I like mysteries. This isn't the answer I can give to the many questions I'm getting lately about baby (am I making any progress, how big is baby, will baby be late or early or emerge with just enough time to be enrolled in kindergarten), but it's the reason behind why I haven't got any answers. Contrary to the amount of preparatory reading I've done for labor and delivery and the number of sensory play activities and ways to manage challenging behaviors I've pinned in anticipation of being a parent, knowing less in this instance seems best. I don't want to spoil the surprise of baby's arrival, and I don't want to get myself wound up over nothing.

While I'm certainly and sorely tempted to ask at recent appointments with my midwives, I'm also a bit of a romantic. In novels and generally more interesting times, a woman had only her intuition and the stories of mothers and aunts and sisters to guide her, astray or otherwise. I imagine she awaited her baby's birth with only as much fear of the inevitable as is reasonable. I've wanted for the same things, and tried to experience pregnancy as naturally as possible and as woman-centric as possible, which isn't to say I don't enjoy the menfolk (and won't be relying tremendously on M, as I have and always will). But this is the place where our bodies are wondrous and strong and capable, when I'll know how to ask for what I need and when.

And I believe that what I need now is to find a little something to celebrate each day, to rest, to dream, and to let my body and my baby do what they already know how to do. Baby will be born whether I know what station he or she is in now or a week from now, whether I have weekly growth scans or whether I've scheduled my induction. I don't need to control this. And I like not controlling it, like not knowing in the same way I like not knowing whether baby is a boy or a girl, the way I like not having yet seen his or her face. We'll meet serendipitously, hopefully the way we were meant to, after so many months of strange intimacy.