At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
Pregnancy is just kind of a demoralizing experience. There is so much about it to love. I love feeling my baby move inside of me. I love the way it has opened my eyes to the realities of being a woman. I love the way pregnancy puts so much into perspective, not quite drowning out my goals and interests in life, but providing a reprimand to the ways I can obsess over them. I love the way I am being forced to consider my body and accept its power and limitations. But despite all of these things, there is still so much about pregnancy that I find to be humiliating and demoralizing.
 
To start, there is the persistent physical discomfort. Even my second trimester was marked by it. My body aches and groans and at times it rears up against me in violent protest as it simultaneously stretches and squashes. Every night I go to bed with a whimpering body trying to digest what it needs but is unable to take in and process. I wake up in the middle of the night and my hips are sobbing as they try to slowly unhinge and loosen to make room. The walls of my belly exist in shocked protest as an ever bigger and bigger foot or elbow thrusts newfound weight against them. My body often can’t seem to decide if this is the best thing ever – because it is what it was made to do – or the most embarrassing, as it struggles to figure out how to make it all work. It doesn’t feel like failure – not at all. But it does feel like a slow, nine month long study in confusion and mayhem.
 
And I feel this all the most when it comes to sex. My body seems to be so distracted by everything else it’s trying to figure out that sex is pretty much the last thing it wants. I often grieve over this reality for my husband, but in truth, it’s just as sorrowful for myself. I love sex, but I do not love it with a bowling ball strapped to my midsection and hips that scream when twisted. I don’t feel like myself. I don’t not feel beautiful; in fact I love my belly and the shape it’s given me. I just feel like my body doesn’t know what to do with itself.
 
I remember thinking before we got pregnant that the whole experience would be so romantic. Sex to try to conceive would be so hot and we would have nine months of googly eyes before the baby came. Trey and I have had many wonderful moments throughout these months. We have had some beautifully intimate and special times, and I have never felt more protection, concern, and affection from my husband than during these months. He has served me sacrificially the whole way through. But it hasn’t necessarily been romantic – getting pregnant was more funny than anything else and my body has generally not been well disposed to food and late night activities. The idea of a babymoon sounds more exhausting than rewarding. Survival has been the goal more than anything else.
 
I don’t want to complain. I really, really, really don’t want to complain. All of this is worth it and more than anything else in the world I can’t wait to meet my daughter. But I also just wish I could have better understood how much the sacrifices of motherhood would start with pregnancy, not birth. My expectations weren’t right. The challenge parenting presents to your sense of self starts at the very beginning, at conception. From that first moment, the call to give of yourself begins, and though the physical reality of my life will soon start to improve once again, the need to die to self has only just begun.

(Image by Wolfgang Sterneck, "A Reality called Boom."

At Momma and Daddy’s, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 
Today was a really wonderful day. My mom threw a shower for me here in Pittsburgh and it was one of the most encouraging experiences I’ve had in a long time. It reminded me what community is. So many women from so many different walks of life were there – some of whom I haven’t seen for a really long time. And they all were so loving and excited. Many of them are older than almost anyone I spend time with in Boston. I always forget how stunted my life is in Boston – no one over the age of 40 spends time with me – but here, more than half of the group was older women and it was like a drink of refreshing water.
 
A. gave a really beautiful devotion/testimony and everything she said was exactly what I needed to hear. One of the most memorable points she made is that fear is not necessarily a bad thing going into parenthood. Fear is a natural human response to something we know is bigger than ourselves, out of our control. But what we do with our fear matters. As Christians, we are called to take our fear to the Lord. All in all, it was a very, very sweet day. Like honey to my soul. I feel so loved and refreshed, and am so thankful for women who remind me of what real life is like, far from the madding crowd of Boston.

At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
Pregnancy is rough. I’m so tired of it. My body is tired, my mind is tired. Sometimes my soul feels tired. I know it’s not going to get any better when I have an infant, but nonetheless, I feel very ready to not be pregnant any more. I am just not a good pregnant lady.
 
Last night I couldn’t sleep and those are just always the worst days. It’s totally unpredictable when I will and won’t be able to sleep, so I haven’t really taken any steps to deal with the insomnia. I just lie there at night and everything aches. My back and hips ache if I lie on my back. My stomach hurts if I lie on my side, even with all of my pillows. I feel itchy. And my legs are starting to feel more and more restless. And as all of this is going on, my mind races over everything that I’m worried about. Am I just going to crash and burn next year? There is so much I want to do and this child is not going to let me do it all, so what do I choose to give up?
 
Trey asked me a couple days ago if I feel ready for motherhood. The truth is I don’t. I don’t in the slightest way feel ready. In fact I feel afraid. But that is only when I think about it in the abstract. When I think about this abstract idea of motherhood and all that it involves, I’m very frightened and I feel very vulnerable. But when I think about my actual baby, when I think about actually getting to hold her and look at her, kiss her and welcome her into the world, then I don’t feel afraid. I don’t feel afraid because the concrete excitement and beauty of getting to greet this little person make all of the abstract fears and concerns step down and take a back seat. Motherhood is a scary thing, but what gives me courage is the chance to get to know and hold my child.
 
And she is there, she is alive. Every day there is something new to discover. Yesterday I put two and two together and realized that she starts to move when I’m playing music. I’m not sure how I missed it before, but I’ve noticed that she is pretty quiet when the house is quiet. But not long after I start to play music, that is when all of the sudden the kicking and jumping starts. I tested it again this morning and sure enough… she was silent all morning and then as soon as I put on some music, the rolling, rounding, bumping movements began.
 
How can I be afraid of these scary ideas in my head when I will soon meet a life that already dances?

At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
This.

At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
“But your setting up a fundamental conflict there. This is a 0 sum game of rights. Either a woman has a right to not be forced into pregnancy or a fetus has a right to be born. You either commit violence against women or violence against the unborn. It's debatable whether a fetus is human, it's not debatable that a woman is.”
 
This comment I saw on Facebook is exactly why we need better theology concerning womanhood.
 
Also, I started posting this journal to the blog and am feeling pretty terrified. I just really don’t want to get slammed and social media is a minefield these days. No, it’s not a minefield. It’s all out nuclear wasteland.

At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
I watched this video today and wept. I’m crying inside over the Women’s March and I’m crying inside over the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and I’m crying because I see so few places for women to turn to discover beauty. Though I don’t begrudge anyone for going to the march, I just can’t find in it the beauty creation promises. It offers togetherness and unity, but demands the price of glorifying a shattered and broken image of womanhood. Is performative political posturing the best we really have to offer women? It doesn’t matter how many women scream together. If what they scream is empty then beauty won’t be found there. You can collect a million shattered mirrors and still only see a fractured and dim image of what is supposed to be. Control is what the world wants; control is what women want. The promise the world offers is that through power, women will finally gain control over the chaotic dissonance of their earthly bodies. As long as this is what we believe, true community between mother and child, between the generation that produces life and the generation that receives it, will be lost. Wholeness – the pushing back of the chaos of the womb – begins not through autonomy, but through community. It is only through the promise of the gospel, the restoration of creation, that peace can be found between my body and the life that it was created to produce.

At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
“Christians are greatly criminal for not living in the constant enjoyment of God. He is ever ready and willing to manifest the glories of his character to their souls; and nothing but their native opposition to holiness, and their love of evil, ever perverts. Are not believers inconsistent creatures? They can speak of a Savior’s love, the happiness resulting from an acquaintance with God, and point out the road to impenitent sinners, which alone will lead to substantial bliss; and yet often wander in forbidden paths – lose all relish for spiritual enjoyments, and rest contented with the low pleasures of sense.
 
If I am a child of Jesus, this inconsistency has often been mine. And yet I long for a greater sense of my dependence, and more entire conformity to Him who died for me. If any thing here deserves the name of happiness, it does not spring from earth. No! it is of heavenly birth, and comes from the regions of purity. The vast and boundless desires implanted in the human heart, cannot by satisfied with any thing short of God. Nothing in heaven or earth is capable of affording real bliss, without him.”
 
- Harriet Newell, 1811

At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
Oh my goodness. I just read a woman’s post on the baby app about her baby boy who was born with severe birth defects. He lived for only 20 minutes before passing away. Her feed had his sonogram pictures and the pictures she took immediately after his birth in the hospital. It was too much emotionally. I start sobbing. These stories are always heartbreaking, but reading them while expecting and with all of these hormones going through me, I thought that I was going to pass out. The emotional weight of it was too much.
 
I had never heard of the whole “rainbow baby” thing until starting to follow this app. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what all of the rainbow emojis were for, but once I did figure it out, the weight of them really hit me. It’s chilling how many women use the emoji.
 
Oh our broken world! What a sad place the world sometimes is. The weak and vulnerable are truly that in this world – too small and too fragile for those who are strong to know how to protect and preserve them. The small things are the most easily neglected, forgotten, trodden on. But we serve a God who became small. The biggest thing became the smallest thing, the weakest and most vulnerable. His birth was the ultimate rainbow – the sign to this world that the destruction of the small and fragile will not go unnoticed, will not go forgotten. The suffering that has been hidden by its smallness will be revealed, and then justice and redemption will arrive.

At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
As the day ends I am deciding not to be anxious about what people think of me, of us, of our life decisions. We are doing both what we love to do and what we think God is calling us to do. We live in a community where our lifestyle isn’t that unusual, and though everyone outside of this bubble might think we’re crazy, I’m ok with it. I like our life. This is what we’ve chosen, and I don’t want to change it for another.

At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
Our new apartment sits adjacent to a pre-school. Today is pretty warm so the kids were playing outside this morning. You can hear them pretty loudly from the living room, which is pretty funny at times. Yesterday they were all howling for a good ten minutes. Today I’ve been imagining how much Baby V is going to want to watch them from the window when she hears them come outside to play. And eventually she is going to want to play with them. I can just imagine her little head perched against the window, longing to play with the big kids. It was a lovely morning, sitting in the sunshine, working on my thesis, and contemplating my little girl. I can’t wait to meet her.