If you'd asked me about it last year around this time, I'd have assured you that I'd be writing copious amounts of spiritually significant insightful essays about the process of pregnancy. That's not been the case. As the blog clearly demonstrates.
A year ago about this time, I was heading home from a month working at yoga school, sheparding new yoga teachers through their initial training. It was just as transformative a month as my own original training was. On the personal internal transformation side of things, my main take-away was the breathtaking realization that I was ready to choose to become a mom. I naively assumed that we would immediately get pregnant. Seven months later, someone showed up to take up residence in my womb. Starting with that "delay," the lesson of this pregnancy has really been that "it's not my timeline." I'm along for the ride. Pregnancy is certainly my experience to have. But it is not my timeline that is at stake anymore. This little being who kicks and flutters and asks my hips to increase their circumference in the most uncomfortable ways – it is this little being's timeline now.
There's a certain sort of stillness and peace in surrendering to that truth. The pregnancy, the birth, the parenting : these are things that I cannot plan. I cannot micro-manage. I can prepare. I can give them energy and love and intention. But ultimately, they are a process I am undergoing, not a thing I am accomplishing. It is a lot like yoga. It also means that I've been spending the last few months business-planning and working on house renovations. Because those are things that I CAN control. I can micro-manage the heck out of them. I can plan them down to the Nth degree.
Pregnancy is, for me, a time for connecting. Connecting inwards with myself, connecting with this amazing shiny bright being who is cohabiting my body for this blink of time, connecting with the amazing man who walks this life path with me. It is a time for rest: lots of sleep, lots of dreaming, lots of sitting and thinking. It is a time for self care, the better spiritual, emotional and physical shape I am in, the better it is for this child. So I eat good food (I do this anyway), I sleep enough (and sometimes excessively), I get regular massage and acupuncture, I meditate. There's a cocoon-like quality to this time. Perhaps in retrospect I'll find that I have much more to say about pregnancy, but for now this is it. It is not my timeline and that is a beautiful thing.