Preparing

Baby Boy is due to arrive in seven days. If he doesn’t, he is due to be evicted in eight days.

That means I have no more than eight days left to be pregnant.

Since I feel like I’m ninety months pregnant, rather than nine, and I’m so eager to meet my little boy, I’m naturally very excited to know that he will be born soon. But, I’m also feeling a little bit like I want to freeze time (only a little bit!!), because I know this is very likely the last time I will ever get to experience pregnancy.

At this point, I’m enormous, and my back hurts, and I can’t get more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep because hip pain wakes me, and going up the stairs feels like climbing Mt. Everest, and my feet and ankles and legs are ridiculously swollen.

But I’m still trying to savor these last days, and I’m trying hard to smile and laugh about these things instead of being grumpy about them or bursting into tears (because yeah, I’m that tired and emotional and pregnant!!). I mean, check out that picture of my feet! I do look kind of funny:

And on a more serious note, I remember very vividly the many months that I prayed for this very cross, this beautiful cross that I’m currently so blessed to carry. So every time I’m tempted to be upset about these discomforts, I try to think about those months and those prayers and realize what a true and amazing blessing these small aches and pains are. That’s not to say I don’t have moments of self-pity or complaining. I do! But I try (really hard) to remember to offer them up for my friends who are suffering the pain of miscarriage and/or infertility, or those who are struggling with even more difficult pregnancy symptoms and sickness. They are never far from my mind.

In these last few days I’m trying to prepare for labor too.

My bag is packed and double checked. I got a pedicure. I have written out babysitter instructions and done tons of crazy grocery shopping for all the things we might need while I’m at the hospital for a few days. I’m reviewing and revising my old labor playlist. My Kindle is charged.

And I’m also preparing for an experience that is different in many ways than my other labors, because this time I recognize the hand of God in the creation of this little life and the beautiful process that is labor and delivery. I’m creating a list of prayer intentions and thinking a lot about redemptive suffering.

Before my conversion, I never thought of suffering as anything but suffering. I always just thought it pretty much sucked, period. Though of course I’ve always recognized that the suffering that happens during the labor and delivery of a baby is different from other situations, in that you know the whole time that it is for an awesome purpose. But still, always before it was just something to get through to get to the real prize.

Now I understand that the suffering in itself can be beautiful and purposeful. Both in that it leads to the obvious and most amazing outcome of holding a sweet little miracle at the end, but also that the suffering itself can be a way of growing closer to Jesus, if I look at it that way and offer it to Him. I love knowing now that I can embrace and offer this suffering, uniting it with the Passion of Christ, for the good of others.

This is both still a little bit confusing and something that makes perfect sense to me.

So, as I’m trying to prepare for labor and meeting my son, I’m praying a lot (this often just takes the form of a frequently repeated “Jesus, I trust in you”), and I’m trying to picture what it will be like this time. I honestly don’t know. I suspect there will be plenty of prayer, and also that it will be much less elegant than what I have in my mind now. I imagine there will be plenty of cursing and yelling just like before, even if I like to think I’ll be peacefully thanking God for each contraction (insert laughter here). I don’t really know.

What I am sure of is that I will feel God’s presence as I bring His newest little miracle into the world.

It won’t be long now!