My Pregnancy Place

We have now had the boys much longer than I was on bedrest.  Since the boys have been born, and my life has changed so dramatically and so quickly, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my days on "bedrest".  As I've said in a previous post, my doctor never used the word "bedrest" with me.  He just told me to stay home with my feet up.  However, since I was also having contractions all the time, I kind of knew my limit.  If I tried to do something that was too much for my body, I'd feel it in my belly.  So, I took care of myself and did as little I could while trying to remain sane.  Near the end, I couldn't even do a load of laundry anymore.  The bending over was too much.  Nor could I sit at the table and eat a meal.  My feet would grow two sizes just in the 30 minutes it took me to sit at the table and eat.  Even turning over in bed took so much effort.  Carting around 15 pounds of kid really took a toll on me.

But it's not the physical aspects of pregnancy that I've been pondering; it's the emotional.  I almost feel like being pregnant was like a place you visit... another world perhaps.  And little things pop up every now and then that remind me and bring back all those feelings.  For example, when it was starting to get hot in Fresno, we turned our air conditioner on for the first time.  As soon as I heard it kick on, my stomach started hurting and it's like I was brought back to another time.  It took me a couple hours to figure out why I felt like that.  Then it hit me.  I spent countless hours last summer laying on our spare bed in the early afternoon (when I was the sickest), just praying that God would help me get through all the nausea.  I would try to nap during that time because sleeping through it was better that writhing through the nausea.  

Smells bring me back to my "pregnancy place" too.  The shower in our bathroom does the most.  The conditioner and shampoo... even the soap.  After my showers, I would have to lay on the bed to give my body a rest before getting ready, so I would smell the soaps a lot longer than usual.  Like everything else, by the time I was done showering, my feet were swollen and legs purple.  So when the boys were first born, I missed laying on the bed after the shower and playing Sodoku on my phone.  

The weirdest thing I missed, and almost had to grieve, was Gilmore Girls.  Now, before you all write me off because of that statement, let me explain.  I spent hours watching that show.  I watched all 7 seasons in a few months.  The citizens of Stars Hallow became my friends and family.  I was home without any interaction with other people, except Jeff when he came home from work and the occasional visitor.  I stayed home from work, from Bible studies, from church, from friend hang-outs... Sometimes those things were brought to me, and for that I was thankful.  Jeff also tried to get me out once in a while and he would wheel me around Costco or Target.  I looked forward to those trips with great anticipation.  It felt a little like a kid going to Disneyland... you're so excited and when you're there it's almost surreal.  It sounds dumb that Costco can do that to a person, but it does.  You realize what you need in order to emotionally survive.  And for me, Gilmore Girls became one of the things that saved me.  So, when the show was done, and I had watched the final episode, I grieved.  It sounds lame, I know.  But it's true.  These people were my comrades, my couch buddies as I tried to wish the hours to go faster.  I lived life through them.  I still sometimes find myself thinking about them and wondering about them and... yes... missing them.  

It's almost like I want to go back and "visit" that place: the place where I was huge; the place where I felt my boys rolling around inside me; the place where I couldn't do anything; and yes, even the place where I puked my guts out.  So much of me has changed and that "place" was my desert where the transformation happened.  Because I can't go back and visit, I will mark my Pregnancy Place with an alter to the Lord in my heart.  Just like the patriarchs of the Old Testament, I will mark the place where I was transformed with sort of a dedication to the Lord.  As I look back at my life, I can almost see a timeline in my mind's eye.  That timeline is marked with events that were filled with emotions (happy, sad, mad, scared, etc).  But they were also events where God met me where I was, and changed me.  I am so humbled and thankful that He chose to not leave me as I am, but change me to be more like Him.  And, my pregnancy was one of those times.  It was the most grueling thing I've been through.  But, like most difficult times, it was definitely the most rewarding.

So for now, as I've said before, I will take Mary's lead and "ponder all these things in my heart" and be so thankful that the God of the universe chose me to be the mom to Ethan and Samuel.