Pregnancy has traditionally been seen as a blessing. But also, traditionally, it can create a lot of pressure around the expectation/need to have children. A sense of responsibility and obligation versus a deep longing or desire. Regardless, everyone has a unique journey with what children or the addition of children means to their personal lives. This is going to be a little bit about my journey with the blessing that is the pregnancy experience.
My journey in child rearing (I’m grimacing as I say that because it makes me feel like a character from The Handmaid’s Tale) began with my son when I was 21. At 33 I had a baby girl that forever changed the way I see myself. And now at 37, I embark on what I truly believe is the last trip to pregnancy-ville. While I feel blessed, I am also scared. While I feel secure, I also feel self-doubt. While I’ve done this before – I feel completely in the dark about what to expect. So cue the deep, nauseated breath, and let’s reflect on the experiences that have passed and the one before me.
1. Rafa aka Buba
I literally turned 21 the first time I was pregnant. This wasn’t something I planned but was over the moon ecstatic for. The surf trip to Peru, where I met the impulsive “amor de mi vida,” had bore some amazing fruit, literally. Soul-searching achieved. I genuinely had absolutely zero doubt in my mind that this was the best thing to have happened to me. I can’t even describe it, but when I reflect back on it, all I see are the wide-eyed, silently confused, judgemental faces that surrounded me whenever I told someone I was pregnant with uncontainable joy and excitement. It crushed my mother, and my father called me a statistic, comparing me to his pregnant 15-year-old high school students. Considering I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 18, I definitely felt resentment for that comment for years.
School + Baby
At the time, I was in my third year of college at Suffolk University’s business school. Majoring in Finance with somewhere around a 3.5 GPA. I was a commuter student working part-time as an administrative assistant at an English-speaking school nearby. Ended up taking a semester off to have my baby and continued to work all through my pregnancy up until a week before my due date.
I clocked 80-hour weeks and, despite the judgey side eyes of the female owner, was known to be first in and last out. This wasn’t difficult to achieve, though, when I had nothing but time. I was also desperately filling the Registrar’s shoes after they left with barely any knowledge transfer or training. The school was under reaccreditation with a filing system that would make a librarian cry. I poured everything I had into that. I think back on that time as a reflection of how hungry I was to prove myself. It didn’t keep the owner from trying to fire me just for being pregnant. I had so much fire inside me it’s no surprise I gave birth to a stellium in Sagittarius! And if that wasn’t enough, after I gave birth:
I went back to school full time
Worked two part-time jobs. Teaching English on the weekends and working customer support from home at night.
And as if that wasn’t enough – I was also breastfeeding. Which meant I was making very suspicious mechanical noises in various bathrooms on campus.
When I think back, I definitely feel an immense amount of pride. The only thing that blows my mind is that with how fierce I was, no one ever even tried to stop me.
2. Athena aka the princess warrior
My first pregnancy is obviously the most memorable experience, but there are so many things I don’t remember. Either because of the endorphins, the constant working, or just the good ol’ fashion survival instinct. But it was my second that was memorable for a whole different reason.
First of all, I didn’t think I would get pregnant again. Or at least I wasn’t creating artificial hope for myself that I would ever find a forever partner. I was perfectly content with things being just my son and me. Did I long for companionship and feeling worthy – absolutely! But I ultimately knew I was the only one who could give those things to myself. And my son was more than enough to feel fullness in my life. After I met my husband, though, I realized that it was definitely possible we might have another. Again, it wasn’t 100% a given, but the weather called for a strong probability of rain.
Big Decisions
Something in my husband and I’s relationship that we’ve found so amusing is that every time we take a big trip – we make big decisions. In this case, it was our first Christmas together in Spain, where both our families live. They immigrated there from Russia when Putin came into power, while my mama’s side be deep in that Castellano conquistadorin’ history. We were in bed and coming clean about marriage – more specifically, wedding vision. When I told him I was not about that crazy wedding stuff and legit would get married at the courthouse, he goes, “you can do that?”.
“Yeah, dude.”
So as soon as we got back, we got married, and in less than a month, I was pregnant. Now mind you – here’s where a little detail comes in; I just had hip surgery 2 months before, over Thanksgiving break. What was supposed to be a 4-6 month PT journey ended up being a pregnancy journey from the 7th circle of hell. I had already lost some strength due to the surgery, but once I became pregnant, I, unfortunately, wasn’t able to get my strength up to the same speed as I was gaining weight or that my hips and body were overall changing. By the time I was in my third trimester, I couldn’t sit too long, stand too long, or lay down for too long in very limited positions (even more limited than is expected when pregnant – awesome).
Apparently, You Labor Like Your Mom?
The one thing that both my past pregnancies have in common was the labor and delivery. While relatively different, they were both under 8 hours. During my first, I was congratulated by the nurse for having a resilience they don’t normally see. I didn’t moan or groan or yell at all – I think they appreciated that? With my second, I was a MESS. Let me tell you, anything that could come out of me did, and my husband was an absolute rock through the whole thing. While it took forever for my water to break – when it did, she came flying out of me in two contractions… I do not hyperbolize… doc didn’t even make it in time by a landslide (ha!).
3. And now…
And now we have a third baking. A THIRD! We’ve somehow entered a club where the parents are officially outnumbered. I have zero idea of what to expect – although before finding out I was pregnant, I was resigned to the idea that it would be a disaster. This, of course, came in the same vibrational frequency of accepting that getting pregnant was becoming less and less probable. And yet here we are. I’m 37, currently almost 11 weeks along. With a bra that holds residents who have already grown by several units. Then there’s the appetite that is still just getting over all-day hangovers.
I’ve described this nausea as “a bag of cats.” Regardless of what I do, it’s a different kind of nausea – kind of like a bag of cats; you may not know what cat you’re getting, but you know it’s a cat. Whether I’m nauseated because I’m hungry, only to feel nauseated by the act of digestion or the impossible discomfort of feeling bloated, a cat awaits me at every turn.
Believe me, I still believe this is a blessing.
Which brings me to my last point. I don’t want to forget this pregnancy! This is (*crosses fingers*) likely the last pregnancy I’ll experience. I was too busy to keep a journal or take pictures during my first and was too miserable during my second to care (yes, that’s horrible, but seriously I wanted the days to fly by). And now, I have a planner, a daily schedule journal, and a gratitude journal. In all these things, I’m keeping track of my day-to-day pregnancy experience and what’s going on outside of that and inside my head and heart.
I’m so clear-minded about how important and wonderful that would be that, while yes, I want to enjoy this, more importantly, I want to be able to talk about it with my kids. Each of them. I want to be able to remember and recount as much as possible. Which is another reason I started this blog. While there is plenty of self-development and self-growth articles, it’s also a very real intimate look at my life and experiences doing exactly that – growing and developing. I look forward to one day sharing all this with them too.