40 weeks pregnant stream of consciousness
I’ve been writing this all week to center my head. I don’t imagine anyone will read it, but I just need it to exist somewhere in this planet.
Any minute now my life will change forever, and short of a death, I don’t think there will ever be as significant of a moment in the rest of my life. Thinking about all other significant moments in my life — meeting my husband and cooking him eggs at 2am, moving to LA without knowing a soul, cooking for the first time ever as a young child — they were all significant only after the fact. What an immense privilege it is to be aware and present for the greatest moment of your life. YET, the only emotion I can come up with is frustration and fear. So this is me publicly splashing water in my face to wake my ass up. Feel what you gotta feel girl, but don’t blink or you’ll miss this moment.
Pain is wild. It’s always worse now than it was before. I got through yesterday but today I cannot with this back pain. And then some how it’s tomorrow and we did. I hate your hiccups, baby. I cannot think of anything else but my whole body shaking against my will. And then poof they stop and I didn’t even notice. Are you scared when you hiccup? Why did it start? I hope you think it’s silly and funny and that you don’t even know what fear is yet. I’m sorry I hated you for even a moment. Though I suspect it won’t be the last. For the last several weeks I literally could not stand up or walk for more than 5 minutes without back breaking pain, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I might not remember this part at all one day.
No one can say the right thing to me; you couldn’t possibly get it, get what I’m going through. But everyone that says something to me makes me rush with an excitement to be alive, living this pregnancy. From a distant friend over Instagram, to stranger on the street, to a mom friend I admire so much. Hearing from you is one of the coolest parts of being a woman. My husband’s affirmation “you are doing great” has been his mantra for every day of 40 weeks, and what makes me smile and breathe deepest are all the words in between these four words. The softness in his eyes, the deep truth in his voice, the way he reaches to touch me at the same time he says it. I can’t believe we are doing this, that I GET to do this with you.
Now I’m crying. How is love this intense, and about to get even deeper?
I want so badly for the pregnancy to be over and I want my baby in my arms. But I will miss all of this experience. When else do you lose and gain an entire world at the same time? Every single day that I see my reflection in the mirror I can’t believe I am looking at myself. I suspect that pregnancy is something you never get used to, and wonder what my second will be like. But I am certain it won’t be like this first experience of constant shock, doubt, imposter syndrome and gratitude.
And I haven’t even brought up COVID-19 yet. 90% of this pregnancy was spend in a pandemic and I hardly even noticed. Sure it added to isolation and fear, but it seems as though those feelings are quite synonymous with a first time pregnancy. I don’t even want to make this a story about corona virus. I just want to read this again one day and feel like I have captured this chapter of my life in motion.
I’m having a few light contractions now, and for the third straight night, so I am hurrying to post so that I can keep this reflection in the state of extreme vulnerability. The last two nights were exciting, terrifying, disappointing and relieving all at the same time. All I can think is what will it REALLY feel like? I am about to find out something that only a woman giving birth will ever know — there is no comparison, there is no way to describe it to someone else. But my brain is spinning with trying to predict what it will feel like to have a full contraction, to be assigned a hospital room, to have my legs pulled back to my head (really random part to think about I know). And the most epic feeling of all — what is it like to touch my child for the first time ever. What it feels like to say ‘my child’ and actually believe it.
Thank you universe for putting me here, catch ya on the other side.
XOXO,
Mom
