First Reflections on Being a Momma

Yesterday was my third prenatal doctor visit, the first quickie. The doc put the stethescope-type thing on my tum and before she could finish saying "Let's hope the baby cooperates" we all three could hear a really hearty swish-swish-swish-swish heartbeat. It's something next to magical, let me tell you. It's Lovely.

Rarely are there moments when you reach a certain happiness, and when you do, there's no telling how you'll react. Watching this baby grow is among my happiest experiences. And I've found I'm a blissful laugher. There's nothing funny to the situation, but laughing is all I can do. My friend Sheri wisely pointed out today that this gives me better perspective on Isaac's name. I laughed, okay.

After the magic moment had passed, my amazing blood pressure had been confirmed, my weight found to be still the same (I've lost and gained back poundage leaving me at my pre-preggs weight...something's about to change, I expect), and our next appointment scheduled, Keith and I got in the car to head home. I started thinking back on hearing for the first time our baby's heart pumping blood through it's little peach-sized body. We've had the opportunity to see Baby Bean twice on sonogram and see the heart beating, but we've never heard it.

I said outloud how awesome it was to hear our baby's heart, and then did what any other savvy person in 2009 would do -- mass texted my family. My mom wrote back that hearing your baby's heartbeat is one of the best experiences of your life. Instead of agreeing with her in my head though, I immediately dissected her statement. My mom's speaking from experience; she heard my heartbeat when I was the size of a peach. My heart beating was her baby's heart beating. But how can that be, since it's always been mine.

All this time, Baby Bean has been our baby, but for the first time, I realized the enormity to procreation -- Baby Bean is our baby, yes, but Baby Bean is also Baby Bean. An individual, who will consider its heart beating to be its own heart, not the heart of its parents. How existential, you're thinking. But seriously, when this baby's born, it'll be our child forever, and its self forever, rarely thinking on what it means to be our child, whose heart was beating inside me, like my own. It's a lot more than just having the same last name, similar looks and manerisms, and the same family history.

Baby Bean had always been indistinguishable from me until yesterday. How strange to realize that I'm carrying someone else's self around, as much as it is also mine. How neat. How ineffable a thought. There's a lot more to this being a momma stuff than morning sickness and diapers, that's the truth.