Anticipating Emma T-minus 31 days
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Nesting instincts definitely kicked in a week or two ago. We’ve managed to get almost everything sorted out and what remains are things that I would prefer not to do this early – like sterilising bottles, etc. I hope we haven’t left anything out.
Physically, I can’t wait for Emma to be born. Being pregnant has never been much fun for me, and I feel a lot heavier with Emma than with Matthew, so really, I’m yearning to feel light again. Would be such a refreshing change from reminding myself that I’m really not a whale.
Emotionally, I’m starting to reach Level Panic since remembering the other day that when Matthew was born, we had a helper and a confinement lady (that came for two weeks so we could learn the ropes from her)… just to tend to one Matthew. Now, we don’t have the confinement lady, and there’s Matthew the Toddler and Emma the Infant. But I know mothers who have a lot less help and still survive the chaos, so I shall just have to keep reminding myself to stay focused.
Spiritually, I’m ready. I think, I hope, I believe. Emma is for me, truly God’s blessing. Why? Because she was a planned baby, and when I say planned, I mean that we had worked out every single detail when we decided to have another child.
Things like, going through my first trimester at my inlaws’ while waiting for our keys so I could go through the morning sickness without having to worry about a brand new home to settle in. PLUS, my inlaws’ helper used to cook our meals so that was taken care of too.
The plan was also to extend our helper’s contract then, and she had said yes very readily too, so we knew we had someone to count on.
I had a rather stable part-time freelance job with my previous company.
And we wanted to conceive that month itself, or wait for another two to three months because renovation would’ve kicked in and I really preferred not to be sick all the time while that was going on.
Personally, I enjoyed Matthew being a Christmas baby… and I wanted Emma to be a year-end baby too. Also, it would be a lot more comfortable with the cool weather.
See how detailed The Plan was?
God willing, Matthew and Emma would just be two years apart.
Well, we took all these to God and He must have approved of The Plan cos I did conceive. (I remember telling Him, God, I’ve sorted myself out. Very, very clearly. The rest is up to You. If You want us to have this baby, then make it happen, or we may just change our minds.)
And then, everything else unravelled.
About a month before we were to move, our then-helper said she needed to go back urgently – like, the following week. We did what we could and she left me to pack the entire house by myself (mostly) and to unpack our lives at our new home mostly by myself too – pregnant, with a toddler, and having to cook real food for the first time in my life! But that really turned out to be quite an adventure that has shaped me to be a better person, I think.
My freelance job suddenly ended too. Nothing concrete was said, but things just happened and I hadn’t worked since. Not that I could have gone to work either, without a helper to take care of Matt at home.
All this while, I’ve been very conscious of how things have come to be. God knows us through and through. Without all the ‘stable’ circumstances we enjoyed back then, we wouldn’t have made the concrete decision to have a second child. And so He gave us all the material comforts for us to take that step.
Once that was firmly grounded, He removed everything – probably what He thinks we don’t really need in the first place. But it continues to amaze me because had God not put in place those things we needed to feel secure, Emma wouldn’t have happened (then again, she might… who knows, really?).
So for the last eight months, especially when things got tough, I constantly remember that God really wants us to have this child.
I didn’t dare say anything earlier, because I’m not sure why He wants us to have Emma. And as those close to me know by now, I am always acutely aware that God can want us to have something, and then experience loss, and through that loss, growth. That scares me. I used to think it’s a lack of faith on my part and that’s probably a contributing factor too. But today, I read an article on Oprah (on my Flipboard; Oprah provides me certain soul food!) that explained exactly what I feel [http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Catastrophizing-How-to-Feel-Joy-Without-Fear].
So I am again, reminded to be grateful for what I have, and to be thankful that I am able to feel joy, even if that means I have to feel vulnerable. And naturally, when your heart is stretched so big for your children, plenty of vulnerability creeps in.
So yes, I still have fears but I’m going to learn the practice of stopping in my fear to acknowledge that it is Vulnerability I feel, which is okay, which is good, even… because I want to embrace joy.
Yes. Spiritually, I’m ready for Emma.
Even though I admit I don’t quite know how to feel about her yet. Like I didn’t know how I would love Matthew.
But I choose to rest in Hope.
MMJ
