Fall is officially here, and all it took was for Chris and I to leave for a week to the Outer Banks. We stayed in Rodanthe with some of Chris' family in a giant beach house. It was a little chilly for swimming but great for sunbathing and playing a little foot ball on the beach. Yes I did!
There was a pool at the house which I got into twice as it was heated, but still a bit too chilly for me. The jacuzzi was more my thing , however, not so much considering I am pregnant. I sat on the ledge where the water just covered my legs. I can't wait to have this baby, if for no other reason than to dip my body in a hot tub. I haven't even taken a bath in months, atleast 9 or 10months. (Yes I shower;-))I can't wait to finish the bathroom remodeling come to think of it!
Anyway, I do not like being pregnant. I know the outcome is what everybody is supposed to look forward to anyway, but I saw an ad for a TV show called 17 kids and counting. I am sorry, I think they are crazy. I guess if they can support and love all 17 kids then who am I to judge, but dag gone! I somehow think that it turns into some sort of production and there isn't time to possibly give each child the love and attention they may need or crave. I think having kids can even be somewhat selfish. Women wanting to be mothers(or girls for that matter) so they have some sort of fulfillment is what I see more than mothers actually giving kids the attention they actually require. I am somewhat generalizing, believe me, I know plenty of great mothers.
I just think about when I was so young and depressed about things and so irritated my parents brought me into the world. I guess some people might find that to be ungrateful or whatever, but during those times I had no choice but to deal with my situation wondering how I got to this earth in the first place. I guess that's the whole miracle of birth. That God planned me first and it didn't matter really about the choices my parents made. I was born for God's glory and not for my parents or my own. In that I thought, well shoot, that isn't so bad.
This past week at the beach I felt really good, then really weak and sort of queasy. Sometimes I was awake and perky and sometimes I was sleepy and irritated and I thought so will my kid be. I don't know whether it is a girl or boy, that'll be a surprise, but they are going to have bad days and hate me for bringing them here. Then other days they are going to smell the grass or the ocean and feel the air in their lungs and realize that life can be an enormous blessing.
I am not a natural "mother." I am nurturing and compassionate yes, I empathize with almost everyone. I can be selfless and aware. I love deeply, but I didn't like dolls and they never were my "babies" when I was young, they were my friends or in my theatrical plays! I preferred GI Joes, but one could argue those are dolls too. I never wished to go through labor or breastfeed(although I will), I got the creeps looking at baby clothes because they reminded me of trolls. Everyone I ever babysat for said their kids adored me, I guess because I didn't treat them like kids but like equals. I let them draw on me or climb on me, I did all the things I liked to do with them, played in the mud, throw water balloons and spit watermelon seeds. Stuff I generally do now at 26 years old.
I guess I never wanted kids for so long was because I saw mothers lose their children(death), or kids misbehave very very badly, or even a kid I knew murdered someone. And it can happen to a loving mother, a good mother, a Christian mother. No one is exempt from the weight of the world. I guess I thought life too would be much easier for me if I wasn't responsible for any child, life is already difficult enough.
Then I met Chris who told me that having a family was the biggest thing on his heart. The biggest thing on my heart was avoiding that...haha. But I love Chris. I guess because he has never judged me. He sees me as a human and loves me despite it:-). I loved Chris as a friend first and then realized that life would be so empty without him. I never even thought I could have kids. I won't go into all the reasons why I thought that or felt that but it scared me when I thought that Chris might never get to be a father. Because if anyone in my mind was ever worthy of being a father it is him. He is the epitome of love. And just when I thought that pregnancy wasn't going to happen I knew in my heart that I was. I felt it even before the test told me so. Before my body even surged with hormones.
So here I am past my first trimester, annoyed as heck that my belly is stretching and that I don't like to sleep on my side, or that I have to eat atleast 20 minutes before I have to do anything, or that my boobs feel like someone punched them, or that when I read anything pregnancy related I get light headed and irritated. I am annoyed that I changed my mind, no amount of sex is worth having a kid with Chris' head pass through me;-). I wink but I mean it sometimes, he has the biggest head I have ever encountered. I have days when I watch little kids and now I feel somewhat drawn to them or teary eyed at work. Like when a kid ran to me, out of all the people around, crying she couldn't find her daddy. I was like, "why me, do I look like a safe person, one who could comfort her or help?" Why did she pick me, for goodness sake, there were mothers around and people who don't walk around with an unintentional scowl on their face like me sometimes.
I guess this is all part of being pregnant and my life changing completely to prepare for another human being. Just like pregnancy itself the feelings I have are uncomfortable and hurt sometimes, sometimes they are humorous and happy, most of the time I am just trying to get used to the idea that I will never be able to go through life again selfish, which is a good thing. But a hard thing. I think some people don't realize the little ways they are selfish until faced with the possiblity of a kid. I think about the words I will most likely hear the most over the next years of my life, "Mom! Hon!" I am not my own anymore at all.
As much as I may sound negative or whatever, I am excited this little kid is coming. I can't wait to see Chris in him(or her). Maybe they will be able to sing(unlike me), maybe they will be tall and have dark hair and be athletic(unlike me), maybe they will have my chin and Chris' hot legs! Maybe they will look funny and awkward and I will definitely love them anyway. Maybe they will be pregnant someday and say, "Mom, you were crazy!" Just like I tell my mom with more than a touch of irony, because she was crazy to love us that much. We are so imperfect and so weak and she gave up herself for us knowing we would be that way. So is it worth it for the mother who loses her child, or the mother whose child murders someone elses, or the mother who has a kid who misbehaves....definitely. I loved my child the moment he was conceived. I love him more than my comfort and I'll love him even more when I see him at my ultrasound in two weeks. He won't just be a twisty little bugger in my belly, I'll see his face:-).
I may feel incapable as a mother, but I hope I never get to be so puffed up with myself to think that I know it all. Children more than anyone else see right through that. I hope more than anything my kid knows I love him.
So here is the little wiggly worm that kicks me all day and all night long. His kicks are getting really strong, so much so that some of them really freak me out and Chris too! I have also felt one of his appendages poking one particular spot in my belly and it sticks out and is hard in the spot. When you touch it, it slowly moves away...weird, but nice!
