Pregnancy does a few things to a person. There are the obvious things, the physical symptoms: becoming rounder in at least three places, frequent urination, back pain. Two days away from entering what is known as the "third trimester," the final stages, a person that would sleep as long as she could is now up at 5:30 in the morning on a holiday listening to the furnace kick in and watching the Christmas tree lights in the living room. The only other time in my life I can remember waking up early (earlier than this) or staying up literally all through the night with ease is when I have had some intense earaches, back when I had a Q-tip addiction and a bad attitude. Pregnancy is not equated with sickness, so the only conclusion I can come to is that my personality is changing; that I, along with my abdomen, am adapting.

It's obvious that I'm completely clueless. I never really paid attention to anyone who was having a child. Now, I have entered into this club where glances between women are exchanged. Female students crowd me, and like me better for my round reproductiveness. Older women give me looks, looks that convey something like "just wait." And while I don't doubt Daniel's heart is growing alongside mine, there is something so private and so feminine about carrying around a bundle of cells that causes symptoms like heartburn and back pain, endlessly thinking about someone else, someone dependent on my ecosystem to survive.

I'm selfish and proud (and stupid) enough to believe that I will raise a child that is not a consumer-driven, exhausted and oblivious brat, and that I can teach my babe a thing or two about what it means to love others, yourself, and the world (alongside my lack of implementing these ideals). Daniel and I have begun to ready the baby room, and are constantly bumping up against the norms, embracing them, then shoving them away simultaneously. Do we need a crib? Does it have to be new (safety standards)? Are we going for looks or efficiency? Today we will go pick up a scratched up, but beautiful $50 rocking chair alternative to the $250 "necessity" at Toys R Us, the first piece of furniature for the room, which I hope helps us to keep our baby-room visions ethical.

Another surprising venue is that people are offended that we do not know the sex of our child. How will you be prepared? they ask, as though pink or blue accents will have any affect on her or his well being. How freeing would be to be a child in those stages where being identified as male or female is whimsical? While gender identity is a slippery topic, what I will say is that regardless of the physical makeup I plan to foster both gentleness and adventure; on the same leg, I must state how easy it is to buy clothes of all kinds for little girls, both princess and tomboy, but that little boys are quite rigidly stuck in their blues and greys that can't be offset with a bow in the hair or pink socks that gives people that exhalation of "gender identifiable."

I remember in my first semester of teaching, a fellow teacher of mine, red-faced and ashamed, told me that when her daughter was just 6 months old or so, she had gone camping and canoeing up north, as though this was too dangerous and reckless for any sane or good parent to do. I disagree. Reckless parenting, to me, is continuing in some kind of party-drunken stupor, passing the baby around a fire while willingly numbing and dumbing down (because our North American way of life is as such that we need to rely on substances to help us "have a good time," and because "having a kid won't rid me of my youth" seems to equate with a devotion to idiocy), avoiding the outdoors because of the dangers (and unwillingness of the parent to go out with the child), and failure to teach the child to read vigorously and spend time by his or herself to develop the imagination.

While I rant on about things like cloth diapering and no-gift birthday parties that I plan on instilling, I can feel the barrage of norm-inducing mothers who shake their heads, hearing again that phrase: "just wait" -- but I am proud of my ideals and criticisms of the modern mother, (while at the same time standing with one foot devoted to stay-at-home values that so many "feminists," who see feminism as simply deleting those stereotypical female qualities from the earth because somehow male qualities surpass them, scowl at -- a topic for another day), and I also see close people around me striving and succeeding in breaking out of the cycle to values that are much more simple and basic.

In the end, what I'm trying to say, is that carrying this developing human in my uterus makes me feel very human, very rooted, and a whole lot more responsible.

She or he twitches in reply.