Mothers’ Day Musings
Me marveling that I still have 7 weeks for this baby boy to grow!
Hey there. It’s been a hot minute.
I’d love to have a long update of all the things I’ve accomplished since I last shared anything here — books I’ve read, photography projects I’ve completed, crafts I’ve created. Turns out, that was not to be.
When I hit the second trimester and stopped throwing up four days a week, I had all these ideas for things I would do to pass the time. Turns out I spent most of the winter napping. And when I wasn’t napping, I was trying to feel Baby J kick — at least from 18 weeks onward. You can see evidence of this in the lack of books I’ve read on my Instagram 2023 books highlight and in the empty watercolor sketchbooks and scrapbooks I’d meant to fill. My photo library has major weeks between imports. This neglected blog is alone enough to indicate that my focus has been decidedly elsewhere. In short, as I realized the other day, my main hobby has become feeling my baby move. And now it’s Mothers’ Day and Baby J is due to make his appearance in 7 weeks. Or, you know, whenever he fancies, since babies really don’t care about following our schedules.
On one level I’m a bit disappointed in myself, missing the energy that I once had for going off adventuring and spending evenings with my watercolors. And yet, I’m also proud of myself for getting this far. Pregnancy has been one of the hardest physical and mental experiences I’ve gone through. The nausea and exhaustion of the first trimester did give way to easier symptoms as the weeks wore on, but the daily (and increasing) exhaustion, aches, and insomnia would be a struggle enough on their own. Coupled with facing down the ghost of loss that haunts my days and dreams, the marathon that is pregnancy became something else entirely. So I don’t regret my lack of hobbies or the hours on the couch, hand to my stomach. I know that getting through each day navigating the fear, the back aches, the sore belly spots, the bloody noses, fatigue, and indigestion (and so much more) is a testament to my strength, not my weakness. Especially when considering that I’ve also spent this entire pregnancy learning the ropes at a new job. Bringing my son into the world will be the greatest thing I’ve ever done.
For all the trials of the last months, pregnancy is also a time of joy. Sometimes I do forget that, so caught up in fending off the fear of losing this baby boy bumping around within me. But today is Mothers’ Day and that has me thinking a lot about what being a mother means and taking joy in all of it. Just as pregnancy has been a time of joy and struggle, wonder and anxiety, I know that motherhood will be a similar combination of contradictions — even if I can’t quite imagine it in all it’s fullness. I do know that I can’t wait. I can’t wait for the sleepless nights and the baby snuggles and the dirty diapers and the giggles and everything that comes with a child. Every roll and kick from Baby J reminds me that these days are so, so very close, and that is worth celebrating.
Last month Austin and I drove into New Hampshire to spend time with some of my oldest and dearest friends. I won’t share the details of C’s story, as it’s her own, but in broad strokes, she lost a pregnancy about a year before I did. We became key supports in each other’s loss, and in a stunning, but beautiful turn of events, we discovered we were pregnant again within weeks of each other. More meaningful still, we’re both expecting to welcome our rainbow babies around the anniversary of our losses. On this particular Saturday in April, C wanted me to take some photos of her with her husband and toddler, as well as photos of the two of us with our matching rainbow bumps. It was a day that so perfectly captured all the complicated feelings that come with rainbow pregnancies — the elation, the fear, the joy, the anxiety. Even though that ghost haunts our steps, joy and celebration also are our companions. We’d been through a long winter’s storm, and now new life is springing up within us, life that will be in our arms before we know it. And that’s one of the (many) things I’m celebrating this Mothers’ Day — the tenacity of joy and hope through loss and the power of a mother’s love through the storms and rainbows of life.
