Some notes on pregnancy…

Hard to believe, that I have reached the end of my pregnancy. I am 5 (FIVE!!) days away from my due date and haven’t popped on here to tell you anything about how it has gone.  So – here are the highlights:

1-I have LOVED being pregnant! Not only has it been an absolute privilege and honour to carry around this little miracle in my womb, but I have felt so uplifted and encouraged by the way people respond to pregnant ladies. My experience has been nothing but positive. I have experienced people slowing down their cars and rolling down their windows to tell me I look great, a stranger on the street giving me his umbrella in a storm, as well as random smiles and encouraging words on the streets. I don’t know about you, but I really didn’t expect this. Every day when I open the newspapers, I read about all the horrible things that people do to one another, and yet, pregnancy, and the excitement of an unborn child really seems to bring out the best in everyone.

2-The past 9 months have been a true journey of personal discovery for me. J and I took a wonderful birth preparation class called ‘Your power, your birth’.  Along with learning a whole lot about the birthing process (which I knew virtually nothing about before!), I also learned to see my pregnancy as a journey to motherhood. My daily experiences began to be framed through this lens.  I’ll give you an example. I had an unfortunate situation in my workplace where I faced a fork in the road. In short: fight for my rights or put my head down and allow others to walk all over me.  When I put it this way, the choice seems obvious, however in the moment, making the right choice was not so obvious. I had people tell me that the best thing to do was to avoid any sort of stress on my baby – which was good advice, but which ultimately, was not what I needed to do. After some thought, I realised that if I was going to bring a little girl (oh yeah – it’s a girl!) into this world, I needed to be able to show her how to stand up for herself. And if I couldn’t do that for myself, then I would have no credibility when it came time for me to teach her that lesson.  And so – that growing little spaghetti squash in my stomach became the inspiration and the lens through which I made that decision and many others over the last few months.

So – when it came time to create a ‘birthing bundle’ in our pre-natal class, here is what I did:

The assignment was to put together 3 objects: one that symbolizes the women in your family and the power that they bring to your upcoming birthing process, one that symbolizes your partner (if applicable), and one that symbolizes you and your baby working together. Here is my bundle:

For the strength from the women in my family, I selected this cross, given to me by my mother, symbolizing the Christian faith held by my mother, my mother in law, my sister and my grandmother, all of which have been inspiring to me throughout my life.

To symbolize my husband, I selected his wedding ring.  If you look closely, you will see that the inside layer of his ring is made of rose gold, surrounded by a tough layer of titanium.  When he had this ring made, he was thinking that the delicate rose gold layer symbolized me, while the second layer hugging and protecting it, while being exposed to the elements, would symbolize him and his role in our lives. The two layers in the ring symbolize a marriage union of us as two separate, yet combined layers. I could not think of a better partner and source of support for what is to come.

Last, but not least, to symbolize my baby and I working together, I selected the wooden salad fork and spoon set that I brought back from South Africa a few years ago. If you look closely, the spoon is more weathered than the fork. So, the spoon is me, and the fork is baby girl. I viewed us a separate, but still working together. As the ‘womb’ I ‘spoon’ feed her and our nutritional intake is one and the same. As the newer and less weathered fork, baby ‘prods’ me, and impacts my decisions and outlook on life.

3-Throughout this journey I’ve read some great books, here are my top two recommendations:

1) Birthing from Within by Pam England and Robert Horowitz

2) Great with Child by Beth Ann Fennely

And before I go, here is one of my many favourite quotes from Great with Child:

On becoming a mother:

“You understand yourself as lodged in history in a way you didn’t before. Your beliefs will be tested, your hypotheses put into action, so you’ll consider them in a new way.  Whether you’re explaining where pets go when they die or teaching your child to recycle, your philosophies have ramifications. For the rest of history, echoes of your voice will be heard”.