Third Pregnancy as told by Amy

This marks my FOURTH attempt at writing about this pregnancy. It has taken me a long time to realize I just don’t want to write about the hard. I don’t want to spend pages and pages trying to articulate what it has been like for me, or trying to make all the things that have happened make sense. I don’t want to go through a chronological account of how things happened and what they mean. Maybe someday that will be a beneficial thing to share so I get far less questions about when this will end, but right now I just don’t want to focus my energy on doing that. Maybe it’s because I know it will never fully be understood and I could never really do the full scope of the experience justice. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to invoke sympathy and maybe it’s just because the hard parts are not the full story as I see it. And probably, it’s that it’s still a little tender and raw and requires too much vulnerability on my part.

Of course it would be inaccurate to pretend it hasn’t been hard. There’s been fears, deep loneliness and feelings of abandonment, sadness, exhaustion, anger, and a lot of just pressing onward.

But there have also been moments of stillness, clarity, peace, and rescue.

I will be honest that when laid out in front of me the hard moments far surpass the amount of peaceful ones, but the hard has always, at least in increments, passed. The thing about the peaceful moments is though that specific moment may come to a close you can reach back and draw from it as much as you need to. So though they have been fewer and far between, they have been enough – albeit sometimes JUST enough – their weight does seem to be heavier.

So as I have reflected on this experience over and over again and what I do want to share, I have just gathered some thoughts about what I want my new baby boy to know about what it was like when his momma carried him and all he did for me:

I feel I began this pregnancy as one person, and am walking out of it another. Motherhood does this to us often, transforms us in ways we otherwise couldn’t have transformed. My baby boy has already allowed me to grow and be stretched so much – and we haven’t yet met. It makes me excited to be his mom and to carry the lessons he’s taught me forward into raising him and my other children.

My first very stark lesson learned: We are wildly not in control of our bodies. We pretend we are, and we even take pride in all we are doing to not be THAT person. But truthfully we don’t really get a major say in what pops up physically for us.

I have also once again become very acquainted with consistent prayer thanks to this pregnancy. After my seizures it often takes me time to re-coordinate my thoughts with the physical act of speaking. Because my seizures often occur in clusters, this means I  have a moment where I “come back” to awareness and am able to hear things, but can’t yet say anything and then fall back into a seizure. This perspective has allowed me to witness my husband’s moment of surrender. There have been many times I have been able to hear him cry, and heard him ask for help, but I can’t respond and I know my seizures aren’t yet done. These moments have been extremely hard for me. In those moments all I have had is quick but sincere prayers to rely on that he will be comforted, and I have also been able to witness the unique ways he has received such comfort.

I did experience my moment of surrender as well. The moment where I knew physically I couldn’t carry myself further and wished I could quit, and I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced anything like this before. I didn’t feel immediately rescued, and truthfully some days I still wish I had been rescued in all the ways I want to, but it did come. The understanding and the peace came though the physical trial didn’t end. The answers I didn’t know I wanted came and allowed me to find some wholeness in the empty. This is probably my favorite lesson I have been given. I am positive I have far more to learn about rescue, but the insight it has given me into true strength and true weakness, and the ability we have to be made strong within the weak has been profound. I feel I comprehend my relationship and my need for God in my life so much more than I did before, and I feel deeply grateful for the need to surrender.

I really want my little baby boy to know that though there were times I wrestled with it all, I knew, and still know he is worth it. I want him to know I drew strength in the fact that while it often felt like my body was experiencing total system failure it was also simultaneously creating a new body for him and allowing a new life to enter into my world and that’s nothing short of miraculous. In fact I consider that something to be proud of.

I want him to know that while I felt picked on and sometimes quite literally begged for rescue I also felt blessed that I have the ability to even do this, to carry a baby, one last time.

I want him to know his brother and sister have been consistently and ridiculously excited to meet him since the beginning. That Camden can’t WAIT to have a little brother and Kyra is positive he’s going to be “sooooo cute”. That Kyra often asks me to uncover my belly so she can sing him twinkle twinkle little star and then tells me she thinks he loves her. I want him to know that his big brother dreams of helping him learn all about cars, legos, and running fast.

I want him to know that his momma fought so hard to get to the finish line — not just so it would be over — but also because I knew holding him would make it all make sense and make it all okay.

I do of course want him to know it was hard, but that all the hard seems to have had a purpose. I’ve honestly never felt such deep emptiness. But in my emptiness I have truly found a peace.

To do so, I have had to learn to let go of so many little things. Sources of identify, sources of self worth, expectations, and so on. I’ve had to lower the bar for myself, lower it again, and then just accept that the bar needed to rest on the floor a while. I’ve had to accept certain limitations and boundaries I would normally never allow myself to have. I’ve had to actively meet needs that I wish I didn’t have.

At times I have looked out and felt a little left behind, seeing all my friends engage in this race of life, making plans, setting goals, and being perpetually busy -- knowing I don’t currently have the ability to participate. But, to my surprise I have come to know this as a gift.

 It is as if God knew if I could just be made tired enough I would finally be still. It’s interesting because for the last couple of years I have told Garth I continually have received the prompting

 just stand still.

Literally over, and over, and over again.

And then I would go on to frustratedly explain that I do not know how to do that! It is not that I haven’t tried – I stepped back from photography for a time, I left social media, I tried to be still in life, but neglected to be still in my mind and heart.

Obviously He knew I would never find this peace and this necessary surrender while engaging in the race we all so easily fall into.

So as the story goes, I was shown how to be still, and then given the opportunity to embrace it.

I have been made tired, and often tell Garth I feel so bone deep exhausted. I have become acquainted with what true brain fatigue is and how it simply cannot be worked around. In the beginning of my seizures, I would even find myself completely unable to read my own paperwork at the doctors office. I have been made emotionally tired, sometimes feeling like I’m on edge because I can’t gracefully handle one more thing. I have been too tired to be anything but still.

Through this exhaustion I feel I have been made new, and life is beginning to have a freshness to it again as I see all the progress we have made.

I entered this pregnancy with quite a plan. And I’m ending it without any plans whatsoever, and honestly I think that’s better. I’m not going to pretend like I don’t desire to be a more present mom again or that I wouldn’t love to feel more connected to my body. I’m also not going to pretend I’m not hopeful my seizures someday end. I do quite literally dream of the day I put my baby in the stroller and go for a walk and my body doesn’t ache of seizures and my brain doesn’t feel foggy and fatigued. But I have learned I can’t chase all of these things. I can’t run around trying to mold the life I think I need in order to be happy. I can’t gather up my identity in the doings of living in this world and I can’t earn my worth in accomplishing some self-inflicted goal rooted in the mind’s rhetoric of “not enough”.

The seizures may continue, they may pass. I may find rest, I may stumble upon a whole new set of challenges. Regardless of what’s next I know some things now for sure: I am weak so that I can be strong. I found emptiness so I could be whole. I found surrender so I could come to understand the rescue. And finally, I found an exhaustion so deep that I have nothing left to give myself but the grace to just be still.

And for all those lessons I will be forever grateful – so thanks baby boy for trusting me to learn them before you arrived.