The last time that I had heard this sound was when my own womb sounds were broadcast into the room by the fetal monitor on her birth day. It had been a sound that I had grown to know intimately over the ten weeks preceding her birth since, once I had started insulin injections to manage my gestational diabetes, I had to go to the hospital each Thursday to monitor her in a non-stress test.
I remember the nurses always asking me if I wanted them to turn down the monitor with its constant whir of the heart that was beating within me but that was not my own. My answer was always the same. "No thank you...I love to listen to her heart beating..." They always offered me the remote control to the little TV in the monitoring room and I always declined, instead asking them to turn out the lights so I could lay there and concentrate on the woosh-woosh-woosh of my Little Being. Every Thursday for ten weeks this was my ritual. Sometimes I'd watch the lines dance on the monitor screen and wonder what she was up to in there. But usually, I'd close my eyes and just listen.
Libby Jo in July 2009
Tonight, I made the connection that while I was doing that on the outside, once a week for an hour or so, my little one was doing that 24/7 for nine-plus months. And tonight, when I hit that button on her sound machine, it flipped the switch in her memory of her time there, not so long ago that it had been forgotten. It was amazing to see it flash across her face in the glimmer of her sleepy eyes as they became heavier with the comfort of being swaddled and rocked to sleep. It was shown just before the sweetest smile that breaks across her lips as she falls to sleep. I love to see that little "I'm off to la-la-land" smile. Sixteen weeks in the world isn't very long when compared to the 39 weeks and three days she spent in utero. So tonight, she sleeps to the comforting sounds of the womb. The ocean can wait until tomorrow.
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