God Save the Date!

I ordered a really cute baby book from Amazon to start recording some of my thoughts and ideas from pregnancy for Baby's future brain trust, so he can enjoy the way I still enjoy my own baby book. And it's lovely, but something's missing.

There are, naturally, a lot of fill-in-the blanks to document milestones such as "date you first felt baby kick," and "date Baby took his first step." These are a good idea, of course, but I was somehow surprised by them. "Date?!!" I thought to myself. "I'm a terrible mother already! I don't remember my kid's STUFF!"--and I racked my brain to figure out the precise date and time I first felt Baby on Board. But while I was doing that, I re-lived exactly how that moment felt (like a little fishy!), what I was doing (lying in Tempur Pedic dream bed), what I was wearing (Liz Lange maternity uniform, blue issue), and that magical moment of I experienced the mystery and wonder of it all. But I am sorry to tell you, I have no idea what the date was beyond April 2010. So that's what I recorded. (I am also sorry to tell you that aside from the wonder feeling, most of my pregnancy could easily match with those more practical details.)

Unfortunately, there was no room in the book to write "Baby, you felt like a little fishy to me, moving swiftly back and forth across my belly. I gasped in wonder knowing, really KNOWING, that you were a real person inside of my person." So I am writing it here.

A date is a wonderful thing and it helps us to quantify and understand an otherwise elusive moment in time. But in some ways it sterilizes an experience and boils it down to X number of days ago when it can be so much bigger, or in some cases, a bit less cosmically relevant. Knowing the specific night that I put Matt's hand on my belly and baby gave him a good hard kick for the first time will not tell our son how his dad exclaimed and held me tight, knowing we were glimpsing the future. By the same token, telling you I last ate soup on May 1, 2010 (I have no idea, actually) seems to impress some larger meaning on such a non-event.

So I am going to try to keep up with the dates if I can in this book, though it's not really my way. (My way seems lazier and lazier the more often I think on it. Whoops.) But I am also adding some little envelopes for letters to my book, so I can recall to Baby, who will one day be a man, in my own way, the most significant memories I have of his early years, even if it is not the day he first recited the first stanza to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Maybe it will just be the way my eyes now well with tears as I imagine singing and rocking him to sleep or seeing him tromping around the woods with his dad. This is the stuff of the memories I already hold dear.

A post script about dates...

Right after I published, I was looking at my time ticker and thought "Holy geez! 86 days left!" But of course, like my dedication to milestone dates, my tenacity to my own due date is pretty shrug-worthy. My philosophy is that my due date is not an expiration date. While I hope very much, for the sake of my joints and my digestive functions, that Baby doesn't tarry too long in my most of me, he is really welcome to join us in this big world whenever he's ready.

Also, Baby and I are both enjoying Nacogdoches Farmers Market plums with gusto and I believe that these also become dates. Or maybe it's prunes. If so, what is the date, exactly?