Hiccups

Witch baby had a big fit of the hiccups in the night; a good 30 little bounces. I found myself rubbing my belly in sympathy.

And also freaking out: during my frenetic research on cord compression and cord accidents at birth I found there is almost no way whatsoever to predict whether a cord will be around a neck or not, except for one study that found a mild correlation between fetal hiccuping and cord accidents.

I will be bringing this up with my nurse.

Once again if I were in Toronto I would do something sooner, but here I feel just uncomfortable enough to talk myself out of it, which isn't necessarily a good thing. (Although witch baby is fine in all other respects, that is, moving around quite strongly in there.)

This is my last week in Ottawa and I'm glad for that reason, although getting a little stressed for other reasons. I don't always make transitions gracefully and this one is going to be awkward: moving in with my parents for a couple of weeks while the house closes and painting occurs, getting moved, etc. And house closings are often scary: it's not clear how we know it's going okay until the day of.

And then moving into our new house sort of marks this transition in my life.

I feel like I went from expectant mother in a bang to bereaved mother/writer, and from there I got my job back but on a part time basis, and then I slid even further back in my life to 20-something, partying harder than usual and dumping responsibilities like our house left right and centre. Then I got knocked up and have been living a strange life back and forth from apartment that's not mine to parental home, and expecting but not expecting, and my work being stable yet unstable, and soon we come to a kind of halt to that kind of thing: wham, landowners again. Shortly after that I'll wrap up my job and go on leave and very shortly after that I will possibly have this baby in my arms.

Which is at least an 18 year commitment every day to being a parent.

I am glad to be getting settled again, and I am glad every day for the house that we found. But I have this other reaction too, which is that the gates are closing on me and either something will go horribly wrong, and I'll have to adjust again, or nothing will but I'll end up an unhappy surburban housewife.

It's hard to say how much of this is quote-unquote normal and how much of it stems from both multiplicity (what do you mean, things happen in my life and I am not aware of them! How did I end up here anyway and whose clothes are these in the closet?!) and how much of it stems from just plain old normal mother-woman roles.

It's affecting my writing too: I don't want to let go of this book because while I'm working on it I don't have to face it ending. So I procrastinate. Of course the heat and all the stress contribute too.

Eh, it's that kind of Sunday morning!