Pregnancy Diaries, Vol. V

Hey little girl, I have loved the last few months with you in my womb. My love for you is fierce, so fierce.

Last time I wrote I said that I was proud of you just for wiggling your legs and arms. I’d been delighting in your very being, unconditional of achievement, and when I wrote those words, my foreboding intuitive brain asked me this question: I wonder if I will learn something in our upcoming tests which tells me this is all you will do, and this unconditional love will be heavily necessary?

And then they told me it was possible your days wouldn’t unfold normally and you wouldn’t do all the things with your arms and legs that I’d pictured. My head throbbed when they offered to take you away. In my shock, I soon recalled my last blog words, that I loved you just because you were alive.

The day they told me there was something abnormal on your brain, I felt gutted when you kicked me. You were so innocent and sweet as you exercised and experimented in there, perfectly naive to the words that had assaulted us that day. I wanted your kicks to be the expression of a perfectly forming baby, but every wiggle reminded me that maybe things were tainted. How wrong it seemed that you were wiggling so joyfully, while I was grieving.  

I felt desperately sad that maybe my joy had been kidnapped and tainted. How unfair to have the magic stolen, to think of your life with such heaviness. I just wanted to smile when I felt your aliveness, and treasure my bump, and dream about your life, and love you just as much.

My wish and prayer were answered two days later. Since that day, I feel your kicks not as a tragic reminder from a naive baby that something may be wrong, but as a poignant sign that you are alive, and forming, and beautiful, and mine.

I forget about your diagnosis often. The other day Ben and I were planning to take you to an orchestral concert when you’re about four, so that you could choose an instrument, if you wanted to play one. Only later did I remember that perhaps you wouldn’t have the motor skills. Sometimes I’m talking about you, and then someone brings up the test findings, and I realise that I had completely forgotten and was rambling on about kicking and bump growing with excitement. Those moments are my favourite, because then you are just my baby who is a joy to carry; not in a box, not a cause for grief, not so different from any other.

I'm so glad it's only maybe, but even if it was definitely, it would be fine. You will be exactly the way you’re meant to be, and we will learn from you exactly what we need to learn. As long as you wiggle, we will love.