There's a word for this

Woke up to feeling like my earlier self again. Like probably later today I will hear that those hormone levels stopped increasing, the way they always did when we were in the midst of trying to stimulate my ovaries, with drugs and acupuncture treatments, and trying to conceive at just the right moments.

This moment turned out to be the right and wrong moment all at once. It was a gift, a reminder of something possible, and yet it seemed to vanish like a will o' the wisp before we could even perceive its existence. So much gained and lost in one instant, bearing so many reminders of a specific, sharp sadness in our history as a family.

Four days ago I felt my body's shape and size and said, "There's a word for this." I searched my wordbanks and found it, saying it aloud, "Gravid." And then I was surprised to realize its meaning almost as I said the word. Heavy with child.

So I knew. But as soon as I thought about it, I realized why at the clothes swap my belly had felt a little odd, a little distorted. So that was why my digestion was different and suddenly I was interested in specific things: white (not brown) basmati rice, chocolate milkshakes, fish.

Looking back to before that, I know I'd be nervous about the three alcoholic beverages I had at the Mark Knopfler show. The wine with dinner the very night we may have conceived our one and only time. I'd be nervous about excess weight gain and varicose veins and toxoplasmosis and stuff like that. So perhaps this is all working out best after all, and really is just a reminder that we're still making all this together: a family, a home, a life, something new that wasn't there before.

Perhaps you always have to leave something behind to be able to go where you need to go next. We'll see.