It gets harder with each successive pregnancy to be in the
moment. The first time around, it’s all a mysterious journey navigated with
great anticipation of what’s around the corner. Labor seems almost worth it for
the sake of finally getting to meet the baby. You can’t imagine what it’s like
having someone drink milk from your body. It’s all slightly mystical.
By the third time around, it’s like I see the pink strip on
the pregnancy test and boom—I see the thirty pounds coming on over nine months
before taking another six months to lose it all. I feel the contractions again,
the engorgement, the grouchiness of sleeplessness. I can guess what the baby
will look like when it comes out: a pink, scrunchy elderly Asian alien. If I
squint hard enough I can even see the months of pureeing and spooning food, the
inevitable toy-throwing and bickering, the potty training.
It’s not that I wasn’t happy to see the pink strip—all our
pregnancies were highly planned-for, desired events we didn’t take for
granted—but somehow in this aerial, fore-shortened view it’s easier to see the
hard things. I have to work harder to see the good moments; to remind myself
that those moments are different each time, and not let them pass me by.
I guess that’s how it is with parenting in general—you get
so eroded by the mundane, difficult things that it takes effort to recall the
good things. You have to develop ways of doing that, like cataloguing those
memories through writing or pictures, making an effort of sharing that with
your spouse instead of complaining, or just getting a break away so your
perspective shifts.
In Psalm 139 it says, “in your book were written, every one
of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of
them”—he truly sees everything, not as we think we do through our pride or
jadedness or postulations—yet he is fully present with us in every moment. He
doesn’t discount what is happening because of what will happen; he doesn’t see
what happens to us relative to what happened to someone else.
I think that’s where I’d like to be with this pregnancy. To
not just see the baby as the reason it’s harder to be rested at night, to clean
stuff off the floor, to hold the other two in my lap. To be more in the moment,
good as much as bad. To arrive at a place of anticipation not out of ignorance,
but even knowing all the difficulties that will come, is harder, but I think
means more. One day I may look back and even miss all this. Or maybe I’ll just
be glad I can fit into my old jeans again.
