where's the baby?

Another night of waking up choking on stomach acid at 1am. Not fun. I migrated to the recliner with a neck pillow and a blanket and managed to get a few hours of sleep, much to my delight. When I woke up I ventured to the couch for a full-on lay down and was quite pleased that my body seemed willing to let me. Whoo hoo! I slept on the couch until I heard Jason wake up this morning. I feel rested and I am grateful for that.

When I was unpleasantly wakened at 1am, it brought me out of a dream I was having. I was on a small stage with two other folks, performing in a casual jam session (which is funny, since I'm not musically inclined). Jason was in the small audience and the baby was on stage with me, in his bassinet. I looked over at the bassinet and realized it was empty. I thought, "where's the baby?" I thought he was in the bassinet. I wasn't panicked - but I was trying to recall where he was. I had a vague memory of giving birth to him recently (for all I know, we were performing our jam session in the hospital)... but he wasn't in the bassinet. I remember I touched my belly with both hands to see if maybe he was still there. I couldn't quite tell if he was or not. Heh. I tried to think hard about if I actually gave birth to him... and then I woke up.

When I got up to go sit in the recliner, I surmised that dream came from the "Mind Your Duck" game we played at the baby shower yesterday. We were each given a rubber duck and told we had to mind our ducks. If we left them unattended, another guest could snatch it up. The winner was the guest with the most ducks (Teresa rocks at this game!).

I did pretty well minding my duck, though during the games, I did forget the duck three(!) times - luckily everyone was engrossed in the games and no one took the duck from me. Heh. At one point I was at the buffet table, trying to one-handedly put food on my plate while holding the duck in the other. I almost blurted out, "it's hard to fix my plate ~and~ hold the duck." Luckily I saw the irony (over my swollen belly) of the complaint before I actually verbalized it. I later told Kim my near-complaint and she laughed with me. Soon, I'll get to learn how to do many, many things one-handedly while minding a baby. Heh!

The baby is still moving quite a bit and his movement are so much stronger and bigger than they were a month ago. When Jason helped me to a sit-up position on the couch this morning he asked, "when is that baby going to get here?" I told him of a middle-of-the-night thought I had: since we've had two recent "hurry up! The baby's coming moments," and now that we both feel "ready", we could invite him to come forth. We very intentionally invited our baby into our lives, and now we could invite him to come out and meet us. :) Jason read a story of how women in one African country give birth: when the time is near for the baby to be birthed, the mother will lean against a wall and tell her baby, "baby, come." Perhaps that'll be our mantra this week: baby, come.