on living {letters to my baby}

Dear Baby,

It’s been awhile since I’ve written. I have to admit, this being pregnant thing has sort of thrown me for a loop. I’ve had a relatively easy time of it so far, but I don’t think pregnancy is ever truly easy. I mean, my body is growing a whole other human being. It took me awhile to figure out how to dose the various bio-identical hormone supplements I’m taking so that I have the right amounts for this human-growing thing to work. Until I figured out the right amounts, I had some symptoms of deficiency that I haven’t experienced in a long time. It was kind of scary, honestly, and I think I pulled back from the pregnancy a little bit. I’ve worked so hard to get to a place of being well, and I didn’t like the idea that pregnancy was putting me back where I started. It turns out that wasn’t the case at all, but when you’re in a hormonally-induced depressive fog, you can’t always see that.

There’s also just a learning curve to reading my body’s cues as a pregnant body. I had gotten really good at knowing how to read my body, but being pregnant is like starting from scratch – what does that mean? For awhile I didn’t really trust what I was sensing and again – pulled back a little bit from letting myself fully experience being pregnant with you. But I finally got to a point where I realized, you know, I trust my body to do this – this creating of a human life. Since then things have been way easier and I think I’ve been kinder to myself as well – eating good food, exercising, getting good rest, taking care of you in every way I know how. It’s funny when you’re motivated from fear or dis-trust, you end up not making such great decisions. But if you start with trust, and love, suddenly the path is clear.

Anyway. All that is neither here nor there, and not really what I wanted to write to you about today. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about as I contemplate becoming a mom is this realization that I want to be a better person. I want to invite you into the grand story that is life. The problem is, sometimes I hide from that story and I don’t really live it – how I can I really invite you into it? Struggling with chronic illness meant taking a break from the whole “life adventure” thing. I spent a couple years resting. Getting well. Not doing much. It was good – I needed it. I learned how to be – a lesson that’s hard to learn in a crazy frenetic world. But now that I’m healthy, it’s almost like I’ve forgotten how to do – sometimes I just default to watching TV, or spending lots of time at the computer, or doing I don’t even know what – things that don’t really have meaning. Your dad and I have talked about how we don’t want to raise you in front of a screen – which is going to be hard to do in today’s over-technological world – but even as we talk I feel a pang of conviction because so much of my life is spent exactly there – in front of a screen.

Once upon a time I never watched TV. I was too busy living, too busy doing things that mattered. Then I got sick, and the stories on TV were the only ones I really could interact with. But in my ideal life, we wouldn’t spend hardly any time watching TV (or playing video games, or sitting on the internet, or any of the other screen-related time-stealers.) We’d read stories instead of watch them, we’d play outside in the dirt, we’d climb trees and explore the world of bugs. We’d bake and create and read some more. We’d make music and draw pictures. We’d ride bikes and fly kites and play kickball. That’s what I want to give to you – a life of rich color and feeling and experience. Not a life full of frenetic, meaningless “doing” (so many of the things that people fill their time with “doing” aren’t any more meaningful than watching TV!) – but also not a life of nothing, a life of being entertained by something flitting by on an electronic screen.

But if I want to give that to you, I have to live it myself, right? I can’t spend my day at the computer, letting it steal all my time, AND give you this life rich. You’re not even here, and you’re making me realize how far I live from my ideals sometimes, and you make me want to be a better person, a person who can show you a life well-lived. I don’t want to be the parent yelling at you to get off your butt and “do something with your life” – I want to show you a life so compelling, so full, so inviting, that you get swept into the grand adventure.

I think I’ll get off the computer and go do some of that living now.

love,
mommy