Bébé apparently likes Beethoven

Recently I experienced a too-rare simple pleasure I've always especially enjoyed. On a magical night when LP was in bed, M was working on the computer, I wasn't too tired and didn't have anything else to do, I flipped the TV channels and immediately came across this good, quirky, thought-provoking movie that was just starting, without commercial breaks.

It was La face cachée de la lune (The Far side of the Moon), a 2003 Québécois flick by Robert Lepage (it was even Canada's Foreign language Oscar nomination that year). Lepage never disappoints, and I love the very local yet very universal tone he always has, his eclectic and countless references, the intelligence of his work, the bittersweet humor. He always chooses the same actors, explores the same themes (difficult brotherly relationships, homosexuality, how childhood influences our present, etc.) yet manages to never make the same movie/play. This one involves a bit of a loser, loner 40-something student whose doctoral thesis in on "how narcissism influenced the exploration of space". And the point of this post is not to tell you the entire plot, but one of his lines is still making my smile and somewhat haunting me since then: "Mankind is so narcissistic, so obsessed with itself and so eager to find mirrors, that it even created God according to its own image."

While I was lying down and watching, bébé was being especially active, as it often is at night right before I go to sleep. That same day, I could definitely feel a switch in its movements, which were suddenly higher and all over the place, as if it had significantly grown overnight (probably in fact just switched positions). Nearly the entire score of the movie is from Beethoven, first because there's a goldfish character named that, but also I think because Lepage could not have found more appropriate music to accompany his movie's atmosphere: very present, beautiful and sad, just a little dark, but with hopeful and even funny moments.

And right when an especially poignant no-dialogue, music-only moment of the movie begun, bébé just started having a life of its own, kicking, twisting, wiggling like mad. I guess it could have been an unrelated coincidence, but it then went on for several minutes -during the whole scene, and then stopped immediately after the music did. I called M to come see this: my belly was popping in every direction, not alien-like recognizable body parts or the like, but just little quick-disappearing bumps. I even tried playing what used to be my favorite game with LP (albeit one that started much later): gently poking my stomach where I could feel its body, trying to elicit a response. Bébé played along! Each time after I did, it kicked back at the same place, immediately, strongly and very deliberately. Like 15 times.

I realized that this was my moment, the one when I could suddenly feel all this maternal love pouring out in waves towards this very small, fragile little thing still inhabiting my own body. I had felt it at the 13-week scan for LP, and I remember how utterly amazed M and I were while looking at the screen at this real baby moving inside of me. I expected it to happen again this time, but even though I was happy and teary, it just wasn't the same, probably because I knew what to expect. And I guess that's the greatest lesson: second pregnancies are different, and perhaps less magical in this way. But your attachment, your excitement, your surprise at the funny differences, are still just as real.