Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

10-24-2015 Saturday Baby Name As of Yet Unknown has arrived! She  is dozing on the boppy on my lap, Maile is watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for about the 8th time this week, Rosie and Matt are grocery shopping after Rosie’s double header soccer games-- last of the season. Oh-- I just heard the chain clinking on the gate- they’ve made it home. I want to write down Baby’s birth story while it’s still fresh and visceral and hasn’t reduced itself to an outline… So she was due October 12. Liz was here, with kids and husband in tow, staying down at my dad’s timeshare in Kapaa with a beautiful condo, a big TV, and a open-late pool that we swam at every day. Liz, with her experience as a doula and auntie status, was here to help with the birth, and especially to watch out for the girls, make sure they were in the right place, make sure they weren’t freaked out… so we waited and waited, spent nice time at their pool, sent their family off on little touristy adventures...

So my due date has come and gone, my belly is round and starting to drop, strangers on the street feel a kind of tribal ownership of my body-- patting my belly and shouting across the farmer's market at me-- You Look Very Pregnant!!! Why yes. Yes I do.  I love that pregnancy DOES connect me with a universal human experience-- everyone is interested and excited and maybe freaked out or pitying-- but I'm not alone in this. It's special but it's universal, too. I still haven't spent much time thinking about what's happening next-- I worked like a crazy thing up to fall break and through it-- haranguing students about last-minute assignments, grading, crossing my fingers that things would go smoothly over the next two quarters while I take off from work-- and I tell people that working full-time through this pregnancy saved my life. Yes, I was bone-tired, but I never had the time or energy to feel sorry for myself. Pregnancy is not a malady like a nasty cold-- the...

I'm about 5 weeks away from giving birth-- really a month and a day from my due date, but you never want to hex it by shaving days off your full 40 week sentence. My belly is profound, my bosom is bounteous. I groan and creak when I stand up or resettle in my chair. I require a phalanx of pillows to sleep (in the small of my back, under my neck but not touching my shoulders, under my left armpit and between my knees, no blanket but yes a sheet, but not covering my feet or arms) and even then I wake up to pee, to drink, to fret, to check facebook, to restart the soporific audiobook, to drink water, to swat mosquitos... My belly is moon-round and lightly marbled with new stretchmarks-- pearly little striations. I rub them daily with coconutty lotion. My girls sniff at me and grimace-- you smell like baby belly! This pregnancy-- I want to capture it before it's over. The baby bumps and rolls and stretches up under my ribcage-- sometimes jabs a sharp ankle or heel outward and...