There is something that happens in this winding down of one experience and building up of another. It is almost surge-like in part, the way that I imagine everything ebbing and flowing as labor heightens, birth on the horizon. Almost concurrently, the culmination of pregnancy moves like a wave into the moment that I will become mom forever; there is no turning back, no unwinding of the clock. Every path is moving in the same direction, toward the same goal, and it is as evident as ever.

The closer we get to baby’s arrival, the more I can imagine what that day will be like. I envision the small details and the big ones, and consider the way I’ll remember the finite moments as I did on our wedding day and only a handful of other landmark occasions in my lifetime. I wonder if it will be this way for every birth, or mostly this one–the first time I’ll learn how I respond and cope and move and progress. The pieces of the story will all make their way into one I know I’ll want to tell and retell, to recall as clearly as I’m able for the rest of my life.

Nothing has ever felt bigger than this. And I wonder if there is anything bigger than this. Soon, we’ll leave this house as parents in progress, and we’ll return shortly after as parents in practice. This very minute, there are 250 lives coming into the world in every way, shape, form and circumstance. And this very minute, 250 mothers are becoming mothers again, or for the first time, and for each one of them, the moment must be very, very real.

Birth is indeed a transformation for everyone involved–not just mom, dad or baby, but for entire households and families. For grandparents becoming grandparents, for aunts and uncles meeting little bundles of joy, for doctors and nurses overcoming obstacles, making tough decisions, and ushering lives into the world day after day after day. There is nothing about me in this space that doesn’t want to change in every way that birth is meant to change me. I can hardly wait for what it will teach us, how it will grow us, and in which ways we’ll become better, softer, stronger for the experience.

expectant,

mm