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32 Weeks Pregnant; Putting Away Fear, Embracing Intuition
I can’t believe I am 32 weeks (plus 4 days) into this unassisted pregnancy journey. I have mentioned before that this was my most difficult pregnancy, and being my 5th I have been given no time for rest! Especially with my very adorable, but very demanding 2yr old son. I have also been much BIGGER with this baby! So, every time I go out people say
“Wow! Due any day now huh?!”
“Are you having twins?”
“Are you suuuure it’s not twins?”
“Geez, you were never this BIG with the other babies!”
You get the point. I’m big. Pretty darn huge. Like a barn. Or a whale. Anything humongous.
So, I kind of started to worry. Why am I so big? Am I having an abnormally giant baby? Is there too much amniotic fluid? What if the baby is enormous? How will I give birth to a hippopotamus baby?
The fear started to creep in. Most people in this society are very, very scared of giving birth. They are distrustful of women’s bodies. They hand over control to doctors the moment a second pink line shows on that pregnancy test. They are tested, prodded, and documented. I constantly have women opening up to me about their births (which I love to share), but I notice consistently the language of disempowerment;
“They told me I couldn’t have a vaginal birth”
“They decided to induce me”
“Oh the doctor wouldn’t let me…”
“I wasn’t allowed to…”
Women are not the primary actors in their births. They are being allowed, or not allowed. They are given permission, or constraints. They are told, not asked.
I had all the fears of the friends, family, dance moms and supermarket cashiers bombarding me. I couldn’t distinguish what was coming from within me, what was genuine.
Then, I had a strange pregnancy dream. I love these weird dreams that happen towards the end of pregnancy. They give me a lot to think about, and it seems like it works out concerns I have in my subconscious. Plus, they are usually absurd and funny. (I dreamt I gave birth to a kitten during my first pregnancy).
I had this dream two nights ago, after worrying all day about the size of my belly. I was on my bed with my husband, when I felt my cervix opening. I said my husband, “I could give birth right now”. I started to push, and gently a baby’s head began to appear. I pushed the baby out easily, quickly, and painlessly. It was a small baby, and a girl. I laughed about that in the dream, because I have been convinced its a big boy.
This dream, somehow in all its weirdness, caused me to feel better. I felt some sort of shift in my emotions. Maybe it was because the dream showed me how wrong I could be. All the worrying, and it was a tiny baby girl. Maybe it was just the fact of remembering birth. I don’t know. I just know that I am not scared anymore. I feel ready, when baby is ready, to do this for the 5th time.
I really can’t wait to discover WHO this baby is!
Count down to birthday.
THis adorable face is driving me crazy!
I tried to multitask
Don’t Allow Stress to Steal Your JOY
Money on my mind lately. Career. School. Needs. Wants. Future. Housing. It’s a lot. I think money, or the lack of it, or the fear of the lack of it, is a worry on many minds. It hurts to spend many hours away from family, for little in return. Many people my age are trying to work in the “gig economy”, trying to maintain some freedom and do what they enjoy. With children, there is not always a choice about what to do but we keep striving for that perfect job or situation where we can be happy and provide for our family. But the stress, it can literally kill you! Stress has been shown to be WORSE than cigarettes. It lowers your immune system, taxes your heart. And for the spirit, it kills faith and turns your focus to the worldly needs we have. It steals JOY. It robs us of loving relationships, marriages fall under the stress and the blame game. So, I am making an effort to breath, keep going one foot in front of the other one, knowing that the right path leads to the right things if only I don’t step aside. Every night I pray with my children “give us this day, our daily bread”. Just for *that* day! I leave you with the words of the wisest one, the King of Kings; Matthew 6:25-34
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
