Hello! This is a follow-up to The Baby Question podcast I made about a year ago—crazy how fast this whole process has been when I think about it that way.
I have a million and one more things to say about this, but for now, I leave you with this transcript of the new podcast I made, which I hope you’ll also listen to. (It involves a song that informed this experience so the transcript will make a lot more sense in its audio version!) I wrote this back at week 14ish, and I’ve come a long way mentally since then. I’m excited to unpack it all with you over the next little while.
I knew I was pregnant before I took a test. I’m too attuned to my body after years of stomach problems—too clued in to every ache and pain. This pain felt new. A little stab here and there, like a needle pressing into some organ at the center of me.
I kept telling my husband, “I’m pregnant” but he didn’t quite believe me. How could he? I’m a separate entity and even if we’re touching there’s a barrier there—skin and bone and culture and purpose. I could be wrong just as often as I’m right.
But still I cried when I saw the positive test. The line was forceful, not sheer. I didn’t have to hold it to the light. And for weeks, I was exhausted. Painfully exhausted. I laid down to stay alive. I could barely work, though I had many clients counting on me.
My creativity left all at once. All I could do was lay and test what food and drink wouldn’t repulse me—or make me feel ill. “I can’t write anything,” I told my husband. “I can’t create.”
“You’re creating life,” he said, echoing the words of many others who tried to reassure me.
Who was creating life? I wondered. My body. Life was being created whether or not my soul, my essence—whatever is piloting this bag of bones—has anything to do with it at all. Who is this body? A thing I’ve loved and hated and insulted and held and caressed and sneered at and cursed for feeling some undiagnosable pain for more than half of my life. I’m attuned to her, but I don’t know her. She’s always up to something I’m not involved in.
And now this…a growing life deep inside of me. I knew there would be sacrifice, yes, that’s all anyone can ever tell me about motherhood. But I didn’t know the sacrifice would be the part of me where I’ve always felt whole: my creativity. How can all of me finally get on the same page?
Sometime last year, I sat on a bus listening to “Broadview” by Slow Pulp. I’m almost positive she’s addressing a lover in this song, but I kept picturing a baby—a soft head, a pair of wobbly legs, a creature I might know—or might never know. I hadn’t decided.
“Am I wrong?” she sang, “Or is it okay to stay inside and out of love?”
Inside—this protective shell I’d created for myself. Ideas of what not to be even as I searched for what I was.
Mormonism taught me I was a mother, even in my youth. All the eggs inside of me were spirits, waiting to be born. I was a vessel. I was a pretty picture on a wall. I was an idea dreamed up thousands of years ago—a non-person, only known for how I could help others, serve others, ferry others from one plane of existence to the next.
It was power. And it was also a small box.
For over a decade, I grappled with my place and my wants. I drew the curtains on my old Mormon life, to block out all the noise telling me what I should be. My relationship with my body was fraught, because now I could decide what I wanted to do with it, and I’d never felt that sort of agency.
But I can’t exist in a vacuum. No one can. My culture is my culture is my DNA. There is no true escape from the people and places and things that shape you. I chose to be in conversation with them instead of pushing them completely out.
I disagreed that motherhood is every woman’s calling. I disagreed that it was my calling, even if I wanted it. I have done so much before this baby. The baby will be a part of what I’ve done. And I’ll continue to do more after this baby, too. I want to bring this baby into my life rather than shape my life around its existence. This baby is a part of the world, not the world.
And so now it’s motherhood on the other side of Mormonism. A place where I’ve had barely any examples. A place where I’m not native. A place I barely fit into right now.
There are still so many times I sit with even my closest friends and feel out of place. Their experiences don’t feel foreign, necessarily, but still unfamiliar. Sometimes I still feel like I need to excuse my not knowing with my upbringing.
I don’t have the sex stories, the drinking stories, the getting high stories, the stories of firsts and milestones I never crossed. And these things don’t matter in the long run—I’m still accepted for all the other parts of me.
But life itself still feels like new territory. How can I show a child the way through a maze I’ve never encountered?
Sometimes I want to go back inside, back where it’s comfortable, back where the rules are a shield. But, I think over and over again, that’s not true autonomy.
I heard don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t all my life. What would I have chosen if I could choose?
“Leave it in the cage,” Slow Pulp sings. The anxiety that I won’t know what to do comes from the cage I was raised in. I still search for some authority to guide me, to approve of my decisions. That person is me, my soul, my body, my instinct. The secret a lot of ex-Mormons discover is that our intuition has always known what’s right. It was the voice we were following—even if we called it something else.
There will be a lot of other voices in my child’s life. Friends—makeshift aunts and uncles—who have been through it all, and can help guide me and my child through the maze. My child wants to attend Bonnaroo? I’ve got the perfect friend for that advice. My child wants to take a year off and travel before going to college? I’ve got a friend who’s done it all. We make up a puzzle of experience. I don’t have to do it alone.
To stay inside, like Slow Pulp says, is to stay safe. I left my safety a long time ago and built a new wall to hide behind. This baby is breaking down the new wall. We’re doing it together.
If I stay inside, I stay out of love. Maybe that’s too dichotomous. But there’s also a reason for the cliche of taking a leap. Every good change in my life happened because I stepped, not knowing there was a bridge but hoping. Some might call it faith.
Still…
There’s a lot I’ve already mourned even as I sit here in the second trimester. Dedicating time to being an aunt. Losing the freedom of simple things like hopping on a City Bike when I want to get somewhere faster. Giving up freedom in general. There’s a lot I’m excited for, too. Watching a new life unfold. Creating new and lasting memories. Expanding community. I’ve let motherhood seem small to me, restrictive. But it’s not anymore—because I’m different, and so is my context.
I’m still spinning in some space, working to connect my soul with my body, to feel at one, to know that every part of me can do this together. I can already feel it sometimes, like how I’ve dreamed of a baby girl several times throughout this pregnancy, before I knew the gender. I was always holding her, taking her through the airport, or on a river run. And once we were laughing together, her in a little pink sweater, holding onto my thumb with her tiny hand. That’s why I wasn’t surprised, too, when I found out the baby is a girl. I know. I just have to trust that I know, and have always known, what’s right for me.
I’m not wrong. It’s okay to stay inside for a bit. It’s not okay to stay out of love. At least not for me. There’s so much to hold close, so much that’s dear to me now and will be newly dear to me soon.
(I’m about 22 weeks along now, due February 9th. Get ready for my attempts at cute maternity outfits...)
