At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
I want you to be my love
I want you to be my love
'Neath the moon and the stars above
I want you to be my love
 
I want you to know me now
I want you to know me now
Break a promise make a vow
I know, you want me now
 
Like I want you
Like I want you
 
I want you to be my love
I want you to be my love
'Neath the moon and the stars above
I want you to be my love
 
'Cause I want you
'Cause I want you
I know all you
All you've been through
 
- Over the Rhine
 
Dear Trey,
 
We’re getting to the end of this. Very soon, maybe sooner than we anticipated, we will no longer be just the two of us. We will be three, a change we will never go back on. I’m crying as I write this, not because I don’t want us to be three, and not just because of the hormones that seem to rage through me these days, but because the last five years have truly been better and more beautiful than I could ever have hoped for or imagined.
 
Our first dance song is playing right now and all I can think about is how afraid I was, even during that first dance. You have put up with so much fear. I hope I have not driven you crazy. But you have been my rock again and again. And you have been my truest friend. I am ready for this next step and more than excited to take it with you, but I also mourn the passing of this particular time we’ve had together. Our special little world is expanding, and though it is for the better good, I will always miss this world we have lived in for that past five years.
 
I know you will be a good father, just as you have been a wonderful husband. It may be years, most likely decades, before our little girl truly understands what she has in you. But I will know, and I will encourage her to see and understand it.
 
Thank you for loving me. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you rolling your eyes at me when I need them to be rolled. Thank you for laughing at me the way you do. Thank you giving me joy. Thank you telling me all about the weird, nerdy things you tell me about. Thank you for your stubbornness. Thank you for kind, sensitive heart. Thank you for being mine.
 
Let’s do this.

At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
 
It's become so hard to write. Not because there isn't anything to write about, but because there is too much to write about. Every day is filled with so much to process, so much to try to understand. Most days I just don't know where to begin.
 
Christmas was both a very good and a very strange time. For some reason a lot of people seem to think that it's particularly special to be pregnant at Christmas. This is so bizarre to me. Why would it be more special to be pregnant at Christmas than at any other time of the year? I guess the insinuation is that somehow it brings you closer to Mary's experience. That I understand. But shouldn't pregnancy bring any woman at any time closer to Mary's experience and the mystery of the incarnation? Christmas is simply a yearly reminder of what we should know to be true year round. The whole idea that it's more special to be pregnant at Christmas just feels to me like part of our romanticization of maternity.
 
Being home while pregnant was also weird, but in a totally different way. It felt similar to the first time I stayed in my parents' house after getting married. It was a marked reminder of the changes that happen in life – the dreams of an adolescent Hannah about marriage and family are no longer dreams, but reality. After marriage the physical presence of this man in my childhood bedroom marked change in ways I could touch and smell. With pregnancy, my own physical space within my parents' home is changing. I'm not just bringing another body into this space, but my body itself no longer exists the same way. I literally no longer move around the house in the same way I once did and that will intensify once this baby is born. My very movement is now marked by another and the space I inhabit changes as I change.
 
I had my first "stranger touches the belly" experience over Christmas. It was awkward. It was after church and I was catching up with an old friend. Her brother, who I've never met, came over and we all started chatting about the baby. He asked me if people touch my belly and as he asked, he reached over and touched it himself. I don't think he even thought about what he was doing, but it was quite a shocker.
 
The belly is definitely taking on a life of its own. Baby V moves around all night long. It seriously is like she's having a party in there. Sometimes I wake up and she is thudding against the walls of my uterus. Not kicking, not punching – full body slamming. I love her so much.
 
The aches and pains are definitely on the rise, too. Driving ten hours to Pittsburgh was a beast. Everything ached when we arrived and it took a few days for my muscles to loosen up again. I've started getting this pain in my left butt cheek, and my lower abdomen gets sore. Sometimes it seems like the baby is balled up in one area of my uterus, either down low or the side I'm sleeping on and then it hurts. I move to my back and she seems to move to a more central area and the relief is wonderful. We have three more months to go, so I can only imagine her love of curling up right on my bladder is only a foretaste of the discomfort due to arrive when she's so big there is nowhere else for her to go. I probably need to be doing more stretching, and I definitely need to be walking more. I tried to dance at Debbie's wedding and that was telling. Everything was so tight I could only make it through a song or two before needing to sit down for a break.
 
I just can't wait to meet this little girl. Every time I think about holding her and laughing with her, smiling into her eyes, I feel like I have a high school crush all over again. We started registering for baby items over Christmas and that was the worst. I hated just about everything having to do with deciphering and picking out things we want for the baby. There is just so much crap in the world to buy for a baby. Even now I can feel my blood pressure rise thinking about the baby registry. But when I think about the baby itself, I don't feel anxious. I know there is so much that I could be anxious about, but all I want to do is hug her. It's hard to feel anxious and afraid when you just can't stop thinking about meeting the person you've been feeling inside of you for months.

(Whitney Waller, "Pregnant.")

 Momma and Daddy's Flat, The White House Guesthouse, Glasgow
 
I really want to live abroad with my children whenever I have them. In particular, I would love to live in Edinburgh. Some of the greatest treasures of my childhood were my experiences living overseas and in various places around the county. As with most things in life, this is also funnily the most painful aspect of my childhood. For so much of my life, I longed to have a sense of place. But now I look back and am deeply thankful for the way my world was always a much bigger place than it would have been if I had just lived in one location. I hope I get the opportunity to share this aspect of who I am with my children.

B. and V.'s Flat, Shoreditch, London
 
I want to listen to my children if I have any. And by that, I don't mean adhere to them, but rather to take them seriously, to engage them, and above all to remember what childhood was like. I want to hear their souls.
 
We went to see Matilda tonight and it brought me to tears. Though my childhood was of course nothing at all like that depicted on stage, the point of the play hit home. So many things about childhood are deeply painful and adults too often feel distant and terrifying. Children think that growing up will give you the strength to overcome the multitude of fears you face and the loneliness you feel. Childhood in many ways is essentially lonely, even in the very best circumstances. Children may be dear playmates, but they are never less than competitors, and adults may be deeply loving, and have no clue how to communicate with you or hear, really hear, what lies underneath the seemingly simple exterior of your childhood.
 
Children are never simple and what may seem petty or foolish is usually only a simple expression of a very serious and complex emotion within. I observe many parents who don't understand their children, especially if they have moody children, and it makes me sad. These kids are simply dealing with all of the things we deal with now as adults, but in childish terms. If only more adults could remember, truly remember, what their internal lives as children were like, and from that starting point try to engage their children. This won't make their children any less sinful, but I imagine it would enable those children to feel less like growing up will solve all of their problems, and in turn create less adult exasperation that all of our problems haven't yet been solved.
 
Families are always messed up, and they always will be. Children will always have a rough time. Growing up will always suck. There were many things I loved about homeschooling and I still want to try to do it myself; but, if there is any charge that I level against the homeschooling movement of my childhood, it was the idea that homeschooling would fix families. Yes, I know (as so many parents have told me) that our childhoods were nothing like their unhappy experiences in the school system. I do not challenge that. But just because something is better than horrible does not mean it cannot also be painful. My siblings, my friends, and I all grew up in what were, all things considered, idyllic homes. And we all have deep turmoil in our souls over many things concerning our childhoods. Does this mean that our childhoods weren't good? Of course not! But it is a fault of homeschooling to fail to understand that even in healthier contexts we could have our own issues within childhood. If we can't openly talk about the pain of our experiences, we cheapen something that was good in a broken world by turning it into a false ideal. When we argue that something was better than the alternative, we sometimes fail to recognize the traumas of our own ways. We are all broken people with very real and significant pains – every happy homeschooling family included.
 
And this is why I want so much to really hear my children. Whatever paths we choose for and with them, their lives will be painful. They will be broken. I will cause that brokenness. And the worse thing I could do would be to think that I can create a system that would offset the brokenness, when really the best thing I could do is just actually get to know my child's heart. 

At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
 
I've been thinking a lot about how scary it is for me to think about giving up work to be a mother. I know that all mothers don't stop working, but most at least significantly alter their working life. At the minimum, I believe that as a mother, I would need to hold all of my work very loosely, willing to give it up if necessary for the good of my family. I think the recognition that having children could very well end my work identity is part of what scares me about having children.
 
The truth is, I am not the same person I was ten years ago. I once saw marriage and children as an escape, as a creative outlet for a life that I wasn't happy with. Everything in my life professionally made me afraid. Everything. The idea of pursuing something, sacrificing for something, and loving it, could never have entered my mind. I wanted many of the same things I want now concerning family life, but I wanted them for the wrong reasons - for meaning and fulfillment, for justification of my existence.
 
But I remember the time in life when all of that truly changed. I was 25 years old, living overseas, had experienced heartbreak, and had not a single romantic prospect. It was the most single time of my life. I was single and more than any other time in my life, I knew that singleness was truly what the Lord had called me to that year. And I was deeply and richly fulfilled. I loved my life and for the first time ever, I understood what joy in work was. I found work pleasant and meaningful. It was hard, but it was fascinating and I simply enjoyed it like I had never enjoyed it before.
 
Since that time, work is something I value. It's something that I like. I like my work. I don't need to run away from it into the fulfillment of a family. I don't need children and pregnancy to feel fulfilled. I am content and joyful now. This doesn't mean that I don't want a family, but it does mean that I don't feel the need to be a mother in order to find something that I enjoy doing. Once I did need that, now I don't.
 
The truth is that people do change and it's not always a bad thing. Of course I want children and a family, but just because that desire has been complicated by the discovery of my identity professionally, it does not mean that the changes in my life are for the worst. No one is stagnant – God is constantly giving us new experiences and new things to ponder and discover. I found out that I actually enjoy work and can find it quite fulfilling. Just because other women don't have this experience, just because it complicates my life, just because it changes things about who I am, these do not make me a bad person. People change. That's not always a bad thing.

At Home, East Arlington, Massachusetts
 
The last week was weird. Really weird.
 
Last weekend we got snowed in and didn't go anywhere. That was actually really nice. It was Valentine's Day on Saturday and Trey and I stayed in the whole day. He did a lot of homework, and I just totally relaxed. We had breakfast in bed and then made a yummy dinner. At the end of the evening, we randomly decided to watch Romeo + Juliet.
 
It was really fun, but by the end of the movie, I was kind of a wreck. It brought back so many memories from my teen years that I just do not like to think about. And the result of that was really not wanting to have kids. It wasn't because I felt afraid of them having the same difficulties; rather it was some kind of deeper reaction. It brought back so many memories of feeling alienated. It brought back how much I sometimes wanted to hurt myself. It brought back so much shame. It brought back the desire to do something to be recognized, to be proud of myself. Mostly, it just reminded me of how much I still haven't addressed these things that seem so far away in the past.
 
But I don't want to delve into these things. Thinking about doing so feels like taking my head and smashing it against the wall at full force. Things are so good now that I don't want to go back to the past. I feel like the issues of my teen years don't define me or my relationships today. I don't want to be sad or burdened by them, nor do I want others to be so. The older I get and the more I understand myself, the more I know that despite the brokenness, my teen years were full of so many good things. I don't want to doubt everything.
 
And yet, my visceral reaction to thinking about all of this is still a strong aversion to wanting children. I guess it just seems like there is still so much inside of me that I'm afraid of – fear, anger, insecurity. It scares me to think about either addressing it, or ignoring it and having it eek out into the lives of my kids.
 
But that wasn't the end of the strangeness of the week. After crying about it all for quite a while with Trey, things got back to normal. He truly is God's greatest blessing to me. I am so so deeply thankful for him. He, more than anything else, makes me want to have kids.
 
That is until on Monday when I developed serious acid reflux. I have never in my life experienced indigestion the way I experienced it this week. I couldn't eat anything without turning into a giant ball of belching. By Thursday, I was convinced I was pregnant. There was no particular reason for this idea apart from the fact that my stomach was doing super weird things it had never done before. But the lead up to taking a pregnancy test after a week of suspecting pregnancy preceded by a meltdown over having kids the weekend before made the test quite ominous.
 
It sucks being a woman in the 21st century. No, it doesn't suck. There are so many good things about it. But the conundrum of childbearing sucks. So many thoughts raced through my head. Relief at knowing I could get pregnant. Surrender to the inevitable. Anger that God would ordain this. Trust that what he wanted was best. Sorrow over lost opportunities to go back to school. Sorrow over my sorrow. Jealousy that other women get to do what they want. Acknowledgement that having children isn't the end of my life or personhood. Fear that Hannah as we know her will be gone forever once there is a baby around. Joy at the idea of a family. And so much confusion. Just so much confusion.
 
In the end, I am not pregnant. The lack of that little blue line both made me incredibly happy and reintroduced so much of the fear about whether or not I'll be able to get pregnant. But the final take away is that I thought quite a lot about what kind of person I want to be. I have come across so many women who are truly lost to their motherhood. The woman I once knew is gone forever and all that remains is an obsession with her children. It's all she can talk about and it's the only thing she is interested in defining herself by. She is no longer primarily a friend or a wife. She is a mother.
 
And the thing that drives me crazy and totally mystifies me is that they seem to do this to themselves willingly. They are their own agents of this change. Usually there is no lack of people willing to talk to them. I have sat with so many young mothers who have ceased to talk about anything except for their mothering. I have been a living, breathing person in their presence, willing and waiting to talk about anything we used to talk about and instead, we don't. The person I knew is gone.
 
This terrifies me. I want more for myself, but mostly, I want more for my children. I want to be the person in their lives who opens the door to the world. I want them to feel like the world is a bigger place because I am their mother, not a small place centering only on our family’s lived reality.
 
Today a picture popped up on Facebook of a mother and her children. I don't know this woman well, but for a long time she has symbolized to me much of what I want to be in motherhood. She is beautiful – not in some superficial or toned way, but she understands her own beauty and embraces it. She is engaged with the world and her mind is awake. And her smile is one of the most genuine motherly smiles I see in pictures on Facebook. She is a woman who has kept her personhood intact and it lets her love her kids ferociously.
 
That is the person I want to be. And not just when I am a mother, but now. 

At Home, East Arlington, Massachusetts

I rediscovered the Broadway soundtrack of Jane Eyre last night while cooking dinner and for some inexplicable reason, it made me want to have a baby more than anything else has since I got married. I was listening to the music and so many memories came flooding back into my head. Memories of college, memories of friendships, memories of excitement about life, memories about the hopes and dreams my sophomore self had. But also just memories of peace in uncertainty and of the Lord ministering to my soul through the music. There is so much joy and longing bound up in that music for me, and somehow that translated into wanting a baby. It was one of the first times I've been able to say, "I don't know how it's all going to work out. I don't know how to schedule and plan everything. But that doesn't matter." It's kind of thrilling.