A moment for Grindy

In a few months this blog will have two subjects. To prepare readers for the expanded coverage, we should give a moment here and there to the impending arrival.

I'm not sure I've mentioned it on the blog before, but Grindy is what Edith has dubbed the baby in utero. We were mystified for awhile, until she revealed that the source of the name is her misremembering of a line in The Seven Silly Eaters, in which Mrs. Peters "squeezed each lemon to its rind." We still don't know what making lemonade has to do with our new baby, unless it was Mrs. Peters' notable fecundity that inspired the association. But hey, the name is androgynous, it's edgy, and the baby's parents both love coffee--it works for us. We just hope Edith can unlearn it once her sibling puts in an appearance.

All evidence suggests that Grindy continues to do well in his/her private swimming pool. We heard the healthy heartbeat once again last week. I first noticed the baby tickling me while sitting in the library a couple of weeks ago, and while Tom and Edith have yet to feel the flutters, the baby is making its gymnastics ever more palpable and they should be able to detect something soon.

Devotee of birth stories that she is, Edith has taken to imagining what's going to happen when Grindy is born. When we talked through a possible scenario the other night, she announced that she would be coming to the hospital with us. "You can't leave me home alone," she reasoned, "because snakes or monsters could get me." So I agreed that if everything happened in a big rush in the middle of the night, as she was imagining, maybe we would wind up bringing her to the hospital but would perhaps call her aunt and uncle or some other friends to come meet her there, so she'd have company while waiting for the baby.

(An aside: Unless matters go completely contrary to plan, Edith will not be attending the actual birth of her sibling. I can only imagine the trauma for a preschooler who jumps when mama so much as stubs her toe. I recently watched the pro-midwifery documentary, The Business of Being Born. While sympathetic to some aspects of its portrayal of home births, I did not see anything appealing in the image of an older sibling being around while mama labored. It's not just the potential trauma for the older sibling; if Edith came up and started tapping on my elbow for attention right as my second child was emerging, as in one case in the film, I wouldn't be answerable for the consequences.)

When Edith wanted to play "Grindy is born" this weekend, she decided to by-pass parental involvement altogether. I was to be Grindy, she instructed, asleep in the crib. She then lay down on a makeshift bed on the floor, playing Edith. While I continued to sleep obediently, she got up, went into the living room, looked at the clock, and announced, "Oh my, it's time to be going." Then she ran back down the hall to me and called, "Wake up, Grindy! We've got to get to the hospital so you can be born." I followed her into the other bedroom, which she declared was the hospital, and lay down on the bed, at which point the maternal figure re-entered the picture: "Now you be Gretchen, and you give birth to Grindy. I'm Edith, and I'm going to go wait in the cafeteria until you call me to come meet my baby brother."

We don't actually know that this baby is a boy. But Tom and Edith are both convinced that it is and have taken to calling it by exclusively male terms. I would be delighted to have a son, but I'm a little indignant on behalf of a possible daughter that everyone should be denying her her rightful identity. We have the opportunity to bring actual medical evidence to bear on the question when we go in for a 20-week ultrasound next week. We may take advantage of the opportunity, or we may continue in a state of intuition and mystery. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile one thing is certain: Edith doesn't intend to be left out. When we were encouraging her to hurry out the door to daycare last Thursday so we could get to our appointment with the midwife, Edith asked what we were going to do at the appointment.

"Listen to the baby's heartbeat," I told her. "Make sure it's healthy."

"But don't do it ALL," she said. "You can't have the baby without me."

We reassured her that giving birth was not on the day's agenda.