A Front Porch Entrance: The Birth of my Belle Part 3

While business and the transitions of life impeded any hope for time to sit and ponder the impact of a second child, the real problem lies in my very analytical approach to life. Not being the mother who wakes up to the kicks of a child en utero, I struggled to come to grasp with the reality of a second child because life looked the same to me. Katherine’s pregnancy had not caused our life to slow down and an unborn child has little need apart from a nap taken vicariously through its mother from 1-3pm every day. Sure, I would often wake up in the morning to see my wife’s stomach contorting like the body of a character out of the movie Men in Black who is about to reveal the presence of an alien inhabiting its host, but this is just a weird extraterrestrial phenomenon not a profoundly life altering occurrence.

I had never really “seen” this baby. We could guess at its gender through the speculations of our midwives who claim to be fairly accurate in their ability to prediction the gender of a baby by its heart rate, but this baby had not been consistent. One appointment it would clock 160 beats per minute and the next appointment it would be 138. “So she says it’s either a boy or a sleeping girl,” my wife would tell me. I would think sarcastically to myself, “That’s great you have just confirmed my deep suspicion that I will soon have either a boy or a girl!” This 50/50 was no problem for my wife, who would flip back and fourth depending on the heart beat and the “expert” opinion coming from her last appointment.

At first I refused to assign a gender to my unborn child as I felt this would set me up for disappointment if the results went contrary to my speculations. I don’t deal well with surprises and the only thing that I was willing to speculate on was that I thought the baby would come after the due date. I have found that a great defense mechanism for surprises is to not allow myself to get excited about the unknown. I like the tangible things in life like little boy bits staring back at me on the tv monitor in the ultra-sound room, excited phone calls to parents and friends, and having a name picked out a month in advance.

None of these were afforded to me to aid in the mental prepared of the birth of my second. Instead, I had my wife’s contorted stomach and an erratic heartbeat.