It's 3am, I've been down to sleep and up again twice already. I feel my big round pregnant belly with my baby boy tossing and turning around in there, my little one breathing softly on the pillow next to me - arm wrapped over my body. I can't sleep - again. If it's not the bathroom calling it's the stomach... and if it's not either of those, it's usually a content idea for the new e-course. I peruse on my phone for a bit downloading ideas and the ache to get up and write hits me. This is a typical night, month 8 into pregnancy.
I often wonder if other mamas are this crazy. Starting a company and teaching at the university this semester has marked one of the most passionate times in my life as I give birth to another incarnation of my profession - the mindful mama. Yet, I hear parents complain often of the endless swirl of family obligations in full swing already, not having time to welcome "number two" in the same way. It seems heavy guilt lurks around every corner, as we are relentlessly critical of not managing to create that same space for this baby as we did the first.
It knocks me over, that guilt, from time to time... like the wind is being knocked out of me. I don't feel as intentional, purposeful, or nearly as mindful. Baby bump pictures, obsessing over a registry, and all that prepping (aka "freaking out) I did with my daughter is just not happening. I wouldn't say I'm not as excited, but wow, it's just simply NOT the same.
Humans find it hard to sit in the dark of the unknown. We are patternistic and love to put anything we can into little "boxes". I think once we wrap our minds around something and it becomes tangible it's never quite the same. That once we give birth to our motherhood it ceases to be this ineffable, ambiguous, mystery to figure out. So I am done with the guilt, OVER IT! It was so thick I couldn't see through the fog. Here I was constantly comparing my first pregnancy with the second instead of being where I am. I feel baptized by relief as I say it... It's NOT the SAME... nor "should" it be... it cannot be and it just ISN'T. You will never enter an experience the same way once you have been through it a first time.
I'll tell you, I don't miss the feeling of not knowing what on earth I was about to embark on. And so, I am here. I DO check-in with the little human growing in there, I still think the process of birth is nothing short of mind-blowing, and I am excited. My life, just like other families preparing to give birth to their second, is inundated with the profound day-to-day responsibility of the little one right in front of us. Our hearts will burst wide open and more love than we ever expected will rise up for the second when they arrive. How calming to return to what is - it strikes me every time how much sweetness, richness and pure BEAUTY there is in our moments if we fully arrive in them - and so here I sit, 4am, finally tired but full of peace.
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