Letters to my unborn child - 24 weeks

I am currently sitting on the verandah at our dear friends' house, gazing into green and feeling unusually zen. We've celebrated Christmas and today is my birthday eve. Tomorrow I turn 35 - an age I find hard to comprehend. Ah time - you certainly are a mystery. Next year, you'll be with us and our lives will have changed in ways we can't imagine. 

Christmas has held special meaning for me this year as I have thought about Mary and how she must have felt before and while her body birthed Jesus in an animal shed. Was she frightened? Or strangely at peace? Was her body sore and uncomfortable? Did she wonder if she'd imagined everything about her child's conception? Did anyone come to help her that night she laboured? Was she filled with awe and delight the moment she set her eyes on her baby son or did she feel like she held a tiny stranger in her arms? 

The Incarnation feels especially important this year in the midst of such global chaos and widespread grief. And not just God becoming flesh, experiencing humanity in all its rawness in Christ's lived out life - but being born of flesh - to a fully human woman - that seems critical too. Those nine months of pregnancy - the stretch marks and nausea and rollercoaster emotions - that was important. The groans and mess and exhaustion of labour - that was important too. It was important because Mary wasn't God. But from her pain and her confusion and her limited and mortal understanding of what was happening, came the long-awaited salvation of the world. Not in a dramatic, spectacular fashion (although the shepherds perhaps would beg to differ), but in a slow-moving, ordinary, messy story that spanned three decades of a mother learning her son. 

And somehow, the difficult waiting and the dark unknown-ness of the future that lies before me seems slightly more bearable. The word 'adventure,' derives from the Latin 'about to happen' and shares the same root, the 'advenire' - 'to arrive', with the word 'advent'. Pregnancy is an adventure - the perilous journey before the arrival of a life-change.

May the advent of the Christ child, born so human-ly, be our strength and encouragement in our adventure. 

Merry Christmas (season, not day).

Mother.

Letters to my unborn child - 22 weeks

 Hello again,

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. We had your detailed scan and I am pleased to report that all is well. You spent most of the appointment curled up on your belly - like a little frog the radiologist said! It was pretty incredible. I can't get over the miracle of two tiny cells becoming a fully formed human - with organs and bones and the beginnings, already, of a unique personality. You were being awfully coy about displaying your genitals, so we haven't been able to confirm if you'll be a Phoebe or Phoebo - though the odds are in favour of the former. I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Meanwhile, we've been having a bit of a stressful time. We moved out of our flat this last weekend and have moved in with your granny and grandpa (temporarily). We have managed to accumulate an awful lot of... stuff and packing it all up was exhausting and actually quite painful, given my bloated state. (The french word for pregnancy, incidentally, is 'la grossesse'. It is very fitting). 

Besides the physical pain, it was also a real emotional wrench. That beautiful flat was my home for more than three years (the longest I've lived anywhere since leaving home!) and was your dad's and my first home as a couple. It has been a safe refuge for me through two arrests and a coup, and an oasis of calm and beauty through changing jobs and car accidents and all the other minor calamities of life. It's also where I fell in love with your dad as he brushed past me, helping me wash dishes in the teeny, tiny kitchen, and where we had our first kiss and spent our first night as a married couple. It was a happy home filled with dancing and cooking and pottering.

We are hopeful though that this is the first step in preparing ourselves for LATT (Life After The Trial) when your mother will (hopefully) be acquitted of her terrorist charges and will be able to retrieve her passport from the Rotten Court. Our landlords have been incredibly generous and have said we can use their cottage as a base while we wait. I will also be gainfully employed next year, thanks to an extended contract, and your dad has been given the freedom to continue his studies online until we can all leave together. I am overwhelmed with gratitude - for God's faithful provision; for our families and friends; for the kindness of strangers; for heavy rain and the glorious green of trees.

You continue to make your presence known with your dolphin imitation in my belly - but your father has yet to feel you move. He claims all he can feel are my digestive processes - which is a little revolting and I am certain is not true. 

Signing off for now,

Mother

Letters to my unborn child - 19 weeks

 Hello you!

So much part of me and yet not. I'll come clean and say I've not really known how to respond to you - this pregnancy has felt very alien in many ways. Which is not to say you are not wanted - you very much are - I just think I hadn't really processed what pregnancy would be. I've thought about being a mother and having a family but I don't think I ever imagined myself pregnant! 

It's a very strange feeling having your body invaded by - a life! For weeks I couldn't see anything different in me but felt like my emotions, my bodily impulses, my brain had been affected by some drug I didn't remember taking. Now that your growing body is more evident in mine, I'm finding being pregnant less abstract and easier to imagine that you're there. Now my battle is to fight the anxiety that comes with my consciousness of your presence - what if....? What if it isn't? What if I'm not enough?

Mercifully, your father has been nothing short of a saint. He has rubbed my neck and made me ginger tea and made sure I was eating my snacks and let me soak his t-shirt in my tears that were sometimes rational but mostly not. Good men do exist and your dad is one of the best. He has sacrificed so much to be an equal partner in this journey and I will be forever grateful. 

Next week we get to see you in a detailed scan. I am equal parts terrified and excited. 

Until then, stay comfy and if you could give me a kick or two occasionally so I know you're ok, that would be grand. 

In fear and trembling,

Your mother.

P.S. It's about to pour with rain - the sky is dark, the air is thick with humidity (yup my hair is all over the place), and the wind is starting to pick up, wafting hints of petrichor through our living room. I really hope you will get to experience African thunderstorms like this. There's nothing like it.