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I am 16 weeks and one day pregnant today.
It was interesting to read the audiobook of Plenty, my new memoir this last week, where I wrote a lot about my experience being pregnant the first two times—the first time, I lost the pregnancy suddenly and painfully. The second time was with Simone. Some of these pregnant moments felt fresh, and others felt like ancient history even though they were not objectively long ago at all.
Simone is 14 months old now, and she just started walking her heart out (watch out, world!). She’s also going through a really needy time where she wants to be in my arms whenever we’re in a new place or with new people. If I put her down, she’ll cry, whine, extend her arms, hold onto my leg for dear life, and keep crying until I pick her back up. (Carrying her is good arm workout, I guess?)
This made me sad, at first, last week when we went to meet a neighborhood toddler and her parents at the playground. The other toddler was toddling away, exploring, climbing, and splashing in the fountain. As long as I held Simone, she was happy people watching and waving to dogs. The moment I put her down…well, she was not having any of that. It was a scorching hot day, so we went into the fountain together. The water made a rainbow on the concrete, and I enjoyed catching up with the parents. We went home wet and happy.
What will life be like with two babies?
I spent my first pregnancy ecstatic (for the most part) and the second one scared (for the most part). Excited and happy, but also heart-achingly scared, after feeling blindsided by the abrupt end to the first pregnancy.
The fear slowly ebbed as I passed my first trimester and ticked into the second, as test after test came back looking normal and good. Yet it felt impossible to eradicate it entirely. Behind every happy and hopeful moment, I felt the lingering sadness of our previous loss.
This time around I’m a mix of the two—of nerves and excitement—but with a new level of overwhelm from juggling a baby and my career. From the relentless and life altering hugeness of being a new mom. From the world shifting under our feet during the pandemic and slowly and uneasily shifting back, or maybe to somewhere new entirely.
I don’t know my body—after pregnancy and breastfeeding and then just a tiny break until getting pregnant again, it felt and still feels not entirely my own.
Two weeks ago, the pregnancy app said the baby was a navel orange, then last week a pear, and then this week an avocado, but aren’t all those things roughly the same size?
It’s early days, but I’ve felt some flutters. They stopped me in my tracks. A fish swimming in my belly. The strangest feeling, and the coolest one.
Who will this little person be?
Every single human was born, and yet it doesn’t stop being remarkable, almost unreal, that we grow each other in our bodies, that my body is growing a person right now, as I write this, making cells into a small boy or girl I will get to meet and care for and love with an all-consuming, melting love. As I giggle and cry and answer emails. As I throw Simone her rainbow-colored ball and feed her two favorite foods in the world, oranges and hummus.
Simone is my rainbow baby, a baby after loss.
What is this baby? A golden baby?
This time, the first trimester was rough. My nausea come and went in waves, but it came a lot, and I spent a significant amount of time hunched over the toilet. Even worse was the exhaustion, which felt especially cruel as I was just recovering from that newborn tired haze, the sleepless days and nights that meld into each other and lose any kind of container or order. Did I brush my teeth? What even is time? Pregnancy exhaustion is a special sort, my whole body screaming STOP just as I’m going about my day, as if hadn’t slept for an eternity, as if I’ve just been hit by a truck. As if my body is very, very busy, which it is.
The first times around, I could lay around on the couch a lot, reading and eating popsicles. I could really lean into self-care. It’s not so easy this pregnancy, with a very busy little girl who goes and goes like the energizer bunny. I’m trying to take care of me, now for me and this creature I am growing, for Simone, for my husband, for the other people in my life who deserve more than a depleted zombie mom/wife/daughter/friend.
I’m trying, but I’m not sure how great of a job I’m doing. I’m usually deeply tired. Most days feel hard.
I don’t mean to complain. I feel so profoundly lucky it throws me for a loop. But also, I’m struggling.
That’s my motherhood experience so far: low lows and sky-scraper high highs.
This going-to-be-a-baby chose me, or we chose each other. I don’t quite believe in God, but the whole thing feels pretty much holy.
The baby is due Thanksgiving.
My world will be a different world.
Everything keeps changing.
Here we are, growing together, this soon-to-be baby and me.