Excitement...and fatigue...

The third trimester has become what everyone said it would...a mix if excitement and fatigue...  

The excitement has taken on a new element, with the reality of the impending birth really hitting home.  We have the nursery set up, clothes washed and put up, most of the necessities in place, and now we are taking extra steps to prepare ourselves, physically, emotionally & spiritually.  We are surrounded by the love & excitement of our families and friends, and alive with all of the possibilities expanding our family will bring.

On the flip side (the yang to the yin, if you will) is the elements that are inevitable in the final countdown.  At 5 weeks out from our due date, I am getting quite a bit uncomfortable.  I had been warned about this, but, as with the rest of life, I never am quite prepared for the reality - or as much as I think I am.  Little miss priss has turned her rear end upward (a really good thing!), but it is pressed firmly against the left side of my rib cage.  This meas that there is a constant pressure on the left side, keeping me from doing seemingly simple tasks, such as putting a sock on my left foot, washing my left foot in the shower, shaving my left leg, and even being able to lift my leg to put it in pants.  It also severely limits my range of motion, making it difficult to close my car door when I am on the drivers side, twist across myself to grab things (like files at work when I need to reference something on a case, etc), and so on.  Overall, I like to believe I have kept an upbeat attitude (JP and others tell me I have been a trooper, so I don't believe my perception is off...).  I did have a breaking point the other night though (and no pun intended...keep reading, you will understand my bad joke).  As I bent over to do something, having her rear end against my ribs create enough pressure that either the ribs or the rear had to give.  This happened in a matter of a second, so there was no conscious thought about it on my part.  In the end, the rear won (another sign that she is endowed with the famous Surles rear - at least in my mind!) and the ribs lost, resulting in a nice loud pop, followed by a nice shooting pain.  I started screaming, scaring poor JP half out of his mind.  I can't know for absolutely sure, but based on the symptoms, I believe Baby Cole broke a rib (or two)....resulting in my first absolute meltdown in quite a while.  I was hurting pretty bad, and just started crying my eyes out.  One of those good, cathartic, blow-your-nose-20-times-and-not-come-close-to-covering-it-all cries.

And as fast as it came, it left.  Not the pain - oh no - that is still right here with me.  But the feeling of frustration & self-pity left quickly.  Thank goodness.  I was just telling someone the other day how self-pity is the worst of all lies we can tell ourselves - no one can argue it away, it becomes all encompassing, drowning out common sense, perception, our connection to those who can tell us the truth, and - the ultimate downfall of self-pity - it shuts us off from the light of our Creator, making all seem hopeless.  And although my sense of wonder and gratitude wasn't immediately restored as the tears left me, it was firmly in place again the next morning.  Which brings me to where I am now...in awe and appreciation of the principle of yin & yang, darkness and light, pleasure and pain...

It truly does all tie in to this wondrous experience of being able to experience pregnancy - human life growing and forming within.  Most women spend the first trimester (plus some) feeling ill, exhausted, overwhelmed and full of fear.  Fear of miscarriage, fear of the body changing, fear of losing the life that you have right this moment, fear of relationships changing...so much fear.  And it doesn't even have to be all-consuming.  In fact, for me, it was more right under the surface, manifesting itself in frustration with all sorts of other things.  But this is coupled with a sense of wonder and amazement when you see the first heartbeat flicker, hear it, and it becomes real.  For me, it was spiritual, but my reaction was a little more in the realm of the human experience - "Holy shit! THAT is a baby growing inside of me!" :)  Then we were able to see how drastically the baby had changed from week 8 to week 12, and we settled in a little bit, becoming more comfortable with the sense of the unknown.

Then the second trimester comes, and I started to get more energy, the illness and sensitivity to smells calmed down, I was able to eat a wider variety of food options (other than mashed potatoes and cheese with crackers!).  My body started to really undergo some changes, which were exciting and scary all at once.  Probably more exciting to me and more scary to JP!! Ha!  I started feeling the fluttering in my stomach, which grew each week.  I remember knowing when we were REALLY in this thing, both of us.  It was a Friday, and in the back of my head I knew I hadn't felt the baby move all day, but I kind of just pushed it down.  But I got home, and drank a little caffeine, shook my belly some (which always was met with a response of spastic motion in my belly), and...nothing.  I went to a pregnancy website, which said that no motion for longer than a couple of hours (at that stage) was cause for alarm.  We called the after hours line, and we calmly asked to come to the hospital, just to get checked out.  So off to the hospital we went, me in tears, and JP trying not to drive like a bat out of hell.  We were immediately escorted from the ER to the Labor & Delivery Unit, where they didn't waste any time hooking me up to fetal monitors.  Immediately you could hear the baby's movement, and a heartbeat, and we both just sighed a huge sigh of relief.  The nurse left to report to the doctor on call, and JP and I sat there, listening to the beautiful sound of our baby's heartbeat.  Two things I will never forget then happened.  First, JP grabbed my hand and said, "That is the best sound in the world.  I could sleep to that every night for the rest of my life."  And then he was able to feel her move for the first time ever.  It seems as though she's not a fan of the fetal monitors, as she kept kicking right between them, over and over, until they were removed.  There is so much more I could say about the second trimester, as it truly is the trimester full of firsts.  First real movements, first major body changes, finding out the sex, seeing all of the ins & outs on the 20 week ultrasound (even the individual chambers of the heart...what?!?).  It's also the time when moms really start bonding with the baby and dads really start to get scared!  At this point, moms start willingly sacrificing aspects and elements of their lives to make room for the baby - buying a little thing here and there rather than buying for self, eating this or that because it's better for the baby's development, saying no where we might not have before because we know we are not the only one's we are caring for anymore.  Dads start fearing what things they might have to sacrifice when the baby comes...and start doing everything they think they will lose with the baby.  For example, JP started lifting in the morning, riding his bike in the afternoon, playing his guitar into the wee hours of the morning, going to see his buddy's in Greenville and Anderson on the weekends, planning hiking trips with the guys, and so on.  As I talked to people, I started realizing that this was normal.  And although it caused some separation between us (and created different realities for us in terms of pregnancy expectations and bonding), it also provided us an opportunity to really flex our communication skills, and to stop putting the outcome of our contentment on each other, and back with our Creator.  

And finally, here we are...in the final stretch of the final trimester.  It's like a dress rehearsal sometimes.  Talking to the doctor about birthing plans and wishes (she's totally on board and supportive of our wishes), setting everything up, cleaning out all of the junk we don't use, buying all of the last minute needs, planning with work/school/etc.   And the body changes...bless the body changes!  I guess what started all of the reminiscing of the past 9 months was the idea of yin/yang, pleasure/pain, surrender/rebirth...

When I talk with people about their pregnancies, they generally relate it as a good or bad experience.  Same with giving birth.  I guess what I am coming to understand is, for me, it's not good or bad.  It is a collective set of experiences, just like everything else in life.  Each pain creates a joy, and each joy a pain.  Not in a bad way...in the way that the universe has to achieve balance.  The way that the process of childbirth creates a bond between mother and child...in the way that I can cry in frustration for a minute and be fully engrossed by the movement of a foot, knee or even that rear end in the ribs the next minute.  In the way that I can be consumed by fear one minute and consumed by wonder the next...over the same thing (like, "There will be a baby coming out of my body VERY soon!").  The way that I can wonder in one thought whether I can be a good mom and in the next can't imagine my life any other way.  In the way that each moment in this life presents itself, as a moment of self-absorption or as a moment of peace in our journey.  And sometimes the moments of self-absorption only contrast to allow the moments of peace to be what they are...truth, reality.  So although I have moments of frustration, self-doubt, insecurity, fear - each of those moments gives birth to a surrender that allows true peace to flow in, for me to feel the nearness of my Creator, to know that I am a child of God, and that my journey - with all it's pleasure and pain - is a wondrous and miraculous gift.  And that each aspect of it can be cherished as the precious gift it is - each moment being that one in time that will never be repeated, unique in every way.