peaceful piano in through the looking glass.

Toward the end of my pregnancy, I slept almost exclusively on the couch. Because every time I laid down in our bed, I was consumed by increasingly intense anxiety, mostly centered around the fear that our baby would die before he was born. Somehow the couch felt a little less like a place that I needed to escape.

So I would lay on my left side, facing the back of the couch with my head propped up on one of our decorative pillows. At some point, David discovered a playlist on our streaming service (called “Peaceful Piano”) and started playing it to help lull me to sleep. Often I would wake in the middle of the night to its sounds, and only then would I finally be able to climb into our bed.

I listen to that playlist now and I recall the ache of potential, of anticipation, but mostly of debilitating fear.

It plays as he sleeps in my arms. And I sense the difference, then and now, acutely. I am at peace.