Observations from the pregger....

When I was younger, I was certain I was different. I always walked to my own drum, had my own unique style, tastes, thoughts, and often defied tradition. I enjoyed my own unique journey, friendships, travels, and challenges. Some of course, like any point on life’s path, were good and some were bad. Each of these elements has shaped who I am, what I believe, and how I lead my life. It sets my priorities, my beliefs, and my passions. With being a first time expecting mom, there is a whole new world that I realize awaits me. I am certain that Nathan and I will love this child with the same ferocity and unconditional support that we have both been lucky to experience from each of our sets of parents. However, knowing a few pregnant friends and acquaintances thus far in my life, I still feel I am different. Maybe every expecting mom feels this way, and then after delivery they lose their sense and previous opinions in the matter, but here is my small observation, at least for now.

So far I have noticed two things about how people interact with you when they know you are expecting. First they all have advice, criticism, opinions and their own experiences to offer up, and secondly, not a single one has been the same. Which makes it ironic that everyone feels the need to share, and sometimes overshare; as since nothing I have heard from anyone has been the same from person to person (except a baby comes out at the end of the story)! I think it is more of a cathartic thing for the storyteller than really anything helpful for the expecting mom or dad, at least in my very inexperienced opinion. Now of course family, close friends or others, who you might directly ask a question or inquire about their experience, would probably be a welcome conversation with any expecting parent. Even hearing about the journey that those close to you made at this same junction in their lives, that is not what I am thinking here. I am talking about random acquaintances, strangers in the grocery store, people you have met once or twice, people you don’t normally share uber personal details with, all that find out you are expecting and seem to seek you out to tell you their tale of woe during pregnancy, labor and delivery.  It just seems silly to me, going back to the reality that no two women’s experience has been the same.  The other piece to this new experience that I do not feel I am aligning with the majority on here is that pregnancy is not all consuming. I was an individual, an employee, a friend, a spouse, a civic minded entity, and an entrepreneur before pregnancy, and plan to be all of those things, and a mom, once it is all said and done. Being pregnant is a status I am in for the next few months, which will culminate into the next chapter of mine and my husband’s life, parenthood. It will not just cease and desist my previous titles making me solely under the heading “pregnant”.  It is not my every waking thought, every meaningful action, nor my complete identity.  In our home, of course, it is a huge topic of our conversations, our planning, and our futures, but my day to day life goes on. I have responsibilities, dreams, thoughts, and plans. All of these include this little person we are gestating, but it is not the sole fulcrum in the balancing act of life that goes on each day.

 I am still Julie, I am still planning on leaving this experience Julie, and while this experience is amazing, wonderful, and unexplainably marvelous, it is an experience. It is not my identity. I have many other aspirations, for myself, for this child, for my life, my marriage, my family. It is a temporary condition that I want to enjoy while it is mine to experience but that will not define who I am, and I hope that because of this I will be a better parent. That I won’t need to live through my child vicariously, that I will truly hope what is best for them and their life, their dreams, their aspirations, and their happiness.  That I can accomplish those things for myself so that my future and the family Nathan and I build together can support our child to accomplish its goals and vision, rather than become my own entirely. Expecting, pregnancy, and babies, while obviously a huge part of my life right now, is not the only topic of conversation I can manage to have right now. I am pregnant, I didn’t have a hemispherectomy.