My body is changing so quickly to accommodate new life–these new breasts and veins, this expanding belly, and the feeling of our baby moving within . . . an uncomfortable miracle.

I can’t imagine there is anything more personal than holding a life inside yourself–nourishing a soul into physical existence with your own breath, your own body.

Becoming a mother is beautiful . . . and painful and exhausting.

I now understand why many wild animals just disappear into a suitable bush by themselves to give birth, only appearing when they and their young are good and ready.

I’m trying very hard to stop explaining my choices in regard to pregnancy and having children, even (or perhaps especially) when pressed. It seems my aversion to expectations is bordering on pathological and it’s no wonder to me that children take months to be able to walk . . . expectations are by far and away the heaviest material known to man.

I cannot wait to meet this person we made. I’m not particularly interested in shopping for baby things, I don’t have a theme or care what the nursery looks like, and I have no preference for gender.  But I cannot wait to meet this person we made–to show him or her what we love about this beautiful world and to find out what he or she will bring into our world that we have no way of knowing yet.

I worry about this child’s health, about all the things that could go wrong from now until I’m dead and can’t worry anymore. But alongside the fear is the most incredible hope and joy–a confusing mix that I imagine will simply be a part of the rest of my life–my uncomfortable miracle, indeed.