Say cheese!

Tomorrow we get our first glimpse of baby (named Phillianna by my sister and mother, since a boy will be Phillip and a girl will be Anna.) Not only will we get some pictures to take with us, but we will be able to record the whole thing on a VCR tape which they nicely label for us. That kind of scared me; I don't trust our VCR to not eat the tape, and if it's our first home movie of Phillianna, I don't want to risk anything.

I also want to make a correction to Mike's post yesterday. I feel pretty confident that I've been feeling the baby for a short time now. Last Friday was the very first time I felt something that felt a lot like ligaments stretching, except it wasn't around the sides... it was right smack in the middle of where my uterus apparently rests. Then on Saturday I felt some weird sensations, but nothing that was noticeably like a baby moving. I've been waiting for what other people described as the butterfly feeling, or a fizzy feeling, as if someone opened a can of coke inside me. But the thumps that I've been feeling have been much more like gas bubbles in a place they don't belong, or like ligaments stretching, or, believe it or not, like being pinched! It felt more like mysterious nerve pain than a butterfly. But, yesterday, I did feel a butterfly feeling, and that was what I was waiting for. I believe the rest of the feelings were baby, but they were annoying feelings, not pleasant Oh-there-it-is!! feelings.

I'm kind of starting to have I-love-my-baby feelings. I don't know how I could love something I never met. It's very strange to feel, and hard to explain. I already feel protective of the baby, partly I suppose because of genes and instincts and Darwin and all that, but it's also kind of selfish! I feel like I am protective of the baby in a I'm-not-wasting-the-past-four-months-so-you-better-keep-on-ticking kind of way. I wouldn't do anything that might hurt it, but mostly because I wouldn't want the headache of starting from scratch. See how selfish that is?! It is like I really don't love this particular fetus as a real baby that already has its hair color and its personality. It could be any old fetus--I don't really care what kind, as long as it comes out alive so I don't have to start over again. That sounds awful.

So maybe it's because we're going to see the baby tomorrow. Or perhaps it's because I can feel it. I've actually started to feel love for the thing. Will Phillianna be an active baby like its daddy, or lazy like its mommy? Will it have my tiny nose or Mike's big ears? This much is assumed by us: it will have curly (or at least wavy) hair and it will be on the larger side of average (as an adult of course).

Anyhow, I suddenly have all these thoughts about what kind of a child we have created. It hadn't occured to me that it was strange not to wonder those things from the moment of conception. I think I've been trying not to get my hopes up about this particular baby. After tomorrow, I think I will be officially in love with this baby, and if anything happens from here on out, I'm in big trouble.