I just sent this video to all the past, present and future mothers on my list. It is an astonishingly high resolution video of a 20-week old fetus. She or he is wiggling around inside his/her mother’s body: Just watching it brought back, with visceral clarity, what it was like to have another, lively human being butting that round head against my diaphragm, or elbowing me in the ribs!
I included a note to my future daughter-in-law: My boy Peter was up to these rock-n-roll shenanigans 24/7 for the whole of his allotted forty-two weeks inside, though I think he might have had a cow bell and maybe some maracas in there too.
He was having such a good time in utero that he resented being born, and let his feelings on this score be known all over the hospital. Having discovered the joy of making very loud sounds with his mouth and lungs, he seemed to decide that extra-uterine existence wasn’t all that bad after all. Especially when he discovered that meals were part of the deal.
So he ate and shrieked and grew, and my Peter…well, your Peter now…has been entertaining us all for nearly thirty years.
Bless you!