on trust {letters to my baby}

Dear Baby,

We’re 20 weeks today, you and I. That means we’re roughly “halfway there” – halfway through your time growing inside of me, halfway to “life on the outside”. It’s still kind of crazy to me, that you’re inside me, growing, exploring. 20 weeks – that means you can hear what’s going on around you and outside of your swimming pool. I’ve started playing a lot of music I think you’ll like…I think we’ll make Beethoven’s 8th Symphony our “theme song”. I haven’t felt you kick or move yet but I know it’s coming soon…wow is that gonna be cool. I think it’ll make this whole thing more real.

Sometimes – even though we’re halfway through this journey of pregnancy – it still doesn’t feel real. Especially now that I’m back to feeling “normal”, and even my little pregnant belly could be…well…just a little added thickness around my middle if you didn’t know any better. Your dad and I have chosen a non-technological pregnancy and birth – kind of weird in today’s day and age, where everything is technology driven. It’s not that your dad and I are anti-technology – we both like our computers and our iPhones and our TV shows. But when it comes to pregnancy and birth, the fact that a lot of fancy doo-dads exist doesn’t necessarily mean we should use them. Doesn’t necessarily mean they are helpful.

You see, I believe that this process of growing a human is what I was made to do. God created me for this, and my body can do it perfectly. It’s not a disease or a medical condition that needs to be managed with lots of tests and drugs and technology. (Of course some pregnancies don’t go as planned and all those things are very helpful to assure a good outcome for all involved…but those kinds of pregnancies aren’t what I’m talking about here.) I read in one of my books the following quote:

“What influenced me the most was my feeling that I could lose something important as a mother if I allowed someone to test my baby. I knew that if a minor or uncertain problem showed up, which is not uncommon, I would be obliged to return again and again and that, after awhile, I might feel as if my baby belonged to the system and not to me.”

So, we’ve chosen not to do a bunch of unnecessary testing. After doing some research on ultrasound and concluding that there is no unambiguous proof as to its safety (granted there is no unambiguous proof that it is unsafe), we decided not to have a routine scan. Our midwife doesn’t use a Doppler to hear your heartbeat – Doppler uses very concentrated ultrasound waves, much more so than in a routine scan.

So here we are, halfway through this pregnancy, and I’ve only had one test run – to find out my blood type. No ultrasound, no Doppler – and we haven’t yet heard your heartbeat, because without a Doppler the only way to hear the heartbeat is with a fetoscope, which only works later on in pregnancy.

I read online on forums – or hear from my many pregnant friends – and I know that by now most people have seen their baby on ultrasound at least once, maybe twice, and have heard the heartbeat countless other times. There’s a lot of talk about not believing there’s really a baby in there until they see it on ultrasound. I don’t have those ultrasound pictures or even a heartbeat to go on. And as I said earlier, sometimes this whole thing doesn’t feel real.

But all this is a good thing.

You see, by not turning my pregnancy and your birth into a medical condition – by not starting out with the assumption that something is wrong and we’d better test everything – I get an incredible opportunity :: to trust. To trust God – that he really did create my body to do this awesome task of creating human life. To trust that you’re growing perfectly and that he’s taking care of you in there. To trust my body – to nourish you, take care of you, and bring you into this world.

Struggling with chronic illness as I have over the last few years, trusting my body is not something that comes easily to me. I had a nightmare the other night that I lost you. There are doubts, and there are fears. But if there weren’t…would it be called trust? On the other side of that nightmare was a deeper knowing, the knowledge that everything is happening exactly as it should.

This learning-to-trust is one thing during pregnancy…but I think it will be the most important tool I have during your birth. Without trust, there is fear – and with fear comes tension, pain, tightening, closing up – the opposite of what needs to happen during birth. I know that I won’t just be able to push the “trust button” during labor and be good at it. No, I need the daily practice that these 9 months of pregnancy gives me.

Pregnancy and birth are not unlike life.

You see, we can go through life starting from a place of trust or from a place of fear. And just like in birth, starting from fear will result in tension, pain, closing up…ultimately it will result in an inability to really live life, because fear paralyzes. Starting from trust gives you the ability to relax into life…take things as they come…be open to what tomorrow might bring…be willing to take risks and do something different.

I hope that the lessons I’m learning during this season of growing you and bringing you into this world are ones I’m able to pass on to you.

Do not be afraid.
Trust.
Relax into it.
Assume the best – not the worst.

It all comes down to this: there is a grand, grand world out here to explore, and grand, grand life to live — and I hope I can introduce it to you to both with love and trust, and without so much of the fear that burdens our world these days.

love,
mommy