I know from experience that pregnancy, every pregnancy, feels disorienting. On Monday your body is your own. On Tuesday it is shared sacred space. We've been here before. Twice before. And while those pregnancies ended, they were long enough to disrupt what I could and could not believe about my body. They were long enough to love someone and lose someone. They were long enough to love and hate what was in the mirror. They were long enough to be surprised by how resilient our flesh can be, suffer and still wake up whole, suffer and still wake up and go to work, suffer and still go to happy hour, suffer and still hope.
After losses, pregnancy feels especially tenuous. My only experience of pregnancy thus far has been destruction and loss, so to be in this new world of good news, healthy ultrasounds, kicks and somersaults after supper, feels beautiful and fragile. To know he's a boy, growing into a boy body, with boy elbows and knees in my stomach, means there's so much more to imagine and cherish, so many daydreams of dirt and baseball and laughter and boat rides, so much more to be lost. He is pictured, not more loved than his lost siblings, but certainly more concrete. He is possible and probable, and that makes the risks loom larger.
But he is an anchor now, too. We cannot drift too deeply into any sea of despair because there are bassinets to research, child care options to discuss. There are nurseries to daydream and names to debate. We may be isolated, a bit stuck, and bruised by the disappointments and fears of this current storm, but we are constantly reminded by a tiny person we love that the future must come, too. And he doesn't care if Mom doesn't have baby showers, or if the new house isn't quite put together, or if he even has a "new" house to come home to in the first place. He'll just be here. We love him for just being here, just existing. And that love is not fragile, it is fierce.
