Soon.
Ramblings on my thoughts about our soon-to-be parenthood. This post was written in the post and has been scheduled ahead of time.
The other day, after our OB shared that she’d likely have to induce me at 39 weeks, I said to my husband, “isn’t it so cool to think about how God-willing, in two weeks or less, we’ll be bringing home our baby girl?”
As I’m writing this, I am 37 weeks pregnant with our little miracle and it hits me in waves whenever I think the fact that soon we’ll be parents. Soon, we’ll be meeting the little baby girl who has been wiggling inside of me for months and whom we’ve prayed for.
Soon, we’ll be on our way to the hospital, entering as expectant parents and leaving with her as her mom and dad.
Soon, she’ll be sitting inside the car seat we’ve installed for her.
Soon, those little legs and fists that would give me excited little jabs, will be kicking away in her little onesies we’ve purchased for her.
Words cannot accurately describe how elated (and nervous) we feel.
In fact, I’ve started and stopped similar posts at varying gestational stages of this pregnancy so far, because I cannot find the right words to say. Perhaps due to pregnancy brain, I feel like every time I’ve started writing a post to detail exactly how I’m feeling in this moment in time, words fail me. I end up deleting the post or saving it to a draft folder, assuming that one day I’ll return to it only to start an entirely new post altogether.
Even now, I am so tempted to stop writing because I can feel this post already turning into a rambling smorgasbord of emotions and thoughts, in an unorganized format, but isn’t that one of the reasons why I said I wanted to create a space like this on Substack? For my sleep-deprived thoughts that can be slightly unhinged and to write about whatever I wanted without worrying about it having any particular formality to it or not?
So here it goes.
Right now, in this very moment, I am so excited for her, but I am so nervous about being a good mom. It sounds crazy, considering if you know even just a little bit of the journey we’ve had, you’d think we’d be super prepared. In some ways, we are.
I remember before conceiving, we’d often have conversations where we just daydreamed about be parents, talking about everything from how we hoped to raise our children to which parenting style we felt comfortable with. We talked at length about baby names, often creating ones that sounded ridiculous for the sake of making the other person laugh. We even talked about what some of the boundaries we planned to intact, God-willing we became parents.
Now that we’re staring birth and parenthood in the face, I feel like in some ways we’re prepared and in others we’re going to feel like we’re running like a chicken with our head cut off trying to figure out how to parent. I’ve heard that feeling is pretty common for first-time parents, however, because there’s so much that you are learning as you go.
Our lives are about to change in such a beautiful yet challenging way that I don’t think our first-time parent minds can truly grasp yet. We’ve never been parents before, so we have no idea what to expect or what it will be like. We’re going to grow and change as people in ways that we haven’t before and I think sometimes the unknown of what that looks like adds to the nervousness and overall excitement.
That being said, every time I think of her or I see one of her little newborn items, picturing her in them, I feel so full of excitement and joy. There are a lot of emotions that I’ve been feeling as we approach the end of this pregnancy and the beginning of our lives as parents, but I am so, so thankful.
Our “just because” car rides will be a lot different or may cease to exist for a bit. I’ll be nestled in the backseat next to our little one instead of in the front seat, controlling the aux cord.
Our priorities will shift to not just being focused on us or each other, but also on her and her needs.
Anywhere we go now, especially with her, will have a purpose and will take us a little longer to get settled.
Speaking of time length, our mornings will have to start slightly earlier.
Schedules will have to shift, plans will have to be canceled, boundaries set, and we couldn’t be happier about it, knowing the reason behind all of those changes is our little girl.
