Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

I'm approaching 17 weeks, and things have been changing fast. I'm happy to say that I haven't any had morning sickness for a couple of weeks now and that I've started feeling the baby flipping around, which is a lot of fun. Last week Daniel and I went to Hattiesburg for a wedding. The first morning we were in town, Audrey began aggressively bouncing my tummy around and commanding the baby to wake up, so he kicked her, which is exactly what I would have done if someone woke me up that way. I was surprised that she could feel him kick so early, but you have to keep in mind that she really got up in there. I think nursing school strips you of your inhibitions and sense of delicacy about other people's personal space. She had her fingers pressed a couple of inches deep in my belly, so I estimate that sane, normal people probably won't be able to feel him kick for a couple more months.

Another thing that has changed recently is that I've transitioned from thinking about the pregnancy all the time to thinking about the baby all the time. For the first few months, I was so intensely aware of the weird stuff my body was doing that sometimes I nearly forgot about the whole baby thing. This probably sounds strange to many of you because of how pregnancy is a beautiful miracle, but what you need to understand is that pregnancy is also a weird and gross miracle, especially for the first few months. Certain things I knew to expect- nausea, soreness, sensitivity to odors, etc. But I'd like to propose that even the classic pregnancy stuff, when it’s happening to you personally, is a pretty bizarre experience. For 24 years, my body has followed certain rules and patterns that I've learned to anticipate. For instance, when I’m hungry, I feel like it’s time to eat, and not like it’s time to puke my guts out. Eating is pretty counterintuitive when you feel like it’s time to puke your guts out, by the way. But the thing is, for the first few weeks of my pregnancy if I didn’t eat when I was nauseated, I would actually puke. I felt like my body was angry with me and was intentionally sending me mixed signals to confuse me and make me suffer. “I need sustenance so you should probably vomit now,” is what my body told me on a regular basis. “What, My Body?? WHY?!” I would ask.

“Normal” stuff aside, it turns out that your body can pull pretty much any stunt on you when you’re pregnant, and the doctors will be surprised by absolutely none of it. “Sometimes that happens” is something you start hearing a lot after you become pregnant. At times, I can’t help but feel like they’re not really listening.

Me: “I’m pregnant, and this morning I pulled a gummy worm out of my belly button.”

Doctor: (filing her nails,) “yeah, sometimes that happens.”

Here’s a true story of something that apparently “sometimes happens.” I know now that this was the first pregnancy symptom I had, although I didn't know I was pregnant at the time, and didn't make the connection between the two because it’s super weird and nobody ever would. One morning I woke up, got dressed, drove to work and after being at work for about 10 minutes, I just... stopped being able to see anything anymore. I could see colors and vague shapes, but anything more than a foot in front of my face was a blur. I thought I was going blind or that maybe there was a tumor pressing on my brain. I panicked for a while then called my doctor and cried a little. After a few hours it went away. The next time I experienced it was a few weeks later, after I’d learned I was pregnant. By this time I’d read about all kinds of crazy stuff that can be chalked up to pregnancy hormones, so I had a hunch that I should probably call my nurse midwife in case this was just another one of the many things my body's allowed to do. She gently informed me that blindness in pregnant women is okay and normal. Of course it is. Body: a million. Hannah: zero.

Lately, I've been feeling much better and have grown used to some of the pregnancy stuff that felt so foreign at first. Meanwhile, I've also become more physically and emotionally aware of the baby’s existence. Of course I was happy about the baby from the beginning, but for a while it all seemed a little abstract to me. I’d see pictures of what the baby was supposed to look like, and for what felt like a long time, it looked much more like a plant than a baby. Seeing the baby in my first ultrasound helped me start to wrap my mind around it. I got to see with my own eyes that there was someone in there. Then the first time I felt the baby kick, something changed. I lay there thinking, this is my child, and I’m his mother, and no one else gets to experience what I'm experiencing with him right now. I felt so joyful. It was the first time I'd ever thought much of it, but suddenly I felt tremendously thankful to have the privilege of carrying him.

So lately, I've been think about him instead of my body. I carefully plan his nursery and research diaper brands and baby monitors. I want to make everything the best I can for him. I wonder what kind of parents we’ll be. I wonder what we’ll decide to name him. I wonder what he’ll be like. What will he look like? Will his personality be like mine or Daniel’s? I can't wait to meet him and learn the answers to all my questions.

Thinking about his arrival naturally leads me to think about giving birth. Today I looked up and realized I was daydreaming about the day the baby comes, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was driving to work and thinking about what songs I wanted to put on a play list for labor, wondering whether I'll prefer happy, upbeat music or something softer. For the longest time, I wouldn’t talk or think or read about labor because I was so scared and I didn’t want to make it worse by learning any more about it. I remember talking to my friend Racheal back in April just before she delivered her first baby, Nora. She was telling me how miserable she was and how ready she was to go into labor. I was so mystified by that. To me, it was like hearing someone say they were ready to die. While I dreaded it and avoided thinking about it at all costs, she was looking forward to it. I thought she was in some kind of denial. I thought all women must have to go into denial to want to give birth. Maybe it’s true, and maybe I’m in denial, but I’m not petrified by the thought of the pain anymore. I think that's because I’ve gotten a small taste of what I have to look forward to. I’m not saying I’m mentally prepared to have the baby today, but I do look forward to it and I know that when the time comes I’ll be ready.

Pretty soon I’m going to start shopping for birth classes and doulas. Becoming better educated about the birth process is going to be a little daunting, but I’m guessing also pretty entertaining, based on some of the weird stuff I’ve read so far. For instance, I don’t know if you guys have heard this, but I once read that during labor, it’s very helpful to have someone “stimulate your nipples” to move things along. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! If anyone tries to do anything of the sort while I’m in labor, that person is going to lose a finger. Also, one of the educational pamphlets I received from the birthing center warned me not to insert anything into my vagina after my water breaks. And guys, I’m so glad someone warned me, because definitely the first thing I would have done in the event of labor would have been to pop a foreign object in there, had they not informed me that it was a bad idea. I mean, I think it probably would have been my first instinct, really.

Tomorrow I'm going in for the follow up ultrasound so we can determine whether our boyish child is a boy. I'll let y'all know if it turns out to be more girlish than we originally thought.