now that I'm entering the 3rd trimester... I get more anxious and worried about my sensations and symptoms. And even though I've been mentally preparing for childbirth, now that I'm getting much closer to the reality, it's like all my confidence flew out the window. I'm not like, full on scared, but each passing week makes me feel more intimidated. I'm trying to stay calm and keep a level head about it. It was much easier to do in the beginning, when labor still seemed so far away.
I think mostly I am worried about complications that will send me to the hospital. I really want to be able to start and complete my birth at home. That's the plan. But I know that things don't always go according to plan.
This is a personal challenge for me to continue to relinquish my desire for control, which ultimately stems from fear of the unknown. In many areas of my life I've been able to give up being a bit of a control freak, but I do revert back into it when I am scared. So I'm trying to not obsess over my perfect plan and ideation of labor and birth and just let the mysteries of life flow through me instead.
I mean, nobody can prepare you for birth, really. It's the craziest thing that happens without your control like ... The baby HAS to come out, one way or another. I think this inevitability is something that I've been contending with for awhile.
It's a feeling of a loss of control -- you're no longer fully in control of your body, a being inevitability will come out either by natural means or medical intervention (dead or alive, a creation will come out). This feeling of a loss of control over my body is what I initially mourned when discovering I was pregnant. Knowing it will happen, knowing it must happen and is necessary for you to bring forth a child.
A woman's burden; the Burden of Womb. Suddenly knowing that the Will of the Species is alive within you, and knowing that each Female must share this burden in some capacity, either in experience or in representation. An Othering of Self which no male can truly comprehend. I often wonder if this is the 'salvation' God meant when He said women are saved through childbirth -- for there is no quicker means to removing the blindfold from your eyes, no faster way to obliterate Ego, than to feel the reality of Life moving through you. I have become more self aware and at peace through this experience, and although the child was unplanned, she has come in the perfect timing, as they tend to do whether or not we can see it in that moment.
I also wonder if this is why women feel a second wind after menopause... after 40-something-odd-years, the Burden is finally lifted. I read that some women finally come fully into themselves and flourish. A new beginning in a new body. We spend our Female lives in a constant state of metamorphosis, like the unending Moon.
Just some thoughts as I enter my final stage of pregnancy.
