What They Don't Tell You

So, before you're pregnant, you have all these ideas (well, I did anyway) of how fabulous being pregnant is. I mean, it is pretty fabulous to grow a human inside your body...but it's also a lot of other things. Like uncomfortable, and exhausting beyond my wildest dreams, (and believe me...4 pregnancies later I have some wild dreams about exhaustion) and absolutely terrifying.



Ok, not ALL of my pregnancies have been terrifying, but this one? Ohmygosh. So much. I know it had everything to do with losing Charis in the beginning. I'd never experienced even a tiny threat of losing a baby...but when we lost her my mind just went there. Everywhere and every way that this pregnancy could have problems was on my mind. Every thing that happened or didn't happen filled me with dread and fear. Sure, there was so much thanks and joy that Amaryllis has always been a healthy, wiggly, growing baby...but always the what if we lose her just like her sister?



My husband has told me so many times I can't think like that...but it's so hard not to. So hard not to just want this to be over...have her here and out of my belly where I can't do anything should something be wrong. Sometimes being pregnant, while so amazing and empowering, makes you feel so helpless. I guess that's probably the point. It's probably where God wants me...but I think He probably understands that I don't particularly like it.

So today, we had a little scare with the baby. (We noticed a few drops in heart rate while listening to her heartbeat. The doctors think it is probably just her rolling onto the cord, or even squeezing it/playing with it. To that I say: stop that, missy.) But it was scary to hear her heart slow down like that. It always sped back up, that beloved little galloping noise that sounds like so much life, but those moments when it slowed down were definitely fear-filled for me. I'm still not satisfied that "all is well"...and probably won't be until I'm finally holding her, but am having to trust that the doctors know more than I do, and reassure myself that she literally kicks me nonstop so she's obviously not lacking energy. The doctors did a non-stress test (thankfully my first out of all these babies) and said that her heart rate, and the little fluctuations, are exactly what they want to see.

This pregnancy has stretched me so much. Not just physically...but sometimes I just feel emotionally empty from the peaks and valleys that have been these last 30 weeks. I've had to realize that another one of the things they don't tell you about pregnancy is just how completely out of your hands it all is. So many even-tinier miracles wrapped up in the growing of one tiny miracle, and all of them out of my hands. Makes it all that much more scary...but all that
much more amazing at the same time. Maybe one of these days, I'll realize that my tiny little grabs at control really are futile. And letting it all go, into the hands of that the One who makes the miracles, is the only way they can happen.