Dancing, adorably, in the womb

...terms like "first trimester," "viability," Fred paused a moment, drew in his Jesus looks to be about eighteen months and "fetal tissue" obscure the deep and breath...

...What arrests the viewer is the R three days into a new preg- love...

...Others, perhaps, are not so fortuled...

...Yet my dancportionally enormous head was bob- teenth century, it is titled Madonna and ing baby has reminded me that clinical bing about...

...Its toes were wiggling, small miracle of a painting...

...Even if I were to suffer a miscar- animation, the joy of this baby...

...Commonweal 3 1 May 19, 2000...

...dancing of my child within...

...Look at that baby moving," and old, a beautiful blond toddler sitting in awesome truth of a human life in the he held up his thumb...

...I pray for a healthy baby and pragmatism, experience, or the mere as few varicose veins as God can bear passage of time...

...At I pressing in its own miniature way the nine weeks and three days, nothing is "Oh, Fred...

...He re- of the psalmist, "fearfully and wonderturned to his work, remarking, "No mat- fully made...

...THE LAST WORD DANCING, ADORABLY, IN THE WOMB Elizabeth Kirkland Cahill ecently I had an obstetrical fore you trust it...

...Then Fred I have not experienced...

...The love I have for these three, enlarged I am lucky: despite occasional qualms I am by now fairly experienced at read- and deepened over eight years as a about my ability to manage four chiling these things myself, and right away mother, has enabled me to extend my- dren, I am able, and willing, to answer I saw the baby's tiny heart beating, ea- self to this child I barely know in a way the call to love a child who is yet ungerly and impossibly fast...

...And it was...

...Child, with Saints Lawrence and Julian...

...I had been through this before, Part of my delight sprang from fore- Were it not for Mary's loving restraint, and expected no surprises...

...There is no real and I saw something else: "Oh look, the In the Frick Collection in New York conflict about offering up the "yes" to baby's doing the mambo," Fred chuck- City, tucked away in a side room, is a God...

...on his right foot caught midwiggle...

...There will be tests for chromososmall can move like that...

...tributor, is co-author with Joseph Papp of until the first twelve weeks are over be- Shakespeare Alive...

...born but, oh, so alive...

...Rendered nate, and truly find a pregnancy diffiits body jiggling around, and its pro- by Gentile da Fabriano in the early fif- cult, or impossible, to bear...

...ter how many ultrasounds I do, I'm We are not entirely out of the woods amazed every time that something so yet...

...We've actualy done it- presence of the divine...

...It was not a his eyes alight, his cheeks rosy, the toes the "viability," as the doctor said, of the matter of choice...

...I would past pregnancies, plenty of anxieties, have predicted that by now my capaci- aches, and pains between now and my ty for wonder would be diminished by due date...

...And to think it's the lap of a regally robed Mary, who making, a life that is, in the poetic words about the size of my thumbnail...

...baby wiggles, the toddler's happy hugs, theologian, but it seems to me that the After the ultrasound technician, a tall, the joyous flips, kicks, and cartwheels of joy animating the child Jesus is the same soft-spoken man named Fred, had es- the preschooler, soccer player, and gym- divinely granted joy that propels the tablished the presence of only one fetus, nast who inhabit my household today...

...guaranteed, and, up until the ultra- we've brought a new human being sound, I had chanted the usual self-pro- into the world...

...Instead, I find the op- to give me...

...There was something know that I shall carry forever within special about this ultrasound and the me the image of the dancing baby, wigminuscule human being I saw in fuzzy gling, jiggling, dancing for joy, exblack and white, dancing for joy...

...But whatever happens, I posite to be true...

...He leans nancy...

...fetus...

...How can we make Elizabeth Kirkland Cahill, a frequent contective mantra of the early days: "Wait it up to him...

...Indeed, with knowledge: the exuberant movement of he would surely catapult into Julian's three other children at home, my main this tiny creature prefigured, I well knew, arms...

...But when I saw that cocks her head affectionately toward ultrasound, nine weeks and baby dancing, I fell irredeemably in her son...

...he brought it into focus and zoomed in...

...It is an uncommonly touching picworry (admittedly far-fetched) was that the squirming smiles of an infant, the ture of a baby reveling in life...

...mal abnormalities, and, to judge from This is my fourth pregnancy...

...I am no I might be carrying twins...

...Its purpose was rou- riage the next day, I simply had to love down toward the supplicating Julian, tine, merely to confirm the due date and it from that moment on...