Still pregnant. 🙂 Life is on a kind of hiatus while the days pass slowly by and we wait to see if this one will stay with us. ‘Morning’ sickness is giving me a tough time, as are an ever increasing list of food aversions. Crackers and fruit are currently my friends. Rose brings home fresh fruit and juice every few days from our local market. There’s a lot of hot weather around and between the servers nausea and heat I’m often stuck home getting cabin fever. Tonight she took me out to the pool to float in the cool water and I came alive for the first time all day. You really are a little froggie, little one. At night we take turns sleeping in front of the air conditioner in the lounge, the sofa is permanently set up as a bed and I nap on it during the day.

You are the size of a blueberry today. Half a matchstick. A small raspberry. A tiny lizard. A little frog. My body is changing around you, swelling up like fruit ripening on the vine. Deep in my gut, tendons pull and yearn as I roll you from my left side to my right while sleeping. You feel like a ship berthed inside me, rocking against my bones, easing into the swell.

Rose and I remember the peace of Tamlorn with wistfulness. We are different mothers to you, hearts a little more scarred, a little more torn open. Trying again is like walking into fire; we are often numb and feel sad about it, but it’s the platform for our courage. We love you no less.

I’m still a half ruin of who I was, my internal world which is usually so lush and verdant is an echo chamber, an empty beach. I have a half life here, full of bewildered grief. My old life flaps around me like tattered flags torn from the mast and I don’t know what to do with it. When Rose holds me, I’m a ship in her bay, rocking to the beat of her big warm heart. She is your Mother, little one. She sings like the sun setting, broken heart still holding hope.

The fear will never stop, come what may, will never truly go away. It’s become as much a part of me as the colour of my blood. The feel of her hand in mine is a kiss of electricity, a burr of tiny insects clicking wings and tuning antenna. The feel of you within me is an ache that nothing can ease, a star strung in a dark sky. A void, and within it, a tiny, distant light.

There’s so much I don’t know. So many questions I can’t answer for you. So many doors I can’t open to you, people who will judge you by me, trials I can’t make any easier. But you are loved. It’s not much, and yet it’s everything. Sail home, little sailor. Swim home, little frog.