Secret Friend

February 5 @ 20 weeks*

The great thing about having a fetus kicking around in my abdomen is feeling the little nudges once in a while: “Hello! Here I am! Right here with you.” Something no one else can tell is happening, something I take as a reminder that something much bigger, well, actually smaller, significant is happening that may or may not have to do with the “real” world, the reality that everyone else shares. I don't mean by this that pregnancy is the greatest thing ever or that what is happening in my body is more important than anything else going on in the world, just that feeling these surprisingly strong movements from a tiny, growing being inside my body grounds me in some way or at least gives me a momentary shift in perspective.

Musing on this, I thought of the practice of having a meditation bell that rings at random times as a reminder to stay in the moment. Hopefully it isn't too horrible to make a slight comparison between this baby and a meditation bell. I've also wondered how I could incorporate this built-in reminder to ground and centre – perhaps to gain a shift in perspective from the all-encompassing cries of a baby! But I have a feeling nothing quite compares to feeling a new little body moving within mine and, of course, the connection brought into awareness by those movements.

This may actually be a functional shift in perspective for the purposes of pregnancy. At some point in her hilarious book (wow, I just googled the title of that book and came up with this crazy website combining images of bears and musak for a dubious purpose) Diane Flacks talks about consciously removing drama from her life because she has a heightened awareness of the negative impact of stress emotional upheaval and the potential impact on her baby. That's mainly what these shifts in awareness, these bumping belly reminders, tell me – I'm happy, I'm content with my life, I'm prioritizing myself and my body, I don't need drama. I think this actually helps me to do my work better since I have no interest in getting emotionally drawn into the complications of other people's lives (and often people, including myself at times, feed off of the rush of drama and complications). I still have empathy and I can support people, but I'm not interested in getting implicated or making it about me. I also really hope I'm not tempting fate here by sounding so stoic about this – I have been thankfully un-encumbered (emotionally) at work since I had a very hard time in the fall. Maybe what I'm writing right now will be helpful if I find myself sinking into it again.

Thinking about the title of this post again, I think a more accurate description might be “secret companion”. I'm not really friends with this little fetus, but we are in it together. And I'm enjoying the company.

*An “inside” shot can be seen here.