The Space Between

We're having a baby tomorrow. Tomorrow everything changes. I'm beyond excited, of course, but I've been having a hard time describing, even to myself, the strange bittersweet feelings that I've had over the last couple of weeks. [If you'd like a musical accompaniment to this post, open this link in a new tab, click play, and then come back. I'll wait... Thanks to Tom for suggesting the perfect song to fit today's mood.]

Knowing exactly when our new player arrives has brought everything into sharp relief, made the line between before and after perfectly clear. It really does feel like I'm "sitting here in limbo/waiting for the dice to roll." I have loved the past six and a half years of being on this two-person team. Team Shackmano has excelled at spur of the moment adventures, late night shows, lazy weekend mornings in bed followed by mid-afternoon brunches, and wine-soaked nights on the couch. Tomorrow we add a new player to the team, and with that addition, everything changes. I know it's going to be an incredible, wonderful, heart-exploding change for the better, and I can't wait to see what new adventures await, but it's still a little sad to say goodbye to the old days. 

Just when I was starting to feel like I was just a completely hormone-addled crazy person, I remembered that I had read something a couple of years ago that described this "in-between" time of the end of pregnancy. Happily, I was able to find it again. I literally wept with relief and recognition when I read this piece by midwife Jana Studelska again.

The last days of pregnancy — sometimes stretching to agonizing weeks — are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world...

To give birth, whether at home in a birth tub with candles and family or in a surgical suite with machines and a neonatal team, a woman must go to the place between this world and the next, to that thin membrane between here and there. To the place where life comes from, to the mystery, in order to reach over to bring forth the child that is hers. The heroic tales of Odysseus are with us, each ordinary day. This round woman is not going into battle, but she is going to the edge of her being where every resource she has will be called on to assist in this journey.

We need time and space to prepare for that journey. And somewhere, deep inside us at a primal level, our cells and hormones and mind and soul know this, and begin the work with or without our awareness.

  
Ok, the reference to the heroic tales of Odysseus may be a smidge on the melodramatic side, but so am I at this point so it resonated with me. The whole thing is not too much longer than what I've posted here, and it is well worth a read. 

By this time tomorrow, I'll be holding our son in my arms. I haven't wrapped my mind around it yet, but my heart is already there.

The last days of pregnancy — sometimes stretching to agonizing weeks — are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world. - See more at: http://www.mothering.com/articles/the-last-days-of-pregnancy-a-place-of-in-between/#sthash.9N8e9lpb.dpuf

The last days of pregnancy — sometimes stretching to agonizing weeks — are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world. - See more at: http://www.mothering.com/articles/the-last-days-of-pregnancy-a-place-of-in-between/#sthash.9N8e9lpb.dpuf

The last days of pregnancy — sometimes stretching to agonizing weeks — are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world. - See more at: http://www.mothering.com/articles/the-last-days-of-pregnancy-a-place-of-in-between/#sthash.9N8e9lpb.dpuf