Belly Update - Look Out Below!

I am very popular these days at work. All the students run up to hug me and tell me how cute it is...that I look like a balloon. They don't say that, but it's what they mean. And who doesn't like balloons, after all? I know I associate them with parties - especially birthday parties, and (as many of you know so well) I adore birthdays.

Balloons are usually bright, festive colors. As a child, I always looked with longing at the large mylar balloons that float happily over the check-out at the grocery store. It didn't matter that it wasn't my birthday or I didn't need to 'Get Well' - they were balloons, and I would have happily left the store with one. Balloon animals are good, too. Somehow talented clowns at carnivals or waiters at restaurants have the talent to make those long, skinny balloons screech their way into unexpectedly familiar shapes. On my first date (which was my sixteenth birthday), my date and I ate dinner across the table from one another with a huge heart-shaped balloon-hat bridging the table, linking our heads. Embarassing, but fun. Two years ago, my roommates at Bread Loaf covered my bed with balloons for my birthday - balloons that miraculously lasted the rest of the summer, tangible reminders of friendship and love.

Becoming a walking balloon is somehow different. Still festive, I suppose, as my growing belly is a constant reminder that our family too is growing. But it's rather disconcerting to see a bit less of one's feet each day. My students have to carefully stowe their backpacks behind their chairs - no chance to trip over what I can't see, that way. As someone who's never really had to work at being slim, it's mostly my sense of self that is in flux. Not as a matter of vanity, really - I don't find my new, balloon shape hideous! It's just one's sense of self in space that must be reconsidered - the very sense that Gnarls Malott (just kidding!) is developing about this time, as he starts to find his cozy home a bit more snug.

Jess and I recently oohed and aahed through "In the Womb" (a show on the Discovery Channel), which explained that as the baby enters the third trimester, he begins to develop a sense of himself in space. Without sight, he starts to understand where he sits in relation to the walls of the placenta. Plus, about now his senses become linked to his brain, allowing him to become more aware of the world around him: hearing and feeling with me as I go through my day. So my sense of how much space I take up seems to grow as my son's does. It seems that part of the joys of motherhood is making space in the world for one's child, beginning with the balloon-like expansion of one's waist-line. This is one balloon that won't be floating anywhere!