thoughts on birth

31 weeks

In the beginning of this pregnancy, I was so focused on just staying pregnant. Terrified of enduring another miscarriage, I crawled along one day at a time, one appointment at a time, breathing a sigh of relief with every passing milestone. But I never actually considered the end result. BIRTH. 

I find it funny that it never really crossed my mind. It seemed so far off, so irrelevant at the time. September seemed forever away, like maybe it would never really come. 

But it's coming. I am in the last leg of my pregnancy and this thing is really in me. I can see it and feel it and I know that it is very much alive. And I'm just beginning to realize that I have to get it out!!!

There are so many childbirth stories and books and documentaries and shows on TLC. I've been spending my time studying diligently, my nose in a book or my eyes glued to the TV, as if this were the hugest final exam of my life. I suppose it is. Some of the stories scare me to death and other ones leave me feeling empowered and excited. But mostly I just feel confused and overwhelmed and unprepared. 

Because how can I prepare for something I've never experienced? I can learn the facts but I can't ever know the experience until I have it for myself. It's like preparing for sex when you're a virgin. You can't. The only thing you can do is know that it will be different than anything you've ever experienced before. 

So this I am open to. And what I do know is that I want to feel it. I want this experience. And I want it fully. Even with its pain, I want it. I want to feel what millions of women before me have also felt. I want to understand it on a level deeper than reading it or watching it. It is a rite of passage and I feel blessed that I have been given this opportunity to reach it. Completely blessed.

In my whole however many years of life, this may just be my biggest moment. And I don't want to miss it. Not any of it.

I knew a woman in grad school who had three grown children. She was not a particularly gorgeous woman, nor was she very outgoing or extraordinary really in any way. Simon Cowell may have called her "forgettable." But she was strong. And she had an inner confidence and beauty that struck me and stuck with me. She had delivered each of her children with no drugs or medical interventions. I remember her telling me (as I shook my head in awe and swore that she was crazy) that no pain could ever match that. She knew if she could get through the birth of her children, she could get through ANYTHING.  

I don't know if I want a doula or a birthing ball or a labor tub. 

But I know I want this.