1. Pink moon
I’m calling this one ‘pink moon’ for the autumn bloom of the Toborochi trees in Santa Cruz. The flowers are bigger and bolder pink than cherry blossoms, packing some kind of tropical punch, but they remind me of Vancouver streets in spring, offering a little thread of connection to some other home. I’m writing here about pregnancy, my second pregnancy. I write for myself, for my child, and for you, listening and witnessing. Thank you.
To try to write about this experience feels at once daunting and redundant. Necessary and needless. Singular and superfluous. It’s the most human thing, to carry a baby, and it’s also the most personally transformative thing that has ever happened to me.
So, write I must. And perhaps, for all the times this has been experienced before, in all of its nuance across time and space, to be able to carve out moments to write and reflect about this process isn’t so common at all. (I can sit here now behind a closed door because my husband is with our almost-two-year-old daughter - dressing her, feeding her, playing with her, taking her to the potty, brushing her teeth, listening to her constant monologue mixed with kids’ songs en español.)
What, I wonder, would Mary have written for herself between her Magnificat song and the matter-of-fact statement (no doubt penned by a man) that ‘she gave birth to a son and laid him in a manger?’
Surely she experienced the same tidal rush of hormones at the onset of pregnancy, the full spectrum of feelings, the nausea, the aversion to foods she used to enjoy, the aversion to unwelcome advice?
(I wonder if Mary herself might be a friend to me on this journey, as we walk towards Christmastide due dates, and the fullness of time.)
On Friday, during a staff meeting and devotional time, I shared with my colleagues that I am pregnant. There were whoops and cheers and lots of “Felicidades!” afterwards. I suspected at least one person would say “I knew it!” - ‘you seemed exhausted’ or ‘you were eating constantly at your desk’ or ‘you had the cara de embarazo’ (whatever that is). Multiple people did seem to know, but it was because of Lydia, not me: the way she had been clinging to me the past few days, always wanting “Mamá!”...the fact that she’d been lying down on the ground recently (nothing to do with her being nearly-two), or sticking her head between her legs - all, apparently, sure signs of a pregnant mother! Now that they all know, I suppose I’ve consented to the stream of commentary, and the more subtle shift of attention from me as an individual to me as the bearer of a child.
For myself I need to find ways to honour and nurture the life that is growing within me while not neglecting my own life. This body is home for me, too.
It’s different, the second time around. The positive test didn’t rock me like it did the first time. Our daughter was right there with us in the bathroom, and she waved the double-lined stick around as if it were a new toy.
It’s sobering, the second time. I know, more or less, what is coming… the first trimester nausea that had me bent over the toilet bowl as a morning routine, the expansion of body and the diminishment of self as this tiny stranger demands more and more of my interior territory, my attention, my sleep. The ruthlessness of birth, the way it carried me to the fine line between life and death. The solitariness of it - what is happening in my body and what is my work to bring into the world, no matter how surrounded I may be by care and support.
I know more, and, at the same time, I know less. I want to yield to the losses while giving myself space to grieve them, I want to yield to the small deaths that allow life to come into the world, I want to contemplate the mystery of this new person, now just 0.1oz, who somehow will command all of my love, and more.
