3rd Trimester Reflections: Elephant blessings and brokenness

This pregnancy has been earth-rattling for me.  For those that don't know, I did not expect this pregnancy.  At all.  Let's start at the beginning....

I'd had a tough time for the last year and a half back in October.  I'd experienced personal loss and the stress of a master's program on top of trying to make life balance with the reality of having a young family.  I was struggling and in October, I finally put down the "everything is fine...everything will be okay" façade and let myself feel the sadness and stress instead of forcing the denial on myself.  I was accepting of that I was in internship, doing school, doing life and just trying to make everything work, and letting myself admit how stressful it seemed was a freeing experience.

I was ready to just get back on track with my healthier balance in life...

3 weeks later was a positive pregnancy test...

BLAM!  Just like that...the dreams and goals I'd had for myself were dealt a serious blow.  See, in my mind, I was supposed to be able to finish up internship in the summer and go on to work.  All my kids were going to be in school, which freed up my husband to go to school and also to be there for the girls before and after school.  We were onto the next stage and I was thrilled...NOW THIS...

It was going to be diapers all over again, midnight feedings, babyproofing the house, car seats...but I'd just moved on from all this.  Not only that, my husband and I have always wanted someone to be home with the kids until around age 3 before sending them to preschool.  We wanted to love them and be consistent and give them a solid foundation for their really formative years (and studying attachment theory has made me even stronger in my own personal conviction on this).  Now this...

I was supposed to be able to focus on school and internship...just learn and grow...not grow another human being in the process...Now this...

I was moving on from the itty bitty kid stage!  I had dreams and goals!  So did my husband!  What the heck?!?!  This just smothered any fire I had for what I'd perceived my future to be.  I was done having kids...Now this...

I'd worked really hard for the last two years on getting healthy, and when my grandma passed and school got harder, I was struggling some again with staying focused.  I was finally getting back on track and feeling more like myself again...now this...

Adding to my anxiety and distress, my pendulum would swing from this emotional side of me to my rational/reasonable side....I have many friends who have struggled with infertility....HOW DARE I BE UNGRATEFUL..."Children are a blessing from the Lord" "Quivers full of them"....I SHOULDN'T FEEL THIS LOATHING OF AN IMAGE BEARER...I've been entrusted with another life by God's design...HOW DARE I QUESTION GOD'S PLAN....My husband is thrilled and is really good with kids...WHY CAN'T I MUSTER WANTING THIS CHILD?....and so many more "reasons" I shouldn't feel as distressed and bitter as I did.  I had the reasons...and they weren't untrue.  They were true.  So why didn't they help?

The more I focused on the emotion and grief of loss of my plans...the more I started to spiral into severe anxiety...the more I focused on the reasons I shouldn't feel the way I do and they were based on truth...the more bitter and resentful I became.  The first 10 weeks were a complete pendulum swinging between wallowing in my anger and living in denial of it for all the "right reasons."  

I was so anxious that I was literally making myself sick.  My nausea and food aversion were through the roof.  I would fluctuate between not wanting to eat and eating everything in sight.  I was so angry, confused and overwhelmed that I couldn't hear neither "congratulations" NOR "well, was this on purpose?  Don't you already have a lot of kids?..."  I couldn't handle the reactions.  I told no one outside of a couple of friends for just short of the first 3 months.  I was furious and grieved.  This wasn't the way it was supposed to be...

I finally got up the guts to tell my family at Christmas (12 weeks in) because I was finally to a minimal acceptance of the pregnancy.  I could handle strange looks or congratulations.  I just had to bite the bullet.

2nd trimester was less anger and frustration and more acceptance...the problem was when my fall semester ended for internship and school...I'd already been so frazzled that I wasn't helping my immuno-suppressed state that comes with pregnancy, and then when the adrenaline dropped off, my health tanked.  I was sick with bronchitis, norovirus, then three sinus infections.  I was sick and not able to engage in my schoolwork nor my clients as full-throttle as I'd wanted to.  I fought hard to do the best I could and I finally get well for two weeks at the end of February...

Then, I have a trip to India that I'd signed up for back in the summer.  Yes, I've had people question my sanity in doing this.  However, it was a tremendous trip training the staff of a human trafficking organization about how trauma affects their clients and ways they can care for themselves...I also got hours for my internship which meant that I would be able to finish in the summer before the baby came.  It was an amazing trip...and the unfortunate part was I caught ANOTHER sinus infection somewhere in the travels and went through almost the who trip sick again...

Little did I know, though, how much I would need that India trip.  I didn't really realize that I was just surviving the pregnancy and life in general until I was having to process with the group there of my schoolmates and professor.  As one of my friends pointed out, I was still referring to the baby as "this baby" or "that baby."  This is distancing language that I did not even realize that I was using until this friend pointed it out.  But then, God sends these people that I needed at just the right time, including the husband of my professor whose first wife had passed away several years ago, but that wife had found herself unexpectedly pregnant and I found that they had wrestled with things like I had...and for him, when his wife passed, it was caring for this youngest (the only one still in the home) that drove him to keep living...otherwise, he says he would have collapsed in grief.  My eyes filled with tears as I realized I felt a kindred spirit with his wife and the struggles as he described them...his story was the beginning of a change in my trajectory and perspective.

Among many crucial people and thoughts that happened on that trip, there was a profound change that happened in me at the most unexpected place on the trip.  We went on one of our final days for elephant rides.  I didn't want to risk falling, so I didn't go.  However, the one of the workers there asked if I would want to have an elephant blessing.  Wanting to be polite, I agreed, having no idea what it was.  Just as I approach the elephant, the man explains that they believe in India that elephants are God's messengers and that their blessings given to a mother and baby are profound.  I was startled, and the pictures make it clear that I didn't know what to expect (as I appeared to be wincing in the photos)...but the top of the elephant's trunk touched my head and as I headed back to the group, I collapsed in sobs.  Something changed in me, I knew I had to get up and let God fill me with joy and I had to stop striving to understand and control what was happening.  I came back with a changed heart toward MY baby in a way that I couldn't explain what happened.  I just knew it was going to be different.  I came back in mid-March a changed mama.

I'm not saying that everything is perfect, there are still days in the last month where I grasp for understanding and control.  But my anger, resentment and distance have been lifted.  It's been replaced with peace, even though I don't understand this.  It has taken me almost 7 months of pregnancy to get here...to even a hint of acceptance accompanied by any sense of joy at all...

But as I've shared my story, I've heard from multiple people who have gone through something similar to my experience.  Unplanned pregnancies that demolished what dreams they have for themselves, the grief and the anger that they KNOW "isn't right."  They shouldn't feel the way they do.  But the more the suppress their feelings, they notice the worse the anger and anxiety get.  They also know people who have struggled with miscarriages and infertility...and spent days lecturing themselves on why they have no right to experience what they're experiencing.  Hearing my story, they would feel a profound sense of relief (and tears from some) who realized that someone else also experienced the pain of this distress and tension between the reality of their emotions and other things they know to be true.  They empathize with my proverbial "pendulum" but never felt really free to express it.

If this has been your experience, I just want you to know that I know how you feel.  I know what it is to be afraid of judgment of others and be grieved over what you thought "would be."  I know what it is to run through the scenarios of baby screams in the night, of diaper changes and potty training AGAIN, and all the work that goes into babies and toddlers.  Trust me, I do.   There is no judgment from me toward you.

I know there are friends who will read this who have tremendous loss of pregnancies, of babies and of infertility.  I'm SO sorry.  I come alongside you in your struggles and welcome us to struggle together and to not be ashamed of the anger and bitterness, the questioning of God's plans, the death of dreams as we had them planned in our minds.  I understand if you'd feel resentful toward me of how I've described my internal experience the physical that you wish you could have.  That you would give anything to have your baby.  I wish I could help heal broken hearts in this area.  I don't understand why things happen the way they do, and I don't have answers...but I do have a hug and a listening ear if you ever need one.

While there may be some who judge me for my internal battle, I no longer mind it.  I understand the shoulds and should nots that encompass what we should think or feel about children.  Maybe at another point, I would have thought the same.  But, you know, the most powerful experiences I had were with friends who would sit with me.  They didn't judge me, they listened to all the reasons I didn't want the baby and the reasons I knew I should want the baby but just couldn't feel them.

They empathized with my distress and simply said they would pray for me.  For those that have, thank you.  Thank you for sitting with me, for loving me, for saying nothing when words would have done more harm than good, for understanding that I was struggling and overwhelmed and you just shared my load.  I appreciate your love and prayers and the Lord has done his work and will continue to work on me as these days, months and years pass.  You have helped me more than you will ever know.  I'm grateful for my "village" and for a God who is so faithful to me, even when I was so faithless.

Here is to a God who is so loving that he will use any means necessary to redeem us in our brokenness...even Elephant Blessings half a world away.