Diaries from When I was Pregnant-1

While I was pregnant, I maintained a journal where I would write about my hopes, wishes, experiences. I wanted to put them up on the blog then but I was nervous about doing it, I felt like I was thinking and saying things I shouldnt. Today, I went down that lane and read my writings, I decided to put them up and share them in this space I have come to love. This was as I moved into my second trimester.  I share it in hopes that my readers (especially those who are pregnant now)know its ok to feel anything and everything! 

Pregnancy: Movement from calm to freak out to calm

I am pregnant. As I write today I am in my 20^th week of pregnancy according to the LMP (Last Menstrual Period) or 19^th week according to the fetal scan. My midwife measured my gradually growing belly and told me I was 20^th week into the baby experience. How do I feel? Sometimes   I don’t remember I am pregnant. I am my usual self-absorbed self, going about my routine with much the same enthusiasm as any other day.  I read stuff that needs getting read, I listen to clients who need to be heard, I am pissed with the same people that I usually am pissed with and I sail through the traffic on the road with the same distaste as I used to before. (Of course now, besides other things that I will soon mention, I am very brazen and open about how I feel , much to the dissatisfaction of others).  Also, since I hang out with newly married or single girlfriends at my work place, it’s easy for me to forget that I am pregnant. Of course, there is eating like an elephant, not working out like I used to, but when is being a sloth a new thing for mankind (not for me at least) . So, even though I don’t drink tea or coffee everyday anymore and eat a bite every hour or so, and pee a jar every half hour I still go about everyday as if I were not pregnant.  Don’t get me wrong. I am delighted that I am pregnant. Always ecstatic when I see my baby through the ultrasound, in fact all the changes (few albeit) that I have mentioned really makes me very aware that I am pregnant. That a baby is due be born after roughly four more months.  

But what I have really been feeling besides happiness is a major hormonal uprising that keeps me feeling blah. I have been pissed with everyone and everybody who don’t  pay attention to me. Who don’t give me what I want and who don’t take good care of me. I found myself crying at a drop of a hat and feeling miserable about being at work, being in the traffic, being at home, everything.  Actually, I was ok with feeling low. I felt like “feeling it” will allow me to pass through it. Overall I have been quite a mess. A happy but a very very hormonal sad mess. But besides the hormonal upsurge, something else was going on that I wasn’t really ready to acknowledge. What was going on within me?

The revelation happened with a bang. One night when I was sleeping I touched my stomach and freaked!  It finally dawned on me that everything was changing! My stomach was growing, I was pregnant, carrying a new life in me that would be a whole new person by himself. Every bit of me, my body, my life, my outlook on things- MY LIFE was on the brink of change! It also struck me the amount of responsibility I will be taking up. I wasn’t sure I was ready for so much. Just realizing this kept me up all night long. I brooded about this all of the next day as well. What does having a new comer into my life mean? I let my thoughts run wild. In essence it meant I was no longer going to be the focus of my life. That there was going to be a whole new individual that was going to take the center stage and go on to become a completely separate individual. I began to ask, what’s in it for me? And why did I ask such a question? Because, for as long as I have known, I have been very fierce about my individuality. It was always about how I could do better, how I could be better, how I could live better and how I could be happier.  Like my husband would put it “it’s always about “me, me, me” “. What can I say, it’s true, I have rebelled and wanted to discover life and the world on my own terms and now I feel, coming upon me a future where I will tend to and nurture another individual other than myself! That certainly requires a whole new measure of selflessness that I wasn’t sure I possessed. I shuddered at the thought.  I tried to remember all my gestures in selflessness. Even my practice as a therapist is a timed act of selflessness where I devote all of myself to hear this individual and be there for him/her. If the clock ticks beyond an hour my therapist hat starts to slip. So what now?

The beauty of the universe is such; I have learnt this time and again: Help is at hand when you truly begin to confront your fears. I began to turn inward. I realized I was projecting this need to be taken care of on my family and friends and not really doing that for myself. Also when I truly let my fears about being a parent uncover I could finally deal with it. Gradually, help began to flow: Through a book I was reading I was reminded that we are never given a task that we cannot handle.  My father reminded me of the many grounding techniques that I often forget about such as Reiki, Meditation, and mindfulness.  And gradually my panic seemed to simmer down. I was able to center myself enough to really think and feel these questions through.

Twenty weeks and now, twenty first week while I continue writing, I can actually feel the flutter of my baby as she/he kicks and wobbles and swims around inside of me. I cannot help but tear. I cannot help but smile and take notice every time this happens.  While I am still scared about how it will all turn out in the end and while I want to do everything right I remember that I have been given this moment and this gift to learn the very lessons I have wanted to learn forever.  What lessons? Two of my most important ones:

1. To slow down:  My conversations with friends and family, my blogs and my introspections will all reveal that throughout my life I have always wanted to balance it all, I have wanted to slow down and breathe, be mindful and centered. I have struggled with this now and then, and right now this moment presents itself exactly for this reason. My life asks me of this, I ask myself this. To slow down to experience the whole of me; to experience the beauty and strength of my body, my mind and my spirit. I find myself already doing this in areas of my life I have never been able to. With a new life growing  I inside of me, I want to eat right, I want to think right, I want to feel right, I want to stay balanced, I want to be the stable bow that will allow the little baby arrow to take a liner path towards her self-actualization. I never asked myself of this in such discipline as I do no. So what’s in it for me? All of the above!

2. To move closer to my divinity, my God: I have a deep faith in my higher power, my creator. I assume her presence with me every day.  However, the other day when I was reading Deepak Chopra’s book on “Magical Beginnings, Enchanted Lives” I was struck by how my experience of divinity moves further with my baby. Says he, “The perennial wisdom traditions tell us that archetypal gods and goddesses brought us forth in their image so that we could re-create and honor them in our image.”  With this I have begun to make a deeper connection with my baby, my divinity, by playing the music that touches me, by being more mindful about my state of being, by talking to her/him every day and by singing to her every day.

Of course I am going to change and of course everything about me is going to be well shaken and reconstructed!  Moving beyond focusing on someone else but me is clearly an exercise in not taking myself so seriously. What’s life if it’s not an opportunity to learn to stay open and grateful to the changes that are at once scary and exciting, eh? Also, while change is occurring in leaps and bounds I cannot but fail to acknowledge that its feels like I am opening myself to my greater potential.