I’m not sure when I actually felt pregnant. I took the at-home test, took the pictures of it, told my husband and…it didn’t feel real.
We told our parents and our closest friends – they rejoiced, we rejoiced…and it didn’t feel real.
I called the doctor and started taking pre-natal vitamins. We scheduled our first pre-natal appointment and, surprise surprise, it didn’t feel real.
It didn’t feel real when I peed in a cup at the doctor’s office, when they took three vials of blood, or when they sat me down to talk about various pregnancy things.
We announced it on Facebook and I blogged about it. People came up and hugged me and told me/us how excited they are. Guess what? It still didn’t feel real.
I downloaded baby apps and learned all that was and is supposedly happening to Monkey. How much he/she is growing, which body parts are becoming more distinct, what symptoms I could expect, all of it. And yet none of it felt real.
People talked me to endlessly (at least it seemed) about their pregnancies and all the horrid symptoms they experienced, the joy of knowing there was a little life inside of them and still nothing felt real.
We heard the heartbeat, which was wonderful and ‘real’ in some sense, but so fleeting that the realness of it didn’t penetrate my heart.
It wasn’t even so much that it didn’t feel real, but that it didn’t feel like I was pregnant. The words would come out of my mouth but they didn’t connect somehow. I’d go to Mass and relish the fact that, even in some tiny way, our baby could receive Jesus in the Eucharist, but that’s as close as I’ve ever been to feeling like it was real. I don’t have the ‘normal’ symptoms. I am tired, but not nearly as tired as most of my friends were during their first pregnancy. I don’t feel sick (minus a few hours/days), I’ve had no ‘weird’ cravings. The cravings I did (and do) have changed by the day and were more from ads I’d seen than what I’d really, really wanted. I’ve had a few aversions, but they were fairly minor. I never got sick (thank God!), but smells would make me queasy. But that’s it.
Slowly my pants stopped being comfortable, but I felt more bloat-y and chubby than pregnant. It didn’t feel like there was a baby growing in me but that I just felt…off.
But you know what? That’s okay. Every woman and every pregnancy is different. Mentally I know there’s a sweet little one (a.k.a. Monkey) growing in me. I know that he or she gets the best of everything I eat, makes me want to sleep while I can, and is sending my sense of smell through the roof. Mentally, I get it. Spiritually and emotionally, I’m not there yet. Maybe when my belly looks more like a pregnancy bump and less like I gorged on ice cream, or when I feel the baby kick, but for right now, its a mental thing. It is a, “God, even though this feels crazy, I trust you” thing. And that’s okay. Just because it isn’t all warm fuzzies all the time doesn’t mean I’m failing at pregnancy, it means that I’m learning things however God chooses to reveal them, and I’m choosing to trust in His plan.
Tomorrow we’re scheduled for an ultrasound, but no matter how real it feels, I’m choosing to trust the God who goes beyond feeling and straight for my soul.
