Imminent Birth

So this baby will be born from within me in less than 2 weeks. It’s amazing to me how an experience that happens countless times every day—so ordinary—can be so incredibly extraordinary. Why isn’t EVERYONE talking about this?

The Physical: There is this amazing dance that happens between my body and this other entity. My mind can only sit back and watch. My baby will soon decide when he is ready to begin his emergence. For months I have felt his rhythmic exercises. I can predict that at 8:00pm he will perk up as well as when I get up to pee (which is very often). I can feel his form now. His head is in position, getting lower. His back still moves from left to right. His right foot loves to scrape against my right ribs. My uterus has been contracting for a long time now, irregularly. I know that this will be the only time in my life when gut-wrenching pain will be a good thing. I want to maintain my amazement and accept a certain loss of control. Through labor I want to continue to embrace this 9-month-old dance. All that I can control is my reaction to the pain.

The Emotional: I have still not definitively figured out why I want to become a parent. How can this act be so simultaneously selfish and selfless? We all want to be loved by others. We all want to love. That could be it, but it’s not because I have others in my life for that. Is it the purity of a child’s love? Well, that doesn’t last forever. The biologist in me knows, evolutionarily, that parenting is too complex to be strictly instinctual. So what is it that drives this desire? And to not just parent, but parent my own biological child. Figuring this one out may require several scotch and sodas once I’m off the wagon again.

For now I guess I will just enjoy the ride.