Great Expectations

Dear Baby,

We are impatiently waiting for you to arrive. You are so lucky -- you get to be the first child of Jenny and Robert, our young friends who have allowed us to share in the unfolding of this miracle.

In your fifth week, Jenny shyly told us she thought she was pregnant; by week seven, she was sure. She was joyous; we were polite. "Congratulations, that's wonderful," we said. Her pregnancy -- your existence -- didn't seem very relevant to our lives.

Ever since I'd lost a baby, then subsequently been unable to conceive, I'd kept my distance from maternity. It was too much of an emotional slippery slope.

But we love Jenny. It was hard to remain detached when, week after week, we watched her growing, bringing forth your new life. As she came to our house to help us with creative projects my attitude underwent a subtle shift. This baby was no longer just hers and Robert's; it was ours, too. We were vicariously pregnant.

At first your mother didn't look much different, Baby. Maybe she was a little rounder in the shoulders and hips, with a more delicate pink tint to her skin. She didn't have quite as much stamina, but her cheerfulness and enthusiasm remained the same.

Then, one lunchtime, we reached for an ice tray; all three in our refrigerator were empty. That's when we discovered your Mom was eating ice -- buckets full of ice, freezers full of ice. "Would you like some ice cream? A pickle, perhaps?" No, just ice.

Her tummy grew. So did her appetite. She got hives and every cold passing by. Her uniform became big T-shirts and your father's drawstring-waisted shorts. She began talking about you. Soon the rest of us were, too.
One day your mother took my hand. "Feel," she said, and there you were, a real person doing somersaults. We started thinking up names. In your honor, we played Mozart.

Before a baby arrives there are infinite expectations. We can imagine any -- every -- possibility. A fetus is abstract. It doesn't wet a diaper or get hungry at 3 a.m. But when a new human being is born imagination ends and reality takes over. The experience begins to narrow. The baby has a certain eye color, a certain hair color, a familiar way of smiling: "Oh look, he has Grandpa's chin!" By attributing familial characteristics to a newborn we start to shape him as surely as his own physique, intellect and temperament will.

The great hope of an infant's appearance in our lives is that we do, indeed, have great hope. Gaze into the dark pools that are his eyes, stroke skin softer than silk, feel the grip of a tiny finger and you have to believe in miracles because you are beholding one.

Until you appear, Baby, your mother remains at the center of our lives. We sit her carefully in the recliner, lift her feet onto the ottoman and ask, "How do you feel?" Last week she replied, "Big." This week she answers, "Bigger."
We watch her rub her huge belly and sense her psychic straining. It's just the two of you now, in the home stretch: "Come on, let's get you out of there and start living our lives together."

Your parents are inseparable, savoring their last days as a twosome before the exhilarating, exhausting experience of parenting bursts over them with a drawn breath and a cry proclaiming: "I'M HERE!" 

Your place in the universe is ready to be filled, Baby. We are waiting to kiss you, hold you, love you. When you arrive, the world will be a better place because you are in it.
Hurry up!

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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