stuck in 1st trimester limbo

So, I did recover from the other day's disappointment (as I have from all others in life!) but it was really so disconcerting.

I kept saying it was like having to repeat the third grade or something. But here we are, again on the eve of week 10 (didn't we already do this??) when we go from embryo to fetus which is yet another small milestone. It's so funny to be counting days and then you speak to someone, like my friend Marsha whose sons both just left for university and you see how time compresses and how eventually, all this will seem a distant memory.

I remember having a similar feeling when we cut together all the old super-8 footage from Ez's childhood and his trip to the Philippines. There they all were, Ez with his little overalls criss-crossed in the front , still learning to walk. Pat and Lolita somewhere near where we are now, young, struggling with small children and all the perils of that period of life. Lolita, always beautiful, shines out at us with the brown-skinned glory of a young mother, leaning against a red car that would now be considered a classic. Cindy, now a mother of a four- and a two-year old, wobbles back and forth on a hobby horse that would never past safety standards in this litigious day and age. And now, everyone is grown and it is as though someone threw a switch and transported them all to now, for we cannot see all the years in between.

And so it seems so silly to be sitting here counting days, even mourning days seemingly 'lost' when it will all pass in the blink of an eye.

This is the limbo time, the transition period. I'm still barely pregnant, not out of the woods, not yet showing. The initially vibrant and overwhelming joy has muted itself - we've gotten used to the idea, now we're just waiting till the next stage. And so because I cannot feel my baby, have yet to hear its tiny poppy-seed heart, I am stuck in the land of wondering what it will all be like. Everywhere I look I see babies and pregnant women and children, in numbers I had not previously imagined. When I see them I think 'Look! They all did it! It's fine!' and yet still it doesn't quell the unrest of this time. I look so forward to the first time I hold this child in my arms, hear its indignant wail at being born, bask in the infinite glory that will be our own small miracle and right now all I can see is that the time will pass so quickly and become the everyday. I hear my brother moaning in the phone as his two-year old son Brody managed to pee all over his new floors and I hear in his voice how the wonder wears off and becomes real life. And it's not that I bemoan that, per se, I just wonder how to keep a piece of this wonderous time, this time right now when everything is hope and joy and miracle. Perhaps that is the essence of parenting - living in the everyday, while somehow keeping a tiny window open on the time when it was still only joy.