What it's like to be 37 weeks pregnant

Cause let's face it, what else could I write about right now?

Photo by Isabella Angélica

Dear reader,

I’ve been wanting to write to you for weeks.

Racking my brain trying to figure out what to share.

And honestly, most of the time these past few months, I’ve felt lost in a pregnancy brain fog, unable to string together a coherent train of thought.

Most of my focus these days goes to preparing for the baby, so maybe it hasn’t been the best time for writing anyway.

But I want to keep up this practice and this newsletter, which feel kind of holy to me.

Months ago, I wanted to write more about the magical feeling of participating in the life-making process. I don’t feel that - or the overflowing sense of happiness I experienced earlier in my pregnancy - so much right now.

Instead I find myself (at 37 weeks and 5 days) feeling uncomfortable, irritable and generally unsatisfied.

I also feel a little sad right now about where I’m at: so far into the pregnancy that there is certainly no going back now (not that I’d want that, although there are some things I miss about my pre-pregnancy life) - yet not far along enough that I can meet my baby.

It’s like being stuck in an uncomfortable waiting room, for an unknown amount of time. Waiting for someone to call my name - for my body and baby to wake me up from this daze with the loud message that it’s time. Time to deliver my baby from his comfy home inside of me and bring him into this world.

My partner has repeatedly stated that the baby is not here yet, because it’s not outside of my womb. But that couldn’t be farther from my lived experience - that this baby IS here - and alive and well and kicking - right down there, on the other side of my belly!

While I could forget that I was pregnant at times earlier in the first or second trimester, there’s no forgetting anymore. The effects of this pregnancy - this human life growing inside of me - are already permanent.

Lately however one of my favorite things to do is to any activity that helps me try to forget I am pregnant - like binge watching The Walking Dead or watching porn. I feel a bit of shame admitting how addicted I seem to be to those two things at the moment - my tendency towards escapism still going strong.

I tell myself these activities are the opposite of what my more enlightened, super spiritual, hippie friends would do during pregnancy. That instead of filling my mind with filth and violence and smut, I should be meditating more, visualizing, chanting mantras and affirmations, working on my breathing techniques, and becoming a hypnobirthing expert. I’m going to be a mother after all - I should be perfect!

But like the chocolately Kellogg’s KitKat cereal I scarfed down this morning with my iced coffee, I imagine these vices are good for me in some way.

They help me to relax (yes, watching people kill zombies oddly calms down my nervous system) and to not make myself more miserable by focusing on the nagging indigestion, back aches, swollen feet and other weird symptoms of pregnancy I’m too embarrassed to share here.

It’s also a convenient way to avoid feeling - and feeding - my fears around having a baby, becoming a mom and taking care of myself, my relationship, my child, my home and family. (What if I don’t do it well enough? What if we’re not good enough?)

So I’m in the process of going from maiden to mama. The experience of pregnancy and birth are a rite of passage, so they say.

In Emily Ratajkowski’s book, My Body, she shares what it’s been like for her to relate to herself, the world, and her body as one of the most conventionally attractive women and successful models of our time.

At the end of the book I was positively shook when she ended the last chapter with the story of the birth of her son. From maiden to mother, she discovered her power.

I felt so connected to Emily all throughout reading her story. Maybe, after 30 years of feeling like the most important thing about my body is how it looks and is perceived by others, I too am waking up to the otherworldly power contained in my female body. A power so much more than ‘what it looks like’. A power to house, to hold, nourish and nurture and feed the next generation.

I sobbed so hard upon finishing that book.

How serendipitous, I thought, to pick up and read this by chance, right now at this exact time of my life. When I, like Emily, will soon give birth to my first son.

I can feel him pressing against my belly right now. The skin of my tummy stretched tight around him. Containing him, holding his whole moving, living being within my being.

Pregnancy is a trip.

As for motherhood, well - I imagine that to be even more of a trip than I can possibly fathom from where I sit right now. On the cusp of it. About to tip, to spill over into it with my entire being. Standing still, with no choice but to surrender myself fully to the roller coaster that is it - motherhood - in just a matter of weeks or days.

I guess the whole of pregnancy is a process and practice of surrendering.

I have some more thoughts I want to share - like how for most of my life, I thought becoming a mom meant ‘going crazy’. But that’s a story for another day. And a fear to work with, ideally before the birth of my baby.

Today I will write out my fears and turn them into affirmations - and hang them around my house to inspire courage and strength in me before the big day.

I’ll eat some healthy food to balance out my sugary breakfast.

And probably end the day on the couch with Netflix again.

How will you spend your day?

What are you avoiding - or surrendering to - right now?

What did this sharing bring up in you?

Let me know in the comments and as always,

wishing you some love and honesty for your day,

Chelsea