Two years ago, beloved family and friends gathered to throw my husband and I our baby shower. There was laughter and food and oodles of sweet and generous gifts.
I remember my uneasiness, an uneasy uncertainty as I was surrounded by so many veterans and recognizing , truly recognizing, this quiet pact among women, was this a club I don't know about? What was this tenderness, watchful kind chagrin I saw in all of their eyes?
It felt like I was looking into a room that each woman had and held as their own.
I was thirty six years old and I had had plenty of time to define many aspects of my self identity. I thought I saw me quite well and I was comfortable, generally, in my own skin.
There were moments I had questioned some of my assumptions. Go back another two years and welcome to the weeks first following after I stopped taking birth control....
I started sleeping better than I had slept since I was seventeen... I got off sleeping pills, stopped having my monthly recurring yeast infections, my skin glowed, lost seven pounds and my libido took off. I was energized, motivated and voluntarily reduced my caffeine....
I felt like I needed to reintroduce myself to myself; 'Hi, I'm Emily. I don't have neurotic thoughts at bed time -I just go to sleep, my skin is behaving like it should in my thirties and not in my mid-teens and my body is relaxed and in-sync with itself...'
Well sort of.
A drawback I would late find out later was that nearly twenty years on birth control had high jacked my reproductive system. In order to conceive I was going to have to do a bunch of humiliating reproductive tests and not fun drugs to jump start my system.
Quick interjection: I am grateful birth control was and is an option for me. Emotionally, mentally, I needed time to discover, to live and be me. I wish I had understood there were possible implications after taking it for so long - at least for me. My path through (relatively brief ) infertility was difficult and emotionally for me.
And last: birth control needs new research. There is tons of new research for dudes in their fifties to get it up better. Ladies -Birth control options have changed very little in over twenty years!
Back to the baby shower...
At the end of my baby shower, my sister in law presented me with a glass jar. Stuffed to the brim were small notes written on pretty paper, each rolled up and tied with gold ribbon. At the very bottom of the jar were thoughtful self pamper gifts that ranged from a home made clay mask to a smaller glass jar of a lavender foot soak and a range of chocolates.
This dear creature explained she had written to each mother in my family, and extended family, and sent a piece of the decorative paper. She had asked each to write their advice, something they wish they knew or perhaps just a simple thought about what motherhood, what parenthood, meant to them.
I felt welcomed, in that moment, to every one of them. I was humbled and grateful.
Life would get busy fast though and I didn't actually open them until at about two months postpartum. It was a cold and lonely and exhausted November morning when I read each one.
As I unrolled and read the quotes, the scripture versuses, the memory, the kind insights - each hand written, I laughed and cried a bit in relief and joy.
Parenthood transformed me. I was a different version of me at the moment of entry. Upon walking through the door I found out how flawed I was, how small I was, how gorgeous fragile and rare life is.
Motherhood is strange and beautiful. I have never doubted myself so deeply, irrevocably trusted my instincts so completely and simultaneously felt so alone and loved.
We are naturally, unexpectedly, delightfully expecting a second child this next January. When I first suspected, instead of the uncertain mixture of fear and excitement I felt when I suspected our first gorgeous treasured little, this time I felt joy.
Deep, unwavering, sunlit joy.
