I haven't posted in a while... I guess the days just go by pretty quick. 13 days from the due date today. I don't look as big as I could, and we have confirmed through ultrasound that the baby is on the small side (but still healthy) - and he moves around with vigor and strength. I'm alternately ready to go into labor right now and a little daunted at the fact that we're here... that we're going to be real, live parents in a few weeks. These 9 months have gone by so fast. I'm now without my full-time work for the first time in four years and have been just getting stuff done around the house. Until now, of course: haunted by swelling feet and a back that can't take too much walking or standing anymore, and less energy in general, I can't get that much done anymore that involves physical exertion. So... I'm just waiting!

Well- the irony is, sometimes we sense more than we think. After musing on parenthood and the sense of mortality last week, a few days ago the husband lost one of his best friends to a motorcycle accident. ML was just in his late thirties, and the husband has known him since the seventh grade. When the husband's first wife left him, ML was the friend that got him through one of the toughest years of his life.
Yesterday evening the husband and another good friend got on a plane and flew out west to help ML's family deal with the loss and endless clerical details of death in a strange state where they know few people. As soon as he left, I fled to a gathering of musicians where I could laugh, play music and not be in the empty house alone. But eventually I had to come home and face our empty home, where my own grief couldn't be squashed anymore by having to comfort the husband, whose own grief over this has got to be 100 times my own. So, as I lay in bed hoping to go to sleep, instead the tears finally started in full force. I started crying harder than I had in a long time. Then the baby started acting up. I don't know what about the crying set him off - the hiccups, the burst of oxygen, the jerks and starts of my diaphragm - but all of a sudden, he started moving more and faster than he ever had before. Whipping and squirming and kicking and thrusting in my belly like a captured eel. I lay back and tried to calm myself and him by rubbing my belly and murmuring aloud, "It's okay baby, mommy's just sad," over and over. It took several minutes for him to calm down, long enough for me to have a few moments of wondering if I'd sent my son into a seizure and was about to lose him too. He eventually settled back down into the sporadic kicks I'd been feeling all day. I fell asleep around 2 am, only to wake up at 6 am unable to get back to sleep. The tears started again, more crying, and I couldn't stop this time. I eventually had to get up into the shower to help me calm down.
Of course, I am grieving for ML. He was one of the first of the husband's friends to meet me as we started dating five years ago. The second time I saw him, he greeted me in such a way that made it clear (beneath his cool exterior) that he was delighted to see me in the husband's life, and wanted to make me feel welcome there. He lived first out west and then moved abroad (though he died out west) so I didn't see him often. But he was the crazier, spontaneous one who lived the face-paced, jet-setting life -drinking merrily to excess, racing motorcyles, making dirty comments - always the one who showed up every New Year's with more high-quality champagne than we ever thought we could drink. And of course, he was one of my husband's greatest friends. One of the things I love about my husband is his predilection- like mine- of holding onto friends, keeping in touch no matter the time or distance. It always gave me a good feeling when the husband got to see ML again - drinking too much for sure, but talking like no time had passed, experiencing one of the greatest friendships of his life. I grieve for ML's loss, but also for the husband's loss of a great friend. There is pain in seeing the love of your life reel in shock and disbelief, knowing his heart is breaking while you kiss his forehead futilely, hold his hand, hug him again.

And on top of all that, there is my baby boy sitting there in my belly. Life and death, side by side. I make sure we're all eating for his sake. I worry that my sorrow and grief is pouring through the umbilical cord, dousing him with the physical experience of feelings he can't yet comprehend. I would protest too, kicking and hitting out against the feelings of sorrow in the world, fighting off the darkness inflicted on us merely because our parents conceived us. "I can't promise you that this life will always be easy," I told him yesterday.
The husband and I had just been laughing the other day, talking about ML. When we announced our impending arrival this past New Year's Eve "Eve," ML was nonchalant -and the topic quickly moved on - in stark contrast to the usual barrage of quizzing about sex, names, how I've been feeling, etc. that most people pepper us with. But the other day as we brought that nonchalance up - the very day, as it turned out, that ML passed on- we commented how he was of course going to be the one that our son would run to when he visited, the colorful, non-relative "uncle" that would horse around with the child and offer him no limit of attention. The husband lamented after the news arrived, "I was going to give him such shit for his initial response after watching him play with our kid for hours...."
And that's the clincher: that our son will never know "uncle" ML. And there again, is the sense of moving into this new plane of life. That we will be known as "mom" and "dad" - but our lives, our childhoods, our friends - will be a mystery to our children. I remember those times my parents reminisced about someone dear taken too early - with the comment, "I wish you could have known him/her" There would be a vague sense of knowing they'd be right, that we would have liked that wonderful/funny/loving person. But how could I know, that behind my parents' comment was a sea of memories, laughter, events, and perhaps even fights and reconciliations - that flooded their mind as they recalled the person that their child never got to meet. And now ML is there too, behind that seawall holding back the flood of the essence of their life, their interaction with others. We can offer our son photographs, a few stories when our friends get together. And in response our son will say, "huh."
And finally of course, there is the sense of motherhood. The tragedy of the figure of Mary, losing her son to the senseless darkness of the world. I think about ML's mother, out west and arranging cremation and memorial services. I feel my own son kick in my belly, affirming his life and existence by the hour. I wonder if she thinks about those days as she experiences the worst kind of loss. And I think to myself, among such joy and hope for my child is the reality that at any day, I could have grown, birthed and raised him --only to lose him.
But of course, I can't know whether I will lose him, or whether he will lose me or his father too soon, or whether life will turn out the best it can for us, with my son sitting beside me in fifty years time as I fade peacefully away after a long good life. We can't know any of this stuff. So instead we turn to our little baby and let him provide all the hope he can - a new life as an old one is taken away. The mystery of life, the amazement that this little life can come from nowhere, is juxtaposed with the bewilderment we feel when a life goes back to where it came from, a place we can only guess at as we journey through this strange passageway between the entrance and the exit.

"If you realize that all things change,
There is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are you'll cut your hand."

- from the Tao te Ching

Five weeks of touring in March, and I survived. Mainly due to constant diligence in getting enough sleep and food. Going to bed right after the show. Making sure I always had something to eat in the morning.

Things have been fun in trimester two... he's been growing by the day, first with the little bumps on my stomach. Now he can kick pretty hard, and I can feel bits of limbs and head going by when it's right up against my stomach front... which is amazing. Now the backaches are starting up, probably a side effect from the touring. I am getting ready to spend the next three months at home, since my gig is pretty much up with the band I've been with for four years. There's a lot of work to do around the house; painting three rooms, working the garden, figuring out what baby stuff I need. Looking around the house and realizing the many bits we need to "babyproof."

As he gets bigger, it gets more and more real. But I think it's not going to get really real until I'm holding him in my arms and getting no sleep, and feeding him constantly.

The husband and I were talking last night too; we both had had the same thought.... taking this step, creating life, means we are really in the "cycle of life." Before now, we just floated around the planet doing whatever. But with this big change, we both feel a step closer to realizing -really realizing - our mortality, moving towards the end. Sounds morbid, but what we feel is just a greater sense of being "human" - even our own infiniteness, and maybe the sense that even though we want the best life for our child, one that includes us for many years, there's no guarantee. We can only do and hope for the best. I feel my priorities have already shifted so much. When it's not just about you anymore, you really feel it in every decision.

Here's the newest development: now I know he's kicking for sure. For one thing, the little knocks in my belly are unmistakably something moving around (not gas.) And also, when I look at my stomach, I can see little ripples and bumps moving!!! This is unbelievably exciting and it adds a bit of fun to the whole escapade. Every time I'd feel him kick and see the stomach move in tandem, I just started laughing. It feels like I get to play with him in an indirect way. Of course he's not really aware of it, but it feels like we're actually sharing an experience for the first time. This is what makes aches and body pillows and getting really full, really fast, worth it!

I'm back on the road this week and the guys can definitely see I'm pregnant now. Reminding them that this changes things is a bit harder... like making sure I get food NOW!!!! They tend to let lunchtime be a bit lazy, but not anymore. There's no putting lunch off for an hour these days. And the touring is generally more tiring, but all in all it's not too bad. I'm sure at the end of March (my final days) I will be quite ready to be done with it, but I'm surviving okay. Most of the husband's friends think I'm crazy, but what am I supposed to do? We've got a mortgage to pay and I can't just sit around for six months straight - sitting around for the last three sounds like quite enough. I'm planning on getting a book on knitting, some needles and yarn when I get home and pick up the knitting hobby I started ten years ago. Baby hats, booties and blankets here I come!!!

Lastly I just want to say that pee on public toilets is really a pain now. I've always been proud of my "hover-" I could get an inch or two above the seat and aim right in the bowl - but now, I've got to sit. Pregnant lady ain't doing no hovering. Nope. So I've got to grit my teeth, grab toilet paper and wipe down the seat and hope that the medical knowledge that urine is sterile will sustain me. Amen.

It's a little boy!!!
We had our ultrasound on Friday, at 18 weeks, and there he was. All the fingers and toes in place, and kicking and jumping around as we watched him on the screen. I was rooting for a girl, but I had had a feeling that it was a boy. All the same, I have to admit I felt a rush of disappointment - it was the gorgeous little girls at all the festivals I played that really made me want to be a parent. But then immediately of course, I felt an accompanying guilt for feeling that way at all. The "bad mother!" voice....I felt like I should chide myself for feeling like a boy would be any less of an amazing experience. I can hope that I'll bring up a boy who will be like his father -respectful towards women, sensitive yet strong... someone that will make some woman really happy someday. And coming from a family of three girls and a boy, perhaps I'll discover some things I never experienced growing up in a strongly female household. (However I still can't help hoping already that number two will achieve XX chromosome status!)

Most importantly of course, was that he seemed healthy and active. It was amazing watching him move, kick and arch his back. We still are awaiting the official results of all the measurements they took of all his little various parts, but nothing seemed out of place at first look. And that of course is most important. We had skipped all the blood tests that look for abnormalities. I was traveling on the road when they needed to be taken, and after conversations with my husband and my parents, we decided that the very slight risk of something being wrong was far outweighed by the possible stress of blood and amniocentisis while I was on the road.

I officially moved into maternity pants - found a great pair at Gap Maternity, the city fit line. They still make my legs look great while giving all the stretch I need up top. H &M provided a really comfy polyester-y pair of black pants, great to travel on the road in, and a black striped pair, on sale for $34. My shirts all nicely show off my growing abdomen for the moment so I don't need to invest in maternity shirts until later on down the line. And a couple great dresses have proved great for onstage clothes on the road, as well as some of the longer looser shirts combined with my new jeans. My lower back is letting my know that I can't bend over as quickly or as deeply to put on socks and lift things... and my boobs continue to grow it seems.

And I'm hungry again already. Time for a snack.

It's 12:08 am on January 1, 2007. A quiet night at home, reading on the couch, the husband is asleep upstairs. He had to work tomorrow, a busy day - and I'm pregnant and nondrinking (though I did sneak a small bit of champagne last night!) So instead of partying in the New Year we stayed at home, played some cards and he went to bed at 10:30. I thought I'd be in bed soon after, but found myself enthralled by a book he bought me for Christmas. The radio was playing in the background, live from Tonic in New York City, jazz that sat in the background. Then, they counted down until midnight and "Auld Lang Syne" started up, at the same time that the sounds of fireworks erupted in the neighborhood. I've always loved New Year's, the counting down to the next installment of life that keeps moving on. Wondering what will come this year, and marveling at the ones that keep adding up behind me. This year - we hope for a baby, whose heartbeat we heard for a second time on Friday. We'll find out if it's a boy or a girl on the 26th of January, when we get our ultrasound. And I couldn't help feeling that this New Year's starts a new era for us as people and as a couple. The end of the freewheeling couple that we were - at least in the sense of out any night we felt like it, partying, dining out... we stayed in tonight and who knows what next year will be like. After so many years single, free, in a way thinking about next year curling up with the baby, the miracle that somehow we've created... sounds pretty good. There's definitely a sad feeling bidding goodbye to my younger, more independent self- balanced by this amazing feeling that soon my life will matter more than anything to one person whom I've taken it upon myself - ourselves - to raise up as best we can.
Up to cuddle with the father - the husband- Happy New Year, here's to a 2007 of peace and life, as best we humans can manage it.
Good night!

I told my bosses a few days ago and it went much better than I thought. I didn't expect them to be angry or anything; but they seemed truly congratulatory and to be honest, somewhat unsurprised. I guess the fact that I'm a happily married childless 30-something means that this wasn't something they hadn't thought of before. So the word is out and I feel better.
So in general I'm getting the word out and telling people in the outside world. I'm also starting to show a bit; my "gut" is getting bigger and I can definitely feel my uterus sticking up at the bottom of my abdomen. I'm using some jeans from my sister-in-law who's a couple sizes bigger than me until I can get to the Gap and Target and H & M and get a few maternity things. Mostly it's the onstage clothes that I'm worried about - I don't mind living in sweatpants and one nice dress in average life, but on stage I still want to look good even though my stomach is ballooning. Nothing like having an audience for your pregnancy!
I almost passed out in the post office yesterday - I was waiting in line for ten minutes and it was warm in there, but I wasn't really thinking about it. Then when I got up to the guy, as he processed my packages I started feeling a bit woozy. Then my vision started going grey, and I crouched down to the floor - "I'm feeling a bit hot," I said. He got my receipt and just as things were really going black, I walked as fast as I could outside to the fresh air and sat down on the steps. After a few minutes I felt better, but it was a bit scary. So I'll have to watch the heat from now on.
Next appointment (#2) is on Friday. I'm looking forward to it. I'd like to hear the heartbeat again... sometimes even though the stomach is growing and I still get queasy now and then (though much less than a few weeks ago) --the whole thing still seems surreal. But that didn't stop a few baby presents from arriving at Christmas. As well as a baby book - Baby 411 - that seems to be a really good one, full of information. As it came from my in-laws that had a baby last April, I'm assuming they found it very helpful.