the first trimester

on pregnancy for the third time

I’ll open with the poem I wrote a few weeks ago, because it says it all.

We’re having another baby! I’m pregnant for the third time, feeling myself wade through these strange waters once again. It all feels new, somehow. How easily we forget! But it also feels familiar, a path I have walked before. The first trimester will very soon come to a close and I am glad to see it go. I had forgotten how hard it is to feel so out of sorts, so exhausted, so sick and strange for such a long time. These have been some of the hardest weeks in my recent memory. I feel far from myself, caged up, held down in the chair in the corner. I look in the mirror and barely recognize myself. This pregnancy has quieted me. It is in this quietude that I watch and wait for all that will come to our family, all that I can’t yet imagine or understand.

unmistakable!

This baby was a genuine surprise. Neither of our others were surprising, so it was a new experience to be so sure that we weren’t pregnant and then to see the test so clearly proclaim that we were. It was the day before new years eve, and I felt the year I had been expecting get whisked out from under me like a rug I had all of my weight on. It was really disorienting. I wasn’t happy about it for a few weeks. I wasn’t angry either, but the happiness felt covered over by shock and, honestly, fear, for quite a while. Having done this twice already, I knew what I was getting into. We knew that we wanted a third baby, but not quite yet. I hadn’t had time to mentally prepare, to feel ready or excited. I wanted to retrace my steps and not undo the baby, but warn myself. Don’t waste these months! They’re the last normal ones you’ll have for a very long time! Had I known I would be starting the year pregnant, I almost surely would have done at least a few things differently beforehand — but it is what it is, and I have come around to true happiness. This is our baby! This little surprise! It wouldn’t have been exactly them any other time! That’s the magic of it, isn’t it? It’s all kind of magic, truly.

Still, I’d wanted more time to build up my birth doula practice, which had really just begun to hit its stride. I’ll need to take a considerable break and lose all the momentum I’ve built, which feels hard and frustrating. I’d wanted to write more, make more, finish more. I’d wanted to focus on work unhindered for just a little while longer. Ah, well. “The impeded stream is the one that sings,” right? I feel that impediment now, forcing me to go to bed at 8 pm every night, weaving nausea into every hour of the day, making my limbs feel lined with lead weights. I feel like I’ve had the flu for six weeks. Yes, it’s even harder than I remembered it, and I remembered it pretty hard. I try to offer my doula mind to myself, soothing words of encouragement and affirmation. It turns out you can’t be your own doula. Part of the magic of having a doula to walk alongside you through pregnancy is feeling heard, feeling witnessed. I have felt almost ghost-like, unable to write about it until I felt ready to share, unable to articulate exactly how it feels without one to listen. Of course I have friends and people around me to see me, but you know what I mean. In cultivating this “alongsider” approach to doula work, I have practiced what I long for myself.

I’m twelve weeks pregnant now. Just this past week at a midwife appointment, my baby was evading the doppler, so the midwife used the handheld ultrasound for a quick peek. There they were! Wiggling, embodied, “clearly thriving” according to my midwife. I felt myself beam with pride when she said that, and exhale in relief. I have had my breath held for this whole first third of the pregnancy. Many stories of loss have made their way to me in recent years, all feeling more vivid in this first trimester than my others, or maybe I have always felt this worried and had just forgotten. Everyone knows that bad things can happen after twelve weeks too, but I feel ready to speak freely about this pregnancy anyway, no matter what unfolds. It was honestly hard to wait this long to share. It all just affirms how vital writing is in my life, and how vital sharing that writing is too. I’ve been logging thoughts in various documents for who knows what (mainly just cyclical complaints about how nauseous I am and how strange I feel), but writing words that will be read soon matters to me. It feels good to not keep this a secret anymore. It turns out I really hate secrets. But something in me felt sure I wanted to wait until now too. It all belongs, the push and pull. There is a time for everything, I suppose.

Oh, what will happen? Who will this baby be? How will my life change entirely again? What is waiting for me? Pregnancy is so vulnerable, so raw and clarifying. I enjoyed talking with the midwife, who treated me like an authority on my own self, my own babies, my own body. I am. I have done this twice before, I do know what to expect, I am deeply educated, very truly aware of what all of this means, and somehow that makes all of the questions burn even brighter. I remind myself: “worry is the work of pregnancy,” a Pam England quote that stuns in its simplicity. It is true. There is so little we can do but worry, and wait, and wonder, and watch. That is the work, allowing the worry to swarm my mind, then allow it to go out again with the tide and with time. It makes me think of the little poem I wrote while I was so anxious about America (still am):

I wear worry like a coat,
try to take it off when
I’m with my children.

The zipper is stuck.
Please, the zipper is stuck.

Pregnancy is the ultimate “zipper is stuck” experience. You can’t escape your body, you can’t escape your mind, you can’t separate from your children because there is one always inside of you, growing bigger and bigger. Here for the third time, I allow myself to feel how hard it is, how much I am giving, and how sure I am that I want to. It still feels like such a great honor to receive the gift of these children. I feel inordinately lucky. I want so badly to do right by them, to treat each of them so well, to surround them with love all the days of their life. And I do, but imperfectly. Pregnancy makes it so much harder. So I own that too. My boys know I need to rest more. They can see that what I’m doing is hard, that I’m different within it. They have offered so much understanding, in their way. I feel the warmth of my family’s unconditional love for me while I exist in this somewhat diminished state for a little while. My husband picked up all the slack with no complaint — I have barely touched a dish or a laundry basket in the past six weeks.

I won’t lie that after two boys I feel myself hoping for a girl, but I truly will be happy either way. We will find out at 20 weeks, so that tension of not knowing yet feels vivid right now. I don’t really have an inkling, and I want to hold it loosely for my own sake. Will there be more babies after this baby? Who knows! They may be our last, they may not be. There is a part of me that wants a huge family, and a part of me that feels my capacity (and our income) already straining at the thought of this third baby. I don’t want to decide anything right now. I want to be here, where we are, family and capacity growing at the pace of real life, no faster, no slower.

There is more to say, but I think this is where I’ll leave this note for now. I’ve been keeping a pregnancy journal that will likely become a zine. I have new pregnancy resource zines from my doula practice that I really want to release soon too. I’ve been using them with clients and feel excited about them. I’m considering doing another “a year postpartum” zine series this time too. That was such a joy after Ben’s birth, such a right-sized project that bore so much fruit for me creativity. For better or for worse, pregnancy and childbearing is very generative for me as an artist. I find it energizing and inspiring, there is so much to talk about. But, I also want to be gentle with myself. Not every personal experience needs to become something outward facing. I don’t need to write everything in my life. Or, do I? This is the tension I always live in. But I love writing birth and postpartum, so I expect I will, I’m just not sure to what extent. It will all depend, I guess, on how things unfold! So much curiosity, so much worry, so much hope! More soon, for sure.

our cute chaotic family announcement pic we took before school this morning

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I haven’t been reading (or doing anything) much in this first trimester, but I did revisit two of my very favorite books: Louise Erdrich’s The Blue Jay’s Dance and Lucy Jones’ Matrescence. Both are so brilliant, and offer such deep solace and understanding. The other book that I want to really spend time with in this pregnancy is Britta Bushnell’s Transformed by Birth.

I’ve gotten some mileage out of my pregnancy playlist already. I have birth and postpartum playlists too. (I know, I’m still on spotify, I’ll decamp at some point!)

Shout out to Unisom + B6, shout out to Chewy Sprees and mint gum, shout out to carry-out pizza, chick fil a, and Dr. Pepper for superceding the wild food aversions I have been stricken by. Hug your nearest mom and thank her specifically for surviving the first trimester as many times as she has, it is NO JOKE SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. Babies are worth it though. Also we so easily forget! Haha, cry.

You can read all my existing pregnancy, birth, and postpartum-centric zines here, and there will surely be more to come! I also wrote a book about my first pregnancy called Broken Waters. Highly recommend!

xoxo, more soon. I’ll just be over here growing a little baby day by day by day, keeping the hoping machine running!