical model says I am. They call it “advanced maternal age.” What that means is once a week, I get to see Mateo –head down, face inward, arms wrapped around his head in what I imagine to be him sucking his thumb. His ribs move in and out as he practices breathing – there is no air and he’s not moving in amniotic fluid just exercising. And you can see his heart working independent of mine at almost twice the rate as if it’s making sure to supply him with the energy he needs to connect all neurons, little wires reaching out, firing up and stepping back. Sometimes when I wake at night, I swear that I’m feeling his pulse in mine – rapid excited so I reach out to my neck and it’s only my own that I’m feeling, rapid excited.
We are both preparing. His movements make me smile. He has hic-ups – they pound in slight rhythmic movements just below my ribs on the left side and then they are gone. He’s moving now, just under my breasts. It’s a new place for so much activity. I’m not sure what it is. I get confused by his positioning sometimes even though I can see it on the ultrasound. Next week, I’m taking a permanent marker with me and outlining him - maybe in purple. Then I’ll know what he’s doing.
We play with each other already. I’ll feel him push again my belly, ribs, diaphragm, so I’ll take my finger tips and push back. He responds. It seems like from the ultrasound, the part that has the closest contact with my skin is his butt. So he’s butting me all of the time. From what I read, he can see light, his eyes open and close, he hears, knows my voice, senses stress. Now he’s layering on the fat. We are connected now – literally, figuratively. I want to be the one that cuts the cord, a symbol that I am committed to helping him grow independently into his own being. That’s the mom’s job right – to give us ourselves.
