and she reads

Hello Baby Girl,

I feel the need to write to you or to write to myself - just to remember what this all feels like.

- I am spending way too much time looking at baby items and checking to make sure everything I have on our registry is exactly the right thing to have on our registry and thinking for too much time about which bottles and breastpump and diapers and onesies will be the absolute best bottles and breastpump and diapers and onesies. Online shopping is my version of nesting.

- Actual nesting is coming soon. The nursery is getting ready to be ready. We have your crib set up (although it is still mattress-less.) and shelves and a recliner. And I have ideas for how I want everything to be. I want to wait until after the baby shower to purchase a lot of items tho. So for now, the nursery sits oddly half-way done.

- I feel you moving all the time. Squirming and kicking and sometimes trying to bash into my organs. Your dad (whoa!) found a picture in one of the many informational books/pamphlets we have collected of how everything (organs and such) fit in there before and after a person is pregnant. I just want to get in and rearrange things to make more space for you and for all of my organs. Like, maybe if I could just shift this kidney a little to the left... and move my lungs up a little.... nope, it will all work as well as it can but I am expecting a little discomfort for both of us.

- I'm enjoying this whole thing more than I expected. I've had a relatively drama and discomfort-free pregnancy (lets hope that continues) and I feel like I will miss having you around when you are out in the world. (Obviously you will still be around, but not so close). Of course I am very much looking forward to you being out in the world - I can't even begin to imagine what it will be like. To see you!

- I am anticipating that it will be hard - for all of us. It must not be very pleasant for you to suddenly have to adjust to things like breathing and being able to fully move your arms. As if someone just flung me out into space and I could technically survive but found that I now had a completely foreign method of breathing and moving and eating.

- I worry less than I expected about things that should worry me. I know you will get out one way or another, whether that involves me being drugged to high heaven or you beatifically entering the world while I prove my drug-free womanly strength. Yes, I will probably be more worried about labor as it gets closer but I would like to keep my calm while I can.

- I worry more about absolutely silly things like whether or not my belly button will pop out - to the point where I got slightly... hysterical about the idea of it. Does it matter if that (horrible dreadful thing) happens? No, of course not. And I obviously know that, but I still haven't quite reconciled myself with the idea.

- I feel so much love towards you already. I didn't really thing it would work that way - that I would love you when it seemed like you would just be a weird little alien being in my stomach. But yes, 67 days before you are due to come into this world (as my Target registry so helpfully tells me) I feel like you are a person in there and I love you.

Your Mom.