Full to Overflowing

Have you ever had a secret you were bursting to share? 

No, not the juicy, gossipy kind. The beautiful kind - the kind that makes you smile at strangers and wish somebody else knew why you were smiling so that they would smile knowingly with you.

I've been holding onto that kind of secret. 

Which is why I've been so blog silent...

Because when you're holding that kind of secret there's really nothing else you want to talk about, but you know you can't talk about that just yet. So you're left tongue-tied, and feel false writing about anything else. It's like impatience times a hundred.

But that's all over now because the words have finally been set free:

We are having a baby!

(I wish you could see my face as I typed that...I literally cannot stop smiling)

For weeks I have held that secret, that little joy in my chest, shared by only my husband and a handful of others. But last week the big 3 month threshold was crossed and we got to blow the doors wide open on it, letting all our loved ones share in the incredibly good news! 

Somehow sharing the knowing makes it all seem more real.

Which is great, because right now I don't feel pregnant.

I haven't been sick at all. I don't have the adorable round belly yet. 

And Life goes on as usual: 

Work and friends and family, commitments and dinners and phone calls.

But all the while I know in my knower that something has changed. It's like this inevitable trajectory has been set before me that no one else can see yet and that I have virtually no control over. 

It makes me see my mother in a whole new light.

It makes me want to call her everyday and listen to her beaming on the other end of the line 

because she knows. I am suddenly, beautifully awakened to all that she must know. 

Because she has been here before. 

In fact, we were here together, if you think about it.

She and I, at the beginning, starting something absolutely new together.

And now it's my turn...that is incredible to think about. 

Now let's back up here before you get the sickening sensation that I am only irrationally giddy about this whole pregnancy thing: 

A) Despite being on the back side of my twenties and despite being a nurse, I have almost no idea what I'm doing. I sat at our first prenatal appointment hanging on my midwife's every word. It's like everything I was taught in my maternity/delivery semester has been obliterated. This must be what people with dementia feel like, "I know I knew that once..." 

B) I hold absolutely no illusions that all will be rosy once the birth is over. Haha, no. That's when things get real. Not 48 hours after the most defining physical experience in most women's lives, the hospital actually sends you home with this wee helpless thing that is totally dependent on YOU. No how-to book, no "come back if this doesn't work out", just a smile and a wave and this new little life is in your hands. How's that for responsibility?

But while I'm anxious about the not knowing and nervous about being a parent, there is this unexplainable contentedness at feeling made for the part. Like joy finding a home.

It's amazing how you can know you were made to do something without ever having done it. 

Maybe it's intuition, or maybe that's what they mean when they say "motherhood", but something has kick-started that was there all along. Lying dormant. Waiting for the go ahead. 

And now the time has finally come.

Before this year is out I am going to be a mother, 

and it feels completely right.