kerouac says

the best one calls you Mr. Baby. she's hoping you arrive on the soonish side, now that you're officially term, so that there's a better chance of my--and your--being mobile in enough time to fly to her wedding. if you feel like complying, we would really like to attend, but we know these things are tricky. do as you feel is best.

you freaked me out yesterday. after not moving around very much during your normal 10:00 p.m. boogie hour, you spent a very chill morning. the first one in recent memory, in fact, in which you have not awoken before me and treated me to some early morning cha-cha as i struggle to stay asleep for fifteen more godforsaken minutes. i ate some cereal and laid back down to do a kick count, and sure enough, you wiggled ten times in about twenty minutes. but they were seriously paltry wiggles. and after ten you stopped again.

sooo, i called the midwives and we went in for a non-stress test. you actually started to perk up in the car on the way there, and then made a beautiful print out for them of your nicely variable heart rate while i snuggled up in one of the L&D rooms (the big one, with the best view out over westwood). all was well. you are doing some great work in there. everyone out here appreciates the effort.

it's early yet to start drumming fingers, asking when you're going to come. i think i'm eager for the next exciting thing to happen more than i'm anxious to have you on the outside. to be frank, there's still some stuff i'm hoping to do before you show up, so i'm not putting on immediate pressure. but if you wanted to shock us all and show up this week, i don't think anyone would be really put out. i haven't fallen in love in a while, and i'm really looking forward to it.

so get here. safely, when you can, and with a minimum of shoulder dystocia.

love,

lb.

third trimester is sort of like attention-your-shoe. exciting stuff could be happening, but it's not, really.

people who have kids say a lot of stuff about how tired they are. i mean, i'm sure they are. i don't mean they're being big wusses about it. but it's daunting. i hate being tired and stressed out, and apparently this is what children do to you. i've heard it too constantly from too many friends and acquaintances to doubt it. it makes me fear that, even once the crazy baby part is past, what we're headed into is a life that is richer, but somehow less satisfying. more full, but more lacking--in time, in . . . satisfaction. i'm talking in circles. someone was just telling me how she feels like she never *pays attention* any more, that she used to be a better listener, and now she just has too much going, all the time, all of it important.

i can see this happening. specifically, to me. the monkey has many wonderful qualities, but keeping balls in the air is not one of them. he has not read a baby book. he has not researched bottles. he doesn't know how to change a diaper, and hasn't considered finding a class that will teach him how. i love many things about him, but it's easy to look at what's coming down the pike and think, uh-oh.

i don't want to drive this baby the way i drive our budget, drive our schedule, drive our grocery shopping. i don't want to be head parent. i don't really want to be head spouse, either, but so far, efforts to avoid it have been frustrating and unsuccessful.

so, cogitating.

in the meantime, i'm tired and hungry and feel simultaneously like i'll be in this holding pattern for a Long Time, and that there is no time, he's practically here, whatever i was going to do in the next month is a pipe dream. i remember this one time when i thought i was going to write a dissertation. HA.

maybe that's part of it, though. this whole thing is so overwhelming that occasionally i don't feel up to talking about it. people keep asking me, excitedly, "how do you feeeel?" and then seem kind of disappointed when i say, "i'm okay."

i am. i'm okay. i've been alternately pretty joyful, kind of scared, and, honestly, a little bored. heartburn and growing out of your pants are sometimes exciting, but a lot of times not. sometimes i wonder if i'd feel that way if we had tried for eight years to get pregnant, like this woman i met yesterday. i'll say it again: we are luckier than we had any reason to expect to be.

he's coming soon--his little fetus body dropped lower two days ago, and i think i might be having some braxton hicks. i might have been for a while, i guess; i don't really know what they're supposed to feel like. there are some sensations that maybe feel like the "tightening" people describe, but they also feel like maybe he just flexed something and my tummy bulged out--in one part, usually, not the whole thing. and they don't seem to have precise beginnings and ends. so maybe not. who cares, kind of. i think the real ones will be easy enough to spot.

in a month or so, he'll be here. we'll be parents. there's nothing i can think of that's important and significant enough to spend these last days doing. i feel elegiac about the last days of me-and-the-monkey, on our own. we've been such an amazing twosome up to this point. i know adding something will only be a net good, but this is mourn-worthy, these two self-involved, each-other-involved people that we've been. we've done what we wanted, for the most part, and we've had enormous fun. somehow i feel like before wee ferguson comes out we're still those single people who fell in love eight years ago, and after he does we're Parents. not really true; in any event, we're already different from those people.

and these new people will be good, too. we'll be in love with a baby and each other. that's not a bad thing.