Five weeks. That’s what’s left; five weeks. In five weeks our son is due. In five weeks, I'll become a Mother and we'll become a family. That’s an awfully short amount of time when you consider that pretty soon a human being will come into this world relying on us for its very survival.
Five weeks.
I thought that when I became pregnant, I would be here more often. I thought that I would find myself writing far more frequently about the experience of carrying a child and the anticipation of becoming a parent. Instead, I found myself simply enjoying the various stages of being pregnant far more than wanting to document it. We haven’t really taken too many pictures and I’ve only posted a handful of blogs about it but that being said, we have taken time every single night for the past eight months to “spend” with our son…to consciously pay attention to his growth, his movements, his existence that is our blessing.
Looking back though, the one thing that I thought I would be forced to address more during this time was the physical changes that come with being pregnant. I’m quite certain that all women go into pregnancy knowing that their bodies will change…but I went into pregnancy anticipating that I would have a lot of difficulty coping with that change. Even though it has improved significantly over the past number of years, my relationship with my body hasn’t always been as healthy as it could be. On many occasions, I have felt betrayed by my body for reasons that have been completely illogical and for reasons that stem farther back than I care to remember. But being pregnant has been far less of a psychological struggle than I thought it would be…and I’m extremely grateful for that. Somehow, in the midst of the past eight months, I have been in a constant state of being able to remind myself just how much of a miracle creating a life really is and so far, my body has done an incredible job of making that happen.
Don’t get me wrong, I still have my anxieties about what my body will be like once our son comes into the world; how it will recover, how it will look (not just to me but also to my husband), how I will adjust “post-baby” and a plethora of other things that run wildly amok in the place that I laughingly call my mind! Those thoughts are still there and they still choose to make themselves at home but somehow, I find myself better able to regain my perspective and sense of center. And it usually happens when our little man moves around and reminds me, yet again, that my body isn’t just carrying another life right now…it’s creating another life; a life that will soon go beyond just him and I, a life that will intrinsically be intertwined in our own and most certainly, a life that will forever matter far more to me than the number of inches affiliated with my waist.
So, what does this mean for you dear readers? Well, I may need to you to remind me of this blog post three months from now in the event that I come back here complaining about my abs that don’t quite look the same!!! Remind me that there was a time when my little boy’s hiccups made me appreciate what my body could do instead of what it looked like.
Already, he's given me the greatest gift of all...and he's not even here yet...
