Dearest Baby "Squiggle"...

I dream about you all the time.  Your eyes; what color will they be?  Your nose that looks so upturned in the ultrasound images... which one of us contributed that feature?  I picture your tiny hands, wrapped around your umbilical cord, tying you to me in your cozy underwater home.  Your kicks punctuate my day, & your heartbeat sounds like rain; constant & rhythmic.

We have names picked out, if you happen to be a boy or a girl.  We are keeping them secret.  We want you to be the first to hear your own name.  We want you to own it.

Your Daddy is suddenly very inspired that we should obtain some of those belly earphones so you can listen to some classical music.  We have a maternity Mozart CD that I listen to sometimes, but we don't know if you can hear those tones swimming through the isolation of my womb to your ears.  I often sing for you.  You seem to like that; you kick in rhythm to the beat while I carry the melody (or sometimes the harmony... my habit of making intricate harmonies up that I cannot break.  I wonder if you will be born hearing music differently because of this). 

At night, after your Daddy easily drifts off to sleep, I lie awake & imagine you.  I think of all the things I want you to experience.  I imagine your nursery, how we will set it up.  I fill it with things of my childhood & try to remember for the morning to ask your Daddy if there is anything from his childhood that he saved for the future that is you.  I imagine various textiles that will teach you texture through touch & exploration.  I envision bookshelves full of enticing titles with worn edges, unabashedly showing the love I hope you will foster for literature.  I see little wooden toys & happily patched stuffed creatures strewn across the playscape of your childhood.

I realize I think a lot about the things we will have in your life.  Maybe that's because I want them all to be things you will cherish, rather than an avalanche of stuff.  Perhaps I fixate on this because I want to limit our belongings from the get-go, so I want to be sure that the items you have are ones that are worthwhile.

Long before I drift into strange pregnancy dreams, I imagine your birthdays.  I see a child growing like bamboo, crazy-fast, & a little haphazardly.  I see you scraping your knees & eating snow (not the yellow snow!).  I imagine making cardboard box houses with you, & outlining a village in the backyard with river rocks, reading "Roxaboxen" & telling you how your Uncle W & I played this game with chalk on the back patio as children.  I see your Daddy & me saving money aside for your birthdays, so every year that you grow older we can take you on a journey to someplace new.  We want you to learn so much about this world we live in.  We like to think a life's worth of birthday experiences will be so much more meaningful than a life's worth of birthday toys that you will only outgrow one day.

I try to imagine what it would be like to hop on a plane with you & Daddy, on our way to visit Aunt D & Uncle B, or en route to a birthday adventure.  Would I have an anxiety attack?  Will you end up with my shortcomings, like anxiety?  I hope you end up like your Daddy; calm & easy-going.  I try to imagine you growing close to your cousins.  I didn’t always get to be close to mine, but these days technology will make it easy for you to babble via face-time with Cousin L in Arizona!  You will likely spend a lot of time interacting with your cousins M & J.  You are all so close in age; I wonder what the dynamic will be like ten years from now.

Sometimes, I wonder if I will be a good enough Mama for you.  I worry that I worry too much.  Yes, I worry about worrying.  Sometimes, I say that I am not ready for this.  I don’t want all these changes, all these responsibilities.  But I think about you too often, & cherish you too much for those moments of doubt to represent a real dissociation.  Sometimes, I feel like a child myself.  I can’t imagine how I will provide you with all the things you deserve when I can barely function on my own!  Your Daddy takes me in his arms & dries my tears, always telling me how I will be the best Mama for you, because I already care so much.  Your Daddy will be your rock, too.  He chases away monsters & reminds us of who we really are when we lose ourselves in all the stresses of daily life.

I can’t promise that you will always get what you want in life.  I can’t promise that life will be easy for you.  I can’t promise that I will always be collected & reliable when you need me to be, or even that your Daddy will be able to make all things better.  But I can promise you all the love we have, smiles at least once every day, & honesty.  We want to build a stable life for you, one in which you feel grounded & safe.  We want so much for you.  But all we can fully promise is love.  You will never want for that.

All my Love,
Mama