Nesting for Flying Cuckcoos

38 Weeks

I'm pretty much just a babbling idiot these days.
I hear it only gets worse.
I have NO room for any thoughts in my head except day-dreaming about this extra life that is inside of me, coming out of me, and being in front of me.
I'm not even my usual Preparation Polly.
I have star charts and tutorials, treasure maps and magic spells to hand over to the temp filling in for me at work, but I'm having a really difficult time passing them on coherently.
A month ago I was freaking out about letting my understudy go on and today I'm barely checking my climbing ring before I wave goodbye to her as I jump backwards off the cliff.
Bloop.
I'm overwhelmingly calm.
I think it's the intense lack of sleep and the fact I have lost 90% of the feeling in my hands.
Plus, I'm so huge and swollen no matter what I'm doing, people are treating me like I will literally explode if I'm shaken and stirred.
As if they will be rushing me to the hospital within the hour, every hour.
It's funny.
I'm a walking bio time bomb.
When I was 11, my mother gave birth to my brother.
I talk to her now and she graciously tells me all about her pregnancy and the weeks after he arrived.
It is fun to listen to now.
She'll say things like, "He cried all night unless we rubbed his pinky toes. You remember that."
But I don't.
My 11 year old perspective was not that I was curious or responsible for him but rather it was like we had this hyper intelligent new pet.
Cute.
I didn't start feeling that intense sibling blood-tie until my twenties.
But nothing compares to being a mom.
I know this now and I haven't even started.
All conversations with my mother include reminiscing about my childhood or my brother's.
They always have.
It feels nice to be so loved but also, I never thought it was a very interesting subject.
"Oh? Yeah. Huh. That moment when you first discovered I didn't enjoy okra I made a face and then stuck out my tongue. That's a good story."
Now I get it.
EVERYTHING about this kid I carry around inside is so FASCINATING to me annnnd... only me.
Greg cares too, of course, but I think it is more obsessively different for the female side.
Not even our own son will think twice when I tell him two weeks before he was born I kept feeling his little butt pressed up against the bottom of my ribcage on the left side.
Who cares?
Moms do.
That's a nice thing when you think about it.
That mother's are the glue of the world.
They are the first groupies.
Thank you, Mom, for making me feel important.
Thanks to all moms for perpetuating the human race.
Thanks Dads too, of course.
Thanks trees.
For the oxygen.
Thank you Internet for holding my thoughts.
Thank you— I'm about to break into an Alanis Morissette song...