As the bump grows...

Last night I placed my hand on my belly. I could feel the pulse of my own fingers and I imaged that it was the pulse of the baby. The rhythmic beat of the blood flowing into my hand making a pulse was the same blood that is flowing from me to the baby. A hypnotic trance took over and slowly it drew my eyes to sleep.

I find comfort in placing my hand on my stomach, a natural extension of my arm. It no longer falls at my side but to the center of our universe right now, my belly. Hubby's hands no longer reach around me but seem to just migrate straight for the bump.

I thought I knew what romance and intimacy was before this experience but there have been so many moments that prove that romance isn't a fine dinner or flowers and intimacy isn't just sweet pillow talk.

True intimacy in it's new form in my life is when hubby prepped the needle in a foreign country because I couldn't convert the math. Intimacy is raising my shirt and exposing a bruised belly and hubby cleaning a spot for a new injection. True intimacy is an ER room where the doctor tells you that a test you need would damage the pregnancy and my hubby leaning into my ear and says he picks my safety above all else. And romance is when in the end you don't have to make a choice.

Romance is in a new form of kiss. A kiss goodnight is not only for me but for the baby. And the first time hubby kissed my belly was the most romantic moment of them all. And in this journey we both would trade a fine dinner and flowers for a monitor in a doctors office to watch the baby dance on it's screen.

As the months move along I know that things will continue to change and that things that seems concrete to me will soon have more flexibility. Everything seems to be changing but changing in a way that is more beautiful and wonderful then I could ever imagined.