Enjoying the mystery

First Bradley Method class. We move on, our pregnancy moves from a personal realm to a much more public one, interacting with other couples, couples we never speak directly to for an entire two hours who we will see, week after week, for twelve weeks. Learning how to give birth. Learning how to coach birth. Learning a method for making a truly distressing life experience as pain-free and easy as is is possible. As is possible.

I put my head against Toni's belly -- we have begin to sing songs. We sing together. And we sing stupid children's songs to the creature inside. "I've Been Working On The Railroad." The "Mockingbird" song (what are those lyrics?) John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt. Are we going to have to sing children's songs to our child? Wow. I assumed we would sing cool songs, Cole Porter.

I press my head against her belly and I feel the baby kick my face. I listen, in the quiet, to the noises inside Toni, the noise that the baby hears (yes, now a baby, not just "the fetus" or "the creature") because, you know, I cannot picture it as a baby. Because it isn't one yet. I was never good at imagining myself as a grown up, nor anyone else. I do not play such fantasy games, maybe it's because my father never encouraged us to have goals. But I want to know what it is like now, to meet the baby on its own terms, not make up some imagining future I cannot possibly know.

It's warm. It's wet. It's dark. It swims around, there's still enough room. I don't know if it's a boy or a girl. But it swims around in there, and kicks, registers its opinion to its mother.

When it joins us out here, I will know the answers to so many questions. Right now I am enjoying the mystery.