Random Reflections

I can't believe this week will be 32 weeks!  Only 7 more to go, at most!  This pregnancy has flown by and I'm not sure if it's because my day to day diabetes management takes up so much brain space, or the little lady has sucked out some brain cells that control my perception of time. Either way it is amazing and exciting.

She is moving A LOT now, and she flipped to the head down position as she must be preparing for her landing.  I have also noticed lots of hiccups which feel like little rhythmic twitches inside of me.  The wiggles and movements are what I will miss the most about being pregnant.  They are constant reminders that my body is miraculously building a whole new human.  For me, there is no greater accomplishment.

Sometimes I still can't believe that I will be a mother.  It will be a whole new identity to relish.  Like my mom has said (and like I've admittedly done so many times) she will only see me as her mother for many many years.  She won't think of me as a whole person who had a life before her.  She won't really believe that I was just like her with dreams and fears and insecurities and hobbies and good days and bad days...she will only know that I can and will take care of her and that I love her.  For that, she'll call me mom.

She won't really be able to process how I met her father and how it has been an emotional journey into marriage and beyond. Or that her father and I were really just two strangers that met and became a family and one day hoped for a little one to title us parents.  She will think we were born parents like everyone else thinks of their own mother and father until they reach a certain age.

She won't know that I love sitting on my porch on a Sunday morning with the sunshine glinting on the leaves and the sounds of the birds and the crickets filling up an empty sky.  It is my quiet time to reflect or sometimes write.  For me, it is a spiritual time.  It's my church.

Funny how the happiest and most joyous occasions in life are usually marked by the tiniest slivers of mourning.  I suppose it's the juxtaposition of the two that really makes the joy that much more heartfelt.  I am in NO WAY regretful or sad about becoming a mother, but I recognize that this life as I know it will simply not exist anymore once she is here.  There will be small glimpses of it that I will miss, even though I know Baby Girl's arrival will undoubtedly be the happiest and most emotional moment in my life.  It is a change for the better but still a major change.  An unceremonious closing of the previous chapter while ringing in a new one.  Change, good or bad, always makes me anxious.

I'm the kind of person who likes to know what's coming.  I'm a planner, a "lister", a comparison chart maker...I like doing anything where I can look at the facts and analyze them to see an outcome.  Momentous occasions just don't come with those kinds of charts.  And babies don't come with instructions.  I hope I can handle it!