I am so sorry I’ve been neglecting good ol’ Ambergon Trail! I’ve lately been obsessed with many things, some good, some bad, some stressful.
Last night I felt PJ move from the outside for the first time. It felt like a muscle spasm, but in a rolling sensation. Almost like the rolling earthquakes we feel here, but the epicenter was my belly, on the right beside the bellybutton. It was unlike anything I’ve ever felt. In the beginning, the books said it’d feel like gas bubbles, and they were totally right. Then, it started feeling like a bob attached to a fishing pole just dragging in the water, creating its own tiny wake as it trailed along.
Now? It feels like something is popping and flipping. It feels like something real. No longer could the feelings be imagined away as gas or empty stomach pains, not even those “explain away everything” round ligament pains could be the cause. I have a living, kicking being inside me. This realization leads me to freak the hell out.
I will be in charge of a living, kicking being for the rest of my life. Honestly, I’m not afraid of the newborn/infant years- heck, not even the toddler years. It’s the elementary school/junior high/HIGH SCHOOL years that just threw me.
As I was laying there last night, flaking another bit of colostrum or whatever the hell it is off my nipple (sorry for the hideous mental image), Piper was just kicking away, doing what seemed to me to be pushing off the wall of my uterus and careening into the back, where her/our placenta lies. I thought to myself (since Paul was sleeping), “My nipples are more ready for motherhood than I am.” My hand resting on my belly, trying to trace the movements of our daughter, I grew cold, yet sweaty at the same time.
I realized: I’m perfectly ready to be a mother-to-be, not so much ready to be a mother. Do all women go through this with their first? I keep thinking how gestation for us humans is 40 weeks, so you get used to not sleeping, dealing with urine and leaky breasts, before you actually have to implement the permanent change to your life.
Don’t get me wrong- I am THRILLED for our new baby to be. I would never ever change what I’m doing right now. I just wish I wasn’t such a freak about it. I can deal with college funds and poopy diapers. I can buy mini hangers and debate where to register. The idea, though, of having my daughter get her driver’s license and leave for prom with some boy scares the hell out of me. Can I parent a teenager?
Obviously, time will tell. I’m sure I’ll grow into it, no? It IS the next logical step from babyhood. 
