Once long ago, a little kid named Bella and her mother sometimes experienced such incredible coincidental thought patterns that it could practically be described as telepathic.
I could be sitting at the kitchen table idly wondering if I should make spaghetti or pork chops for dinner and Bella would say, “I’d rather have spaghetti Mom,” responding to me as if I had spoken out loud. This kind of psychic connection happened time and time again – and I suspect it happens to other mothers and their children too. It is perhaps a natural extension of knowing somebody extremely well. I think it is a kind of relationship that can develop between very close friends, roommates, and husbands and wives.
Of course these days, anything I say to Bella is hotly contested. I can’t seem to make a single statement without her denying that I know anything about her at all. But I do like to reflect on the past when she and I were so much more in rhythm.
I think it’s happening again, but not between me and the baby, but Chad and the baby. I can actually feel a relationship developing between our unborn child and Chad.
First of all, the baby reacts (by moving- sometimes very suddenly) as soon as Chad touches me. It’s like the baby recognizes not only his voice, but his presence. Of course that might be the baby reacting to my reaction to Chad, but it feels like the baby is reacting to Chad.
Then the other night, Chad was having a dream and his body was twitching the way a dreaming body does. I was half awake as I often am these nights, and I could feel his dreaming hand lying heavy on my belly. Suddenly there was a jolt of feeling passing from Chad’s hand to the baby and back again through the wall of my belly. The baby was kicking and moving about in relation to Chad’s hand and movement. Very clearly I had the sensation that the baby and Chad were participating in the same dream and that I was merely the conduit. I wonder what that bodes for Chad’s relationship with his future child? I look forward to observing…