The Baby in Kate’s Belly

About a month ago I was at a prenatal yoga class and we were doing the whole go-around-the-room-and-say-how-prego-you-are routine. It’s the kind of sharing with strangers that threw me for a loop at my first prenatal yoga class two-and-a-half years ago. It was weird enough to be in a room with 20 other pregnant women. And as a late bloomer to marriage and motherhood, it was even weirder that I had a legitimate reason to be part of the kind of pack I’d never been part of.

On top of that, the way everyone had a turn to talk in class was totally unexpected. Here I was coming to get some exercise, and suddenly this super personal thing–my pregnancy–turned into a slumber party-style sharing session.

Of course, it took me all of 4 minutes to drink the Kool-Aid and swap stories about late-night hip aches and perpetual peeing.

So here I was, back in the saddle at prenatal yoga for this pregnancy, and feeling smugly experienced as all these other women talked with wonder and amazement about their first times. Everyone else seemed to know down to the hour how pregnant they were–”On Sunday I’ll be fifteen-and-a-half weeks” they’d report smiling proudly–while I tried to summon up a reasonable approximation for how far along I was. (And spent the rest of the time comparing my belly-girth to still-slim first-timers who were even further along than me.)

When my turn was up I said it was my second pregnancy, and mentioned that my 2-year old also claims to have a baby in her belly. This resulted in some polite chuckling, and caused the only other second-time mom to exclaim from across the room, “That is so funny! My son says the same thing!”

Her son? Now that’s just weird.

Tonight Mark came home from work and was playing on the carpet with Kate in the way that’s so damn sweet you just bless your stars for your awesome little family. (I also get a strong hit of this feeling when Mark bathes Kate at night and I eavesdrop on their crazy-cute conversations. Some day I’ll tape them so we can play them back when she’s in the habit of stumbling home hours after her curfew and we need something to convince us to not put her up for a late-stage adoption.)

So Mark and Kate, playing on the carpet… After a few sessions of wrestling alternating with hugging, Kate pulled up her shirt and started to tell Mark about the baby in her belly. When he asked if it was a boy or a girl, she said matter-of-factly “Boy.” When asked his name, she said a quick “Ummm” in the new way she does, then said, “Rotto!”

This nearly caused Mark to fall through the floorboards with glee. “What’s that? What’s your baby’s name?” And again, with more confidence: “Rotto!”

“Rotto? The baby in your belly’s name is Rotto?” Mark was nearly as delighted by this name as he was when I came up with Wigwam Boy on the drive to our friend’s lake house in Minnesota. (I know. Isn’t Wigwam Boy a great name?!)

Thus far, Kate has only named one other thing. One of her small plastic baby dolls she calls Little Peanut, which, like everything she does, we find extremely adorable. And now Rotto. Well, it’s unlikely there’ll be a lot of other Rottos in his class at school.

I wonder what the son of that woman from yoga class named his baby.