I Carry It in My Heart

The New York Times reported today on a study carried out by Dutch scientists on fetal microchimerism. In this phenomenon, cells from the fetus escape from the uterus and disperse throughout a mother's body. They have identified Y-chromosome cells in mothers decades after pregnancy with sons, and now believe that fetal cells can be present in a mother for the rest of her life. They can have varying effects on a mother's body, even becoming part of her organs' function. Studies of mice have shown fetal cells to become part of cardiac cells, even become beating heart cells.

The witty headline writer called it a "pregnancy souvenir."

I knew it.

“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)
I am never without it (anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) 
I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)” 
― E.E. Cummings