Luna di settembre

Laura Pausini fez uma canção para uma filha (será a dela?) e lembro que na gravidez a escutava bastante, repetindo alguns trechos como poesia para a Cora-da-barriga...

Aqui vai:

Avrai gli occhi di tuo padre                       Você terá os olhos de seu pai
E la sua malinconia                                    E sua melancolia
Il silenzio senza tempo che pervade           O silêncio sem tempo que permeia
Al tramonto la marea                                  a maré no por do sol
Arriverai con la luna di settembre             Você chegará com a lua de setembro
Che verserà il suo latte dentro me              Que fará fluir seu leite dentro de mim
E ti amerò                                                  E te amarei
Come accade nelle favole per sempre        Como acontece nos contos de fada, para sempre

(...)

Ma in un attimo lo so                                   Mas em um segundo eu sei
Volerai via                                                  Você vai voar para longe
Verso l'isola lontana                                    Para uma ilha longínqua
di una città                                                  de uma cidade
Come ho fatto un giorno anch'io                 Como eu fiz também um dia
Amore mio                                                  Meu amor
Perché il sole puó scordarsi della luna...      Porque o sol pode se esquecer da lua

Unfathomably Bewildering

There's so much to write about now with Cora in my life.

I wish I could write it with pen and paper in hand, but time is not something I have to spare.
I am captive to this love, 24/7. My milk is our compass for now.
Her skin is so soft, silky and brand new. I soak its smell up, intoxicated. I am exhausted, yet discovering new realms of energy and motivation. and FAITH, lots of it.
My day is full of should's, but she's the only need to.

Who is this little girl in my lap? Who is this baby, who will very soon not be a baby anymore? Her father's eyes? Her mother's nose? Who will she prove to be, little by little, smile by smile?

She is eager - eager to talk, eager to move, eager to be touch and be touched. She is grateful and generous, smiling and cooing when we get it right. She is learning to experiment things with her mouth, right now it's her little hand. Her plump little drool covered hand. What is your world like, little one? Do you feel safe, loved, happy? That's all I could hope for.

Having a child is so unfathomably bewildering.

Oh My

Oh my, you are here...have been here for almost a month.
Oh my, you have a name, a face, a hungry mouth and sparkly eyes!!

I haven't felt like myself since you've come, I have been living off 2-3 hour bursts of sleep, I have been living on another planet. It blows my mind that I have a DAUGHTER.

You are an arrow that we have helped launch into the world, ever since you were conceived, we have no control - you have come to flourish, to unfold into yourself, everyday a little more. There can be little attachment: the belly has gone, next to go are your newborn clothes. It's such a bittersweet feeling! I'm grateful things get easier as you get older, but it also pangs my heart that your little baby self will last so little! The thought helps me be more patient when the going gets tough.

Love you, little girl.

big and beautiful

Atualizações:
Esse fim de semana senti várias coisas, cólicas fortes mas espaçadas e sem nenhum ritmo entendível. A médica detectou um dedinho de dilatação, chegou a encostar na cabeça dela! Não entendo muito bem isso, como dá pra encostar na cabeça mas nada estar "acontecendo" de fato.
Mas enfim, estamos aqui ainda, não tenho sentido nada mais nada além disso, e até as cólicas pararam esses últimos dias.
Nossos exames estão normais. Nem sombra de diabetes.
Você é "grande" porque você é você, não por nenhuma doença. Que nem disse seu pai, você é forte. As pessoas se preocupam com seu tamanho, isso me tira do sério. Me remete a toda a MINHA infância e à MINHA história de parto com minha mãe. Cresci a vida toda escutando como eu fui um bebê grande que quase matou minha mãe de dor e de verdade. Cresci sempre acima da curva, de altura e espessura. Nunca fui miúda, e quando engordei aos dez anos, aí sim esse complexo virou complexo! Foram anos de luta para emagrecer, para me sentir bem com meu próprio corpo, para parar de me encurvar e tentar me esconder.
E agoro começo a escutar coisas sobre VOCÊ e viro uma onça!! Nos deixem em paz! Você é acima da média, e daí? Você é forte, como eu! GRANDE não quer dizer patologia. Você é linda, tenho certeza disso.

Estamos chegando perto da data provável do parto oficial, dia 20. Sinto seu corpo com mais clareza agora, especialmente seus pés encostando na parte de cima da barriga...encostando nao, empurrando, deixando sua marca!

Me pergunto quais serão os próximos passos médicos. Sei que ela está um pouco ansiosa para que você venha logo, devido à questão do tamanho. Ela até falou em pensar em alguma indução com acupuntura...e nem estávamos na semana 39! Quero esperar até você anunciar que está pronta, até que algo na nossa química desencadeie o processo. Tenho te falado que estamos aqui, te esperando, na expectativa, prontos. Espero que você possa confiar nisso. Sei que você sente meus altos e baixos, minha ambiguidade...não significa que eu não queira você, mesmo quando a dúvida se instala. Isso é meu medo, é o medo que me faz pensar essas coisas, mas eu sei que te amo, que te amamos, não há dúvida quanto a isso. Mal podemos esperar para ver seu rosto, sentir seu cheiro, tocar suas mãos e pés....vai ser uma aventura doida, disso eu tenho certeza!

the physicality of an expanding balloon

Being pregnant has changed my views on being pregnant. It made me go from idolizing it, admiring it - to almost hating it completely. Oh please don't judge me.
I'm uncomfortable 98% of the time. There is no position to sleep in, sit in, walk in, it's becoming lunacy.
It changes everything. self-image, social image, habits - eating, sleeping, daytime, night time, sexual, etc...
It makes you go a bit crazy, messes with all sorts of emotions, really surfaces some deep and heavy things.
I haven't felt much pleasure at all with the physical state of being pregnant. In the beginning it was months of torture with the nausea and panic attacks and the feeling just plain awful, thinking I couldn't have any of my regular meds to help me.  Then I gained the weight all at once and that was a scary time for me as well, just for all the psychological trauma that brought forth and the radical diet changes I adopted, which were stressful for me. Then I got awkward, and I got those weird back pains, which have gone away, but a myriad of new things have taken its place. Heartburn was the latest of them and it has gotten better, or I've gotten better at putting it under my control. Now there's all this restlessness coursing through my body all the time, and I feel like i cannot expand any further, i don't want to, I feel stubborn and childish and angry...grr!!

but I do want to see her. I do have this curiosity about her person...but please, let's start a new phase, on the outside of my body now, ok?

Algo muda

Sabe quando algo muda, no ar? Em volta de você? Cheguei em casa ontem e senti isso com muita força. A preta velha estava certa..."você vai se surpreender" e ai deu uma risada gostosa.
As horas caíram de volta para seu lugar de pano de fundo e não como tic tacs de 1000000 decibéis.
Em casa, de repente, você se sente em casa, o coração acalma, a sujeira já nao incomoda do mesmo jeito. Algo se afrouxou.
Acordei de manhã e o dia não parecia tão ameaçador, a cama parecia muito muito confortável e acolhedora. Nada é tão urgente ou impossível.
enfim.

Algo está virando CASA.

expectativas e desabafo

My belly is moving in waves as I write. She is moving in waves, pushing against her tight quarters.
Does she know when I'm upset? What does it feel like in there for her when there is an upset?
It happened. We are here, living together. After all those talks about doing this, long before the pregnancy, after all the fears, sometimes disagreements and frustrations, we're HERE. In an apartment, fully furnished by us, fully equipped, everything chosen by us, everything thought carefully by us...and now it's done. We took the leap and I don't really know how I managed except to say that I really took it a day at a time, one decision at a time.
Now, I allow myself to cry and feel all the emotions that accompany this recent change in life cycle and such. Just cry out of the courage it took to get here, to take on this enormous responsibility right before another one is about to be born. To leave the little nest I managed to build for myself at my mom's place.
I still can't relax too well here. I don't know what's expected of me, to say the truth. I know we share the chores, that we're both expecting each other to help out and that there are no officially designated roles, other than who is most willing/available at the time something needs to be done. But in my head, that's not how it's playing out.
In my head, I don't grasp where I fit in the whole-he's-working-and-I'm-not-scheme. The whole I'm-a-stay-at-home-mom-for-now-at-least scheme. Money bothers me, I wish it weren't all on him. I wish it didn't make me feel like what I do or what I need is less important.  I mean, I have my little earnings here and there, but it bothers me that I can't go after a career per se right now if I intend to have any sanity left at the end of a pregnancy and the beginning of infant-caring.
At the same time, it bothers me that he can't do more on that front. Of course, the belly is mine, but irrationally it upsets me that he can't grasp how uncomfortable and scary it can get at times, and also how amazing and enthralling.
Just to show how confusing it all can be: I get upset at myself because I get angry at him for feeling too lazy to wash the dishes and I start reminding him he had promised to do it, and I promised myself I would let him do it and not do it myself, not give in to my antsy-ness...and I end up feeling guilty about feeling angry and "nagging" and end up washing them myself, but at that point it seems like I'm doing it to get at him, when I'm not, it's just that the sink full of stuff really bothers me.
And then I don't know how we're supposed to share the chores, if something bothers me more than it bothers him, how do we do it fairly?
And what do I do when he's tired from work and his blood pressure is off the charts but I really wanted him to read this chapter from a maternity book...I've been waiting for him to want to read it since month 3, I guess, but I don't want to nag and I know that his process is not the same as mine, i.e. he's not interested in the same things in the same way...but it's a chapter about how the father helps with the first few months of the newborn, how important that role is and what it's about really...and what I'm trying to tell him is I'm scared of these first few months when he'll still be off almost all day taking care of the world, it seems, being head of a department and dealing with pressures of his own and he might not have the mental, physical or emotional energy to be with me, to really BE with me. I don't know what I'm supposed to ask for, what is just a fact of life, what I should get mad about, what is not fair to get mad about, how much he should be thinking about these things as well, how much he's running away from thinking about these things and leaving me with them and how much I'm just being plain unfair or how it is unfair to me. But at the same time, I need help, because it's not gonna be a picnic for me either, trying to balance my welfare, the baby's schedule, the house chores, any translation offers that should come, his work schedule, our couple's schedule (whatever that means), the budget...and he's still busy having to live up to his parents expectations of doing things together and having a certain lifestyle, which is frustrating on another level that I can't quite put my finger on yet.
So this is our last few weeks of pregnancy and I am overwhelmed with how to start a married life AND a family life all at once. I feel scared that we're not having the time to have the couple part first, the just us as independent young adults phase...
I feel like I should be queen right now, being pampered in every way, being thought of in the littlest things, like if my feet hurt or if I'd like some ice with my water, you know? Or if I feel lonely, or bored... Or if my head hurts, or if the baby is moving, or AAAAH! I want to feel like he and his family understand if I don't feel so social or if I break some sort of social protocol because I need to respect what my body is asking of me. Without the added pressure of them thinking I'm disrespectful or uninterested or whatever. I wish I could be recognized for still cleaning the house top to bottom with my 8.5 month belly.
I wish I didn't feel so childish for wanting all this and breaking into tears because I'm not feeling it.
I wish he could understand that I am irrational pretty much at this point, well, since the beginning, it's been all about emotion, I wish he'd stop expecting me to appeal to my rationality when I get upset.
And if truly this is impossible for him, if it is asking for too much, then I would rather be left alone right now and do it by myself than to go through all this ordeal in my head of doubt, guilt, anger, sadness, doubt...without knowing how to address any of it, because it feels like too much to express, too much to ask for.