Bed rest and a ficlet
Happy Post-Thanksgiving to those who celebrated it! Happy Friday to one and all.
I’ve been committed to bed rest. Phineas is being far too curious about the outside world and we’re now trying to bore him into staying in me a couple months longer. So far, the plan is working. And for that reason, I wrote an original ficlet for the newest pre-member of our family. It's so nice to be writing again.
***
Title: Grateful For Tiny Things
A/N: Original
Dedication: For Phineas
***
A bony elbow brushes against my ribs, sore from abuse, and I inhale deeply. It’s 2:00 am and he’s flipping and spinning again in dizzying circles, stretching and kicking out his tiny feet, testing, tasting, hiccuping, pressing his palms against membrane and muscle and stretched taut skin. Then a heavy, familiar pressure squeezes my womb, my heart. The sensation is so low it’s frightening. I roll onto my left side and slide a pillow between my knees.
I coo to him late at night when I’m unable to sleep, when the tiny contractions ripple out from my center, my cervix. I take another pill, another deep breath and scold him, beg him, promise him a future of only warmth and softness and kindness if only he’d calm his curiosity, his restless motion. It’s a promise I will never be able to keep and, deep down, I sense he knows it.
The clock ticks and the television flickers and I turn away from time and place. I turn inward because there is nothing else to do anymore. Resistance is futile. The body is weak. The mind is dangerous. I try to peek inside myself and picture the womb like a tent, seemingly thin protection, tiny from the outside, but once unzipped revealing a warm space large enough to live in for weeks….hopefully months. I massage my stomach and sing a hushed lullaby and, amazingly, the movements slow, then stop altogether. I’ve won this round, but I know there are many more to come.
I carefully turn back - to the soft tick, the lights and sounds, the reality of this tiny chapter in my life - and count my many blessings.
I am thankful for tiny things that, strung together, create a perfect circle, unending, round, like my belly, like this baby’s bottom bulging in my womb, reminding me that I am still very pregnant.
Seven weeks to go…
Miss you all!!!
I’ve been committed to bed rest. Phineas is being far too curious about the outside world and we’re now trying to bore him into staying in me a couple months longer. So far, the plan is working. And for that reason, I wrote an original ficlet for the newest pre-member of our family. It's so nice to be writing again.
***
Title: Grateful For Tiny Things
A/N: Original
Dedication: For Phineas
***
A bony elbow brushes against my ribs, sore from abuse, and I inhale deeply. It’s 2:00 am and he’s flipping and spinning again in dizzying circles, stretching and kicking out his tiny feet, testing, tasting, hiccuping, pressing his palms against membrane and muscle and stretched taut skin. Then a heavy, familiar pressure squeezes my womb, my heart. The sensation is so low it’s frightening. I roll onto my left side and slide a pillow between my knees.
I coo to him late at night when I’m unable to sleep, when the tiny contractions ripple out from my center, my cervix. I take another pill, another deep breath and scold him, beg him, promise him a future of only warmth and softness and kindness if only he’d calm his curiosity, his restless motion. It’s a promise I will never be able to keep and, deep down, I sense he knows it.
The clock ticks and the television flickers and I turn away from time and place. I turn inward because there is nothing else to do anymore. Resistance is futile. The body is weak. The mind is dangerous. I try to peek inside myself and picture the womb like a tent, seemingly thin protection, tiny from the outside, but once unzipped revealing a warm space large enough to live in for weeks….hopefully months. I massage my stomach and sing a hushed lullaby and, amazingly, the movements slow, then stop altogether. I’ve won this round, but I know there are many more to come.
I carefully turn back - to the soft tick, the lights and sounds, the reality of this tiny chapter in my life - and count my many blessings.
I am thankful for tiny things that, strung together, create a perfect circle, unending, round, like my belly, like this baby’s bottom bulging in my womb, reminding me that I am still very pregnant.
Seven weeks to go…
Miss you all!!!