Sharing

When you are pregnant, you are never alone.

Everywhere I go, I have a little being with me who hears what I hear, tastes what I eat, feels when I'm stressed, and taps me to remind me that he's still in there. As if I could forget.

Carrying someone inside of you is possibly the most intimate experience that I can imagine, but this intimacy is being shared with a stranger. Someone I haven't yet met. I think that maybe it would be better if we could do it in reverse. Meet our child, fall in love with him, know that I love him more than anything else, and THEN be able to tuck him inside of me and carry him around and take perfect care of him. But I don't get it that way. Instead I am sharing the most generous, giving, nurturing, supportive thing I will ever do with someone I don't know.

I've been thinking about what it will be like when he isn't inside of me anymore. I think I will miss him, even though he'll be right here on the outside. But I won't have the constant companion that I've had this year, I won't feel him turning and kicking and dancing inside of me. I wonder if I'll be lonely.