My Life: It Started One Day in the Womb

Can you picture life as a fetus?

You're in a fluid filled chamber. You cannot move very well. You can hear sounds. Gurgling perhaps. A strong thumping noise accompanied by a gurgle. The thumping noise does not always remain the same beat, but changes.

With the changes, comes pressure. Sometimes, the beating comes with movement. Almost like being on a bad ride at the carnival. Jiggling, sometimes a gentle forward motion.

You can picture what it feels like to do the Macarena. Can you even picture what it would feel like if you were inside someone when they were doing it.

First, there'd be the rocking sideways, almost a twitch. Then, there'd be that bump next to your left ear. Then, the bump next to your right ear. Then, the feeling of going up in the air with a twist and a sharp downward and fast stop.

Almost enough to make one go 'oooof'.

I do not remember much about being in the womb. I heard a story once, about a man who sang songs to his wife's abdomen while she was pregnant.

Apparently, as the story goes, the boy was born and was perhaps four years old when the man, the father told the boy that he had played guitar and sang to him when he wasn't born yet. The boy looked at him, and said 'That was you?'

It's really something to think about, isn't it?

Life was simpler then. It was warm. It was safe. There was no lawn to mow. There was nothing to do. Nothing to do but wait. Wait and think. Think and grow.

I suppose I did not notice that my space was ever decreasing, with every day, it became harder and harder to move around. It was almost as if the walls were coming closer. Good thing I was not claustrophobic.

Then. There was a period of rocking, almost a pendulum movement. Apparently my mother walked to the hospital. Was she walking fast? I don't know. She claimed that she had a bad cramp and my father was not home, so she walked the seven blocks to the hospital and checked in.

My older sister knows nothing of this happening since she was fifteen and in school and wasn't aware.

I don't remember much about my birth. I know that I had to squeeze through a small tunnel and I thought I was not going to get through it. There were people to help me out at the other end of the tunnel when I got to the other side.

How they knew I was in need of their help is beyond me, but they helped me out. I must have been cold and wet and angry, but at some point, someone was holding me and I once again heard the familiar thump, thump thumping noise.

I fell asleep. The ordeal had been exhausting, this birth.