Day ~146

My first training in the unpredictability of parenting.

Sunday, she barely stirred all day. A quiet day at home, to be sure, but I kept waiting ... DTB kept assuring me that she was just sleeping, as little babes are wont to do. Yesterday, she rolled and fluttered and burbled around in there all afternoon - I loved it! Today, a couple swift, gentle rumbles, but mostly nothing. I'm trying to pinpoint a pattern, but it eludes me. I want to get to know her! I'm even considering renting a fetal doppler just so I can connect with her in a tangible way every day. You can get them online for around $20 a month, and they are supposedly totally safe. I'll check with my doc, and then maybe ...

In other news, my mom's therapist has told me that it probably isn't a good idea to count on her being ready to provide consistent childcare any time soon. My mom is a long story that I won't go into here - she is an amazing woman, but also a very shattered woman. Her one greatest strength is being with children - she brings magic into their lives. She is one of those women who seems made for motherhood - I couldn't ask for a better person to provide love and care for this baby. But, she's struggling with things that make it a very bad idea to assume I can count on the consistency and commitment that are totally necessary when you make plans for handing over your child, and returning to work.

Oh, if only I had a choice! But I don't. (Yes, okay, I know we all have choices, and some might accuse me of being a horrible, selfish person to have a child and then go back to the office, but ... let me finish ...) My entire paycheck pays the mortgage. We worked really, really hard to be able to buy our own home, and my income was a big part of making it possible. And after watching what's happened to my mom, I have to admit it's really important to me that I am building my own retirement fund and helping to ensure my family's economic health into the future. I am crossing my fingers that I can telecommute part of the week, and that DTB can do the same, and we can cobble something together that feels safe and secure for Little Miss Belly. I suppose it will all become more clear after she is cradled between us, breathing her baby breaths. We'll know what to do.

I am, quite astonishingly (to me), enjoying being pregnant. It's a little uncomfortable, it's a lot weird, but it's also such an incredible experience. It leaves me awestruck sometimes. I know that I'll only do this once or twice in my life, so I am treasuring every single day, knowing that it's fleeting. I still can't quite wrap my brain around this idea that I will have a daughter in a few short months ...

I've started reading to her - Carl Sandberg's Rootabaga Stories, which my dad read to me, to impart his love of words to his own young daughter (it worked). They are whimsical, dreamy bits of prose, poetic and rhythmic, silly and surreal. They remind me of the sound of shoes on dusty gravel roads and nighttime crickets and ice tinkling in lemonade pitchers and the downy touch of flannel.