Dear Baby | 23 Weeks

Dear Baby,

We're halfway to meeting you and it's kind of blowing my mind. For weeks (okay, months) I couldn't really picture anything about you--I knew you were in there but you still felt so hypothetical, so unreal to me; this little bundle of cells, more alien than baby.

But then we saw your little face and nose on the ultrasound, the curve of your neck and skull and even your brain--I feel you moving every day and your dad can feel your kicks around 6PM when they're especially strong, and the other night we lay in bed talking about how you'd be a toddler before we knew it, and when you turn 15 or 16 will you even need to learn how to drive? Our neighborhood is right in the middle of Silicon Valley so every day we see self-driving cars being tested on the roads and I can't help but imagine you as a teenager, laughing at how much manual driving we used to have to do when you were a brand-new baby.

For as long as I can remember I've had one particular baby girl name picked out, and then we found out you were actually a girl and now we can't seem to name you. You're so real now, so human to me, that it makes you even more magical; more unreal. Naming an actual person like you feels like such a responsibility. Is that your name? I flip it over in my mind and wonder. Kick twice if that's your name. 

One thing you don't know about me yet is how much I'm obsessed with fall, when the weather turns cool and the leaves change color and it smells like campfires every morning. Every year around this time (sometimes even earlier--the 4th of July is my new limit) I find myself wishing the rest of our summer days away and counting down until September, October, November. You'll be here this November, though, and there's so much we still need to do, so much to prepare for, that I'm trying so hard not to wish these last few months away. But then I think about your tiny face and how much we love you already and it's almost impossible to not get caught in a daydream where we're both wrapped up in a blanket, you with a tiny hat on your head, me with some hot chocolate (or maybe a boozy hot apple cider...let's be realistic), soaking up our first fall and winter together.

I'll talk to you again before then. Are you getting enough hash browns in there? I'll keep 'em coming, just in case.

With love,

Megan (AKA your mom--so weird)