As a writer, I’ve always been fascinated by the power of words.
Just two or three small words can change your life forever. (I guess that makes them a lot like a baby—they pack a big punch in a small package.) There’s “I love you,” “I do,” “You’re hired,” “You’re fired,” and the list goes on. The most recent three-letter set of words to change my husband's and my life came last week during a visit with our midwife.
Into my seventeenth week of pregnancy, we knew that this visit could answer the big pink and blue question mark that had been rotating in our minds. The technician scanned the abdomen, head and limbs. During the process, I was a little alarmed to see a schnozola that could rival Jimmy Durante, but the technician quickly assured me that it was common at this stage and he would grow into it.
“Wait, what was that? Did you say … HE!?” Yes, the moment of truth had finally arrived and those three little words were as sweet as they could be: “IT’S A BOY!”
I would like to have jumped up and down for joy, but as I was being restrained by the transducer, I shed a few glistening tears instead. (Every pregnant woman’s favorite show of emotion.) Somehow, my technician managed to restrain her own tears, so—not wanting me to feel like the only wuss in the room—my husband joined in on the fun.
To avoid grossing out the office staff, we waited until they moved us to a private room to share the remainder of our emotions. Once there, we hugged and kissed and laughed and cried some more. It was by far the happiest moment of my pregnancy to date. (The second happiest was a few days earlier when I discovered the miracle of Phenergan for my vomiting.)
Picturing our baby in a football helmet or playing with cars made him seem so much more real. During my lowest moments—usually the ones where I was hovering over a toilet—I had struggled to think of the baby as, well, a baby, and found it easier to think of it as a semi-parasitic creature who was bent on making me feel as miserable as possible until it arrived. Now, I can’t imagine thinking anything more ridiculous. I haven’t even seen our little guy yet, but I already know that he’ll be perfect, prominent proboscis or not.
And to think—it all started with the three little words, “How YOU doing?”
Just kidding—Tom and I actually met while working at an inner-city ministry together, and our courtship was as proper as an old-fashioned Sunday afternoon picnic of fried chicken, sweet tea and, of course, well-dressed little boys climbing trees and playing tag in the sunshine.
