The Heart of the Matter

It all became so very real for me on Wednesday when we went for our monthly pre-natal visit at Whole Health. After about an hour talking with the doctor about how Lisa is doing, what we should be doing and other stuff, she suddenly said just as cool as a cucumber, "So you want to see if we can find the heartbeat?"

Lisa and I looked at each other in shock. Lisa said, "You can do that already?"

"Sometimes you can find it now."

Both of us tearing up, "Definitely."

She proceeded to take some measurements and retrieve her baby sonar and a device for all of us to listen if she could locate the pulsing potential person. She no more than put on the more sensitive device when she said, "There it is loud and clear." She then tried the more public device and suddenly we were in the middle of a tiny pulsar on the edge of the galaxy. The entire world outside that room just vanished. My breath caught and I started crying. Lisa laughing and crying simultaneously. Walls closing in, my heart pouring out, my own pulse pounding. Such a little thing to contain so much energy, a virtual big bang in the microcosmos. All suddenly miracuously, physically real. It was the eternal instant and an instant eternity. I realized that this is the beat of nearly all rave music 120 beats per minute, or more.

We laughed and cried and talked for a minute and the world outside the room came back into focus. Cars and trees and other people and nausea and work and moodiness and exhaustion.... We listened again and it was smashed by the atom heart. I was blown apart to the quantum level, the spore level. That beating heart was me and Lisa and someone completely different and new and unfinished (I guess we're all unfinished until were done). Nascent. Possibility to potentiality to probability to............PERSONALITY! Lisa laughing again blasted out of the speakers and we were back on earth in Missouri in a doctor's office. The doctor saying this was one of her favorite moments in a pregancy. She was glowing as much as we were.

We stumbled through the rest of the appointment and dealing with setting up future appointments and left the building in that way you do when trying to buy something in an altered state of consciousness. We stood outside looking at each other for a couple of minutes and then went back to work. It was very hard to concentrate on anything. That sound pounding in my own ears, only half as fast.

Are we most alive in those primeval moments?

Guy Clark

It's not rational, this pregnancy thing. I now know why pregnant female animals are dangerous. Something instinctual happens. It's hard to explain.

Baby is now about 12 weeks--that means he/she is ~2 inches long, eyes are moving closer together, fingers and toes differentiating...we have a doctor's appointment Monday and I'm hoping we can schedule an ultrasound soon. I need to know that there's just one healthy little being in there. (Too many people have been scaring me with twin stories and the likelihood goes up when you're over 35.) It still feels kind of surreal, but this intensity I feel about taking care of this miniscule being just starting inside me is profound.

For those of you who've been through it, I know it's no revelation. For me, wow.

Saw some friends last weekend who have two kids and got a lot of really helpful, useful perspective.

I am trying to learn as much as possible so that we can, hopefully, do things as naturally as possible, but I'm also open to the chance that we may have to make changes in our plans. That's the biggest bit of advice I've been getting. It helps that our doctor has such an amazing reputation with everyone I talk to who knows her--I feel so blessed.

More soon.