Small Miracles

As we sat on extremely uncomfortable chairs being forced to watch our 13th or 14th waterbirth on the childbirth educator's favorite DVD (..and who knew there were so many birthing exhibitionists out there?) I sat trying not to fidget and ended up contemplating my navel.

Which, miracle of miracles, is still there.

It might not be much longer. It's gotten much flatter and drawn out in the past few weeks, and Stanley really doesn't have too much more room to grow without taking up that small amount of space which used to be my fairly deep, round, innie belly button. On what used to be my fairly flat, hard stomach. Oh yes, those were the days. They were good times, those days.

I monitor my belly button's progress because I can't really gauge the progress of anything else. The days simply plod on and though we are marching inexorably closer to the fateful day, the bodily changes aren't fantastic enough from one minute to the next to really pinpoint any succession.

Still, we're ending our 34th week here and we've still got our navel. We still don't waddle, we've only had one incident of swelling ankles, and the need to urinate, contrary to popular myth, is really quite manageable. There's been no heartburn to speak of. Sleep is uncomfortable at times but not completely impossible.

Hey, I strung sap tubing a few days ago while slogging through a foot of snow. You can't say the old girl's had it yet. Suffice to say we're hanging in there. The heck with the miracle of life; I'm counting the small miracles now.