If wonder can describe what it’s like to be pregnant, I have no word for what I’m feeling now.  Love?  Surely that.  And wonder too.  But also elation.  And joy.  Gratitude.  The sense that I could watch this tiny life all day and it wouldn’t be too much. He’s beautiful.  He’s more beautiful than I could have imagined.

We named him Elijah.  Elijah Clay.  All we can do is just smile and stare at him.  And each other.  And then smile and stare some more.

Surgery went well.  It started out a little rockily, since I have a history of heart palpitations and the spinal block they gave me made my heart go nuts and my blood pressure drop (and my dear husband get woozy watching me almost pass out).  But the anesthesiologists were very good, and soon I was stabilized, and even sooner after that I heard a baby cry, and then he was on my chest and I was staring into the eyes of an 8-pound, 11-ounce ball of precious.

As with most cesareans, we had to stay in the hospital for a few days, so Sunday night was our first one home.  We’re thinking now that all the millions of doctors and lab techs and anesthesiologists and CNAs and food dropper-offers and picker-uppers and birth certificate people and lactation specialists and hearing testers and shot-givers and – am I forgetting anyone? – who come into your room in the hospital every minute of every day are all in on some grand conspiracy to make being at home seem like HEAVEN compared with being at the hospital, because we can’t say enough how great it is to be home.  I’ve been up the last two nights every 2 to three hours for feedings, but feel like I’m being treated to the most generous amounts of sleep ever, and have woken up both days feeling emotionally on top of the world.  I can so do this.

My only complaint right now is the lingering spinal headache I got from the spinal block that forces me flat on my back for any kind of relief.  But I’ve been told that should subside any day now, and really, who cares if I’m flat on my back when I have THIS to stare at while I’m there?

Okay.  Enough gushing for now.

Love to all.

YOW!  Tomorrow I’m having a baby!!!

It’s been a really great few days around here, plump not only with baby, but with excitement and joy and fear and STRESS about what in the world we’ll name this kid.  Aren’t boys’ names way harder to pick than girls’?  We think so.  We’ve finally narrowed it down to two, and we’ll just see which one suits him once we get a look at his sweet face.

Last week we decided we really needed to do something crazy just days before birth, something memorable and weird so the myth of our child’s birth week could be endlessly fun to tell.  I’m having so many contractions, though, that only get worse when I’m on my feet for very long, and really, how wacky can you be when you’re 9 months pregnant???  N. brainstormed hunting, but seeing as neither of us like killing things, and I hate loud noises, and really, neither of us has any need to hunt, EVER, we settled on a milder alternative:  fishing.

So Monday we packed up the car and headed for the coast, intending to rent poles and fish off the pier at Capitola.  It was a gorgeous day, and a gorgeous drive, and we soaked in all of it.  The pier was speckled (beyond bird poop) with a motley crew of fisherpeople, but none were catching anything and the day was just so beautiful and our hands just so clean that…we decided we’d just watch.  I have very fond memories of fishing with my dad as a kid, but my record for catching fish as an adult is a grand whopping zero, and I guess for now it’ll stay that way.  (Mind you, my record says nothing of how many times I’ve actually fished.  Which is quite a few.  The closest I’ve come to a catch, though, was lassoing a sardine through the little loop of line that gets made when you knot your hook to the line on the pole.  Pretty impressive, no?)

We couldn’t have asked for a better day, though, and after strolling the beach and the quaint shops in the area (interspersed with sitting on benches every hundred yards), and a VERY yummy ice cream cone, we came home satisfied.  Here’s a beach picture of me and my belly.

Yesterday was full of finishing up house projects and trying to pick a name, and a fabulous dinner at a little Indian restaurant.  We feel happy and excited and just can hardly believe tomorrow is it.

Thanks to all of you for your kind thoughts and wishes – here and by phone and email.  We’ve so appreciated every one of them.

Until soon, and with a giddy grin,

Kristin

Love officially started for me at my friend’s church.  When I was 14. 

My friend had invited me to a harvest party, and I was only too thrilled to discover that someone like him was there.  I fell for him immediately.  Maybe it was the enormous leather high tops.  The pegged pants.  The over-sized turtleneck and hair-covered neckline.  But maybe it was far more than that.  Maybe it was just him.

Two years later we were dating, moving excitedly from friendship into romance and working earnestly to figure out how to “be” with each other at church now.  Do we act like we’re dating?  Do we pretend we’re just friends?  How do we keep from making our church friends uncomfortable?  That’s when Bonnie Raitt’s Something to Talk About became our song.

Yesterday was our ninth wedding anniversary.  Can you believe it?  Nine years.  To celebrate we bought Raitt’s Best Of CD and cranked it up on our way to a rendezvous in San Francisco.  The setting sun spilled orange over everything and as Bonnie belted out her soul, we reflected on life and love and all we’ve adventured through in the last decade.  Appropriately, on this day of commemorating “us”, we even got ourselves into the driving/navigating tension we predictably do when we’re trying to find places we haven’t been to before.  Life is so real, no?  And wonderful.

N, I love you.  I love you more than words can communicate.  These last nine years have been the most beautiful, challenging, adventurous, comforting, life-changing, life-sustaining ride.  There isn’t a soul on earth I’d rather have done them with than you.

Pregnancy is the weirdest experience.  Such a mix of things.  Wonder, worry, joy, confusion, gladness, discomfort, restlessness, irritation, peace – it’s all in there.  It’s all in me, moving around like my baby.  At times like a kick in my side.

I could write about the moments of magic, when it feels like I’m participating in, or even just looking on at, the making of a masterpiece, one whose movements, for now, are like the wind:  speaking of a force, a dynamo, I can’t see bodily yet, but can definitely watch the effects of.  I can watch and feel my body change to accommodate this miracle, can learn of the mysteries that hormones know well – mysteries about how to make there be milk when it’s needed, how to tune me in to the needs and movements of a vulnerable life, how to make my body release the masterpiece when it’s time for its out-of-me phase, and shrink my womb back to pre-baby size.  There is wonder in all of it.  Joy in joining creation and procreation.

And there’s pain.  I could write about how uncomfortable I’m feeling most of the time.  How much I miss sleeping on my back.  How my knees are starting to ache from all this weight and my left hip throb from the lopsided distribution of it.  I could write about how frustrated I got last week when all of this forced me to admit I can’t do what I want to do in a day – how helpless this made me feel, and angry, and disappointed.  How I cried and cried for fear that the baby would get here before my list of things to do could get accomplished, and because I was just so exhausted I couldn’t see straight.

I could write about not wanting to miss anything important through this time – time with my husband without kid distractions, leisure to rest when I choose, soaking in the wonder of a baby inside – and feeling like time has become a sprinter, and my “presentness” to this experience incapable of keeping up.  I’m frustrated by the ways my fatigue and discomfort suck my mental and emotional energy into themselves, stealing thoughts away from broader or whimsical topics and pasting them onto things like, “I think I need a nap,” or “I’m so hot,” or “Ow.  Ow ow ow.”  There’s a world spinning around and in me, a complicated world, with pressing concerns and topics ripe for thought and conversation, and these are the things I’m thinking.  I have moments of awareness of this broader world, but then long stretches of focus only on my body, my breath, my need for food, for tears, for sleep.

It’s all so weird.  So fine and good and normal, yes.  But weird.  A liminal space, where I’m not sure what my body and soul are doing, and can only dimly imagine who I’m going to be in coming weeks and years, how this baby will change me and the ways I’ve defined “normal” for my life.  Who is this new person I’m soon to meet?  And how do I wrap my mind around the thought that I’m gonna have a massive role to play in shaping him?

I could write more, pages more, but frankly…I’m tired.  I need a nap.  And a snack maybe?…

Sigh.  The weirdness of it all.

July flew by with such a host of out-of-town trips and friends and family staying with us and shopping for baby stuff and shopping for a new (to us) car with a little more room and safety than the one we’ve been driving, that I begin August with a whirlwind still whirling inside myself, and a driving need for space to be still.  To center.  To be present again to my thoughts and feelings.  To write.  This baby in my womb is growing by the day, and, having spent the last two months perched breechly, has his birthday all picked out already (a scheduled c-section).  August 25^th.  Can you believe it???  That’s three weeks away.

A little more shopping still needs to happen for him.  A trip to the DMV to finish up car stuff.  A small handful of other social commitments.  But generally, I’m hoping these last three weeks can be spacious and still.  A chance to finish up another chapter or two of the novel I’m writing.  A chance to journal.  A chance to let my soul catch up with my body, really.

If I don’t write much here, this is why.  While I’m eager to stay in touch with all of you, I think I’m even more eager right now to get back in touch with myself, and with the reality of this baby who’s coming so soon.

Love to you all.