The day I cried

It may have been the hormones, just a pregnant day of feeling a little more weepy and sensitive, but I couldn't chalk it all up to the complex physiology of being pregnant. It was genuine and I still get teary when I think upon it.

When I was in the midst of balling, I told my husband I wasn't sure why I was getting so emotional about it. I was 20 some weeks along and I'd been thinking about how time was warping in speed. Like one of those amusement park rides that starts slow and then gains momentum until you're whirling in circles and everything is a blur. For some reason the second half of my pregnancy was going much faster than the first and while it was exciting, it also scared me.

I love having her inside me, with me everywhere I go. I love talking to her. I love that when I go to work, she tags along. At the end of the day, I reassure her, yes it's finally time to go home and Daddy will give her a kiss on my belly.

I also feel as though I can protect her quite well from this world. Not perfectly, but she feels safer in my womb. While I can't always protect her from the life stress that I encounter, I can protect her from people and many dangers in the world. I've gotten several reassurances from my doctor (with my incessant worrying) that the uterus is designed to be strong and protecting. She is safe.

And so I cried when it really dawned on me that this will change. That this time is the most I will ever be able to protect her. That her going with me everywhere I go will change. Feeling her kicks and rolls will change. That this time will come to an end. I'm going to miss that, and even as I write this several weeks later, I get a knotty lump in my throat.  I realize that it will be replaced by new joys and stages with her, which I'm eager to experience. But in that moment I told my husband, I'm going to miss having her safe and secure in my belly, in tune with me.

Fast forward to 40 weeks:

I'm due today and I am a flurried mix of emotions.

You feel like a roly poly baby now. You snuggle up from one side of my belly to the other. You do little stretches that I've grown accustomed to. Your hiccups are much stronger now, and I swear I can feel little feathery hands and fingers waving around. Sometimes you're a very strong baby, testing the limits of the uterus and it looks like you're trying to break out. Maybe you are all ready and confident for this world!

 I am excited to finally meet you! To learn your quirks and personality. To look into your eyes. I will get to interact with you in so many new ways! I'm anxious that the labor will go well and my body will be able to do something it's never done before. I'm scared for your safety. I'm nervous about parenting. I'm sad that the pregnancy is ending. I feel all of these emotions at once, which gets a bit confusing!

 I've gotten so used to you being inside me for nine months, it's as if I don't remember any differently- as if you've always been there. I hadn't anticipated this difficulty of letting go of the pregnancy, of you growing up, although we don't usually think of birth in that way. It's a big change though. For almost a year you've been connected to my body. You've been my buddy, co-experiencing my life, my ups and downs, and all the places I've gone. I could write a detailed autobiography or talk for hours with a therapist, but I think you have come the closest to an insider view of my actual experience of life. And I have become more aware of your experience or the closest that a human can of what life might be like in the womb. You made me more aware of life before birth.

Recently I saw all the pictures that the proud and emotional parents posted on Facebook of their kids' first day of school, and I realized that every stage from here on out will be a "letting go". An ending, intertwined with a new beginning. I've often had a hard time with endings, but this one is particularly hard. I've read and written about it before- how life is not static despite how much we want to cling and freeze it. Life is Motion and constant Transition, and therefore it's that much more important to actually be present in the moment. Accepting the Flow of Life.

So I sit still with you, close my eyes, and focus on your movements. I savor them. I focus my thoughts solely on you, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

We will get through this labor and delivery together. I will face my fears of the unknown and I will do this for you. We will transition to the next stage that life has to offer the two of us, and I will be overjoyed to see you develop relationships with your dad and others. You will still be my little buddy, just in a different way. And I will always be your mother, the one who carried, nourished and bonded with you before you entered this world.

*Photo credits to Angela Lynn Photography

To my unborn daughter

I love her innocence. Her kicks that are simply kicks, with no other purpose or motivation. She is not plagued by a mind yet with worries or stress or fear of judgment. She purely is. She may be aware. She tastes amniotic fluid. She experiences hiccups, but does not resist or get upset by having her third round of hiccups in a day. She floats. She experiments by touching her face and the cord. She explores her small environment. She is content. Or at least I hope and imagine she is content. She does not worry whether she will grow correctly. She just grows. She is dependent upon me wholly and trusts me, although she may not even be aware of this. She doesn't stress about whether I will eat enough or refrain from toxic substances.

 Her life form is entirely dependent upon my sustenance and the perpetual motion of Life Force, that which gives her life. The invisible. God. Life energy. Creation. And yet she is not, because her soul IS her and her soul is not dependent upon me or any earthly force. However, the development of her body, which she needs to experience a life on this earth, is to a certain extent dependent upon her mother, me.

There is so much I can learn from her. Perhaps I should mimic her way of life. Join her in simply being. Be content. Be free of worries. Experience the present. Or at the very least I can enjoy her Way. It gives me peace knowing a being such as this resides in me and is a part of me. I treasure her presence, having her with me everywhere I go.

I know this is temporary, an experience gift from God, and so I take the time to adore the moment. To sit in silence with my hand on my belly and tune into her ever changing and growing movements. To focus solely on her and this experience of her within me. To send her love and give her praise and encouragement, not that she needs it but because I love her. And sustaining her to the best of my ability physically and mentally.

I dream about my future relationship with her, getting to know everything about this soul who has chosen me to be her mother, and I savor this time with her even more. That one day  when she is a grown woman, I can look at her and fondly remember when my bond was just budding for her. I have several close relationships with other souls on earth and those who have passed away, but I was not aware until now of yet another who is coming to earth to be my daughter. I am eager and excited to meet a soul mate this way.

Our Baby

I love to create with words. It's natural and second nature to me. As humans we are all creators. You don't have to be artistic to be a co-creator with God. We are created in his/her image and there's no doubt God is the ultimate creator.

We create every day without realizing it. The thoughts and interpretations we spin on how we view events. The words we choose to articulate ourselves to another. We are dynamic innovative creatures. We create mud castles at the beach and new theories in physics. We create new ways of tackling a relationship problem and new ways of reaching a troubled child. To survive we must create.

My body creates new cells to heal a wound. I don't know how, it's mystifying. It doesn't involve any conscious thinking. It just happens. I repeatedly create another heart beat so that I can continue my life. I don't over think it. I don't think about it at all. Unconsciously my body and soul does this in joint effort.

This is also happening in my womb. I don't think through the steps. But somehow through the unconscious effort of  intertwined DNA, my incubating body, this new soul, God, and spirituality, a human is being created inside of me.

I realize I'm not the first pregnant woman and I don't plan to act like it. However, my experience is unique and since I love to create with words, it's how I will share some of my evolving thoughts as I go through my first pregnancy. I've also started a pregnancy journal, written to our baby.

I never fully understood this idea of being a co-creator with God until now. I feel a profound gratitude that God allows my husband and I to have such an intimate contribution to God's creation. While I still view God as the creator of the soul and spirit that will inhabit this person, I am awed and honored to have such a role (and responsibility) in creating this baby's body. And then of course in guiding this little person through life. I am also awed by the idea of this person being a combination of my husband and myself. While I've always known this logically, I've never experienced it. My husband put it well. He said this baby is a culmination of not just our physiology, but of our 11 year relationship. The sweat and tears and love and joys we've put into this ever evolving imperfect but beautiful and genuine relationship.

The week that the heart started beating, I longed to know exactly when that very first beat began. I was struck with how this commencing heart would beat years beyond my own, as if it gave me glimpse into those unknown decades that my own eyes will never see.

We've decided to not tell anyone until I'm further along. My husband and I are private people and we want to keep some of this process special and private for us. As I write this, I'm almost 7 weeks and I enjoy having this little secret. I go to the store and none of the strangers know. I go to work, I see people I know, and no one knows about this tiny but growing secret. Half an inch long, about the size of a blueberry and yet so many parts are actively forming within this tiny being, even the lens of the eyes! How is this possible? I'm not even trying or consciously doing anything!

This is another eye-opening thing for me. My natural tendency, especially when I'm stressed is to over think and worry. After doing this for 32 years, I've somehow convinced myself that this works (although it really doesn't) and so I keep doing it. For some reason I think if I use my mind hard enough, I will come up with the perfect solution and everything will work out. When I was sitting in silence and meditating today with others, I became more aware of how much I do this, and how ineffective it is. And much like how my heart beats without conscious demand, this baby is plunging right along, with the help of its DNA, my body, life energy, and God. Without me having to use my mind. At all.

Do i still worry? Of course. My worry has ramped up the last few weeks.  Google searches are a pregnant woman's worst enemy. I worry about whether I'm doing the right things, if the baby is okay, if anything is wrong. My mind is trying to do its half-crazed thing, but I'm certain it's not helping. Trusting the unconscious, the unseen, the unknown, is hard for a person like me. I've revered my thinking mind like the western world reveres its scientists. But the mind and the visible has its limitations.

Somehow this little person is still growing by means of these other forces. I'm in awe of this experience and know that this human is not just coming as a child for me to guide, but that this soul is coming to have a relationship with my husband and I, and has many things to teach the two of us.

A short story about this Violet:

I spent well over a year trying to get this violet to re-bloom. I re-potted it several months ago and still nothing happened. I'd almost given up. Soon after I found out I was pregnant, this single bloom appeared and it brought me joy! 

Changing Relationships

I'm not the same person I was ten years ago. My core self is the same, but many of the outward aspects are different such as my likes and dislikes, how I spend my time, what I think about, how I relate to others, how I handle stress, and what I wear. I once read that our bodies are physiologically different due to the death and regeneration of cells. Neuronal pathways change based on changes in behaviors and thought patterns.

Relationships change in much the same way. This didn't dawn on me until about ten years into my relationship with my husband. Not only is he different and I'm different but our relationship is much different than it was when we were 21, 25, or even a few years ago. It's in a constant state of motion, dynamic and changing. Our communication is different. How we spend our time together. The things we talk about. How we argue, how we resolve conflict. The essence of it, which is impossible to describe within the limitations of human language, is different. Which...if he's a different person, and so am I, then it makes sense that our relationship would also be different. It's the most apparent with my significant other since we're a huge part of each other's lives, but you'll see traces of it in other relationships too, with family, friends, and children. Your environment and life stages also affect your relationships. The interplay of those two things are much different now then when I first started dating my husband.

Before I understood this, I worried that something was wrong or it might mean the end of a relationship. Change usually feels icky and uncomfortable, especially if I don't understand it or don't have control over it. But if I can at least acknowledge the change and accept its existence (accept does not mean liking it), it usually helps. If you need to  mourn the parts that are no longer there, then do that. There are some aspects of our 21-year-old relationship that I miss. Even simple things like staying up until 4 am and going to Steak and Shake for an early breakfast was practical when I was in college and had evening classes, but now we work day jobs with a regular routine. I miss that and now my husband and I joke when we're still out (but yawning) at midnight.

"Losing" those things makes room for uncovering the new aspects of your relationship. We developed a new "tradition" of rotating restaurants we go to for brunch on some weekends. The key is adapting and accepting. This applies to deeper seated aspects of the relationship also. Some parts are "lost", but new parts are shiny and ready for you to discover.

How might this topic affect those who are engaged and those considering divorce? Or those going through a rough patch? I'm neither supporting or discouraging marriage or divorce. Would it give relief or might it scare those who are engaged? Would it affirm those in the process of divorce or make them second guess their decision?

Can you think of any relationships that are exactly the same as they were ten years ago? I know I can't.