The Waiting...
Phone calls, facetimes, texts, what's apps, facebook messages, tweets. Bumping (literally) into people on the school run, at the shop...
"not long now..."
"you still here?!" - why yes - because I'm having a baby, not emigrating.
People are kind. They care. I am so grateful for it all. I'm sorry I'm not getting to reply/answer/respond all the time.
The waiting for this baby, in all honesty, has been agony. I am so very desperate to begin this new chapter of our family life. I've been pregnant for 526356 weeks. I feel like I have felt all the normal things already; mourned the changes to our party of three, reconciled the tough newborn days/weeks/months ahead, given thought to the impending 'new normal' and given space in my heart and my head to welcome this baby without fear.
Levi was born at 37.5 weeks. 8lbs 2oz of beautiful, sworthy, baby boy. I remember going to bed that night after my waters broke and having a silent little cry in the dark as I curled into Dave's warm back thinking that this was the end of an era in our married life. This was the last night in our little house, just us. Things would never be the same again; our two was imminently becoming a three. And now we sit here on the cusp on this next transition, and although those feelings are familiar, they are more processed - there has been more time to give to them than the first time around. We are so much more ready.
"Are you overdue?" - I mean, I guess - if you base a baby's readiness to enter the world on mathematics alone. My heart says "forget the due dates - it will come when it's good and ready". My body says "that's quite enough now".
Every day I wake up, hyper-aware of my body. Each movement inside (enough? too much?), each change, each symptom, each "sign". My fingers, hot to the touch of a screen googling anything and everything. Relax, they say. Enjoy these last days. I cried over my sausages, potatoes and beans tonight. Just because.
The desire to control and to know can be overwhelming. It's funny how you can feel so ready, so poised and so prepared yet so vulnerable at the same time.
A few friends directed me to this article in Mothering magazine on the last days of pregnancy - this time of waiting, or 'Zwischen' as the Germans call it - 'an in-between' time. The article calls for a reverence of this time - that it is hugely spiritual - a now and not yet, thin place. I feel this so very deeply right now and want to be able to rest here until the zwischen is over and this baby can be brought safely into our home and our lives.
