Let the mother you want to be fall away and become the mother your children actually need.

This is who I want to be pregnant: soft. joyfully embodied. prepared, together, graceful.

In short, I want to present the picture of motherhood that I idealized before I became a mom, before I understood that a season of my life would arrive where I had to put “brush my teeth” on a to-do list so I wouldn’t forget, when I would have to sacrifice nail appointments because finding a sitter or juggling schedules with my husband was too difficult, or when I would have to give up bangs or earrings because these accessories were now a liability with a feral toddler.

Being pregnant with my second child, I can already appreciate how a second gets swallowed up by your fast-paced life. With my first, he set the pace and changed everything. His moods and needs dominate the day and my life orbits around him. I don’t have time to think about the normal aches and challenges of pregnancy because I’m making lunch or trying to coordinate naptime with an appointment or managing a meltdown. I have less resources, and if I’m honest this makes me feel guilty for not being as intentional with thinking about my pregnancy. I used to write my son letters when I was pregnant, meditate with my hands on my belly every night, and ritualize his milestones. Now I’m more stretched, and the free time I do have is spent preparing logistics for the baby, not necessarily connecting with him on this super-psychic level.

I talk to my baby while I nurse my son. I feel the baby kick while I read my son books about becoming a big brother. I think about my baby while my husband and I review the budget to make sure we’re saving enough for maternity leave. My second son is arriving into a fully established family with daily routines and splashes of chaos and multiple layers of competing needs. The intention I poured into my first is not realistic with him, but it doesn’t mean the love is less or the effort is meaningless.

With this pregnancy, I’m focused on becoming a more resourced, stable mom. I’m taking the prenatal supplements, drinking more water, and going to weekly chiropractic and PT. I’m clarifying meal prep systems, building my postpartum freezer stash early, and getting that meal train going.

I know what to expect, I trust my decisions more, and I’m preparing for a different initiation into matrescence, one that sees the family as a whole and not just the child.

My first child was a universe that sucked me into an all-consuming gravitational field. My husband used to joke that I would step on his face to get to my son. One time, I broke our car’s air conditioning unit to crawl into the back seat to comfort him. My son was my everything, but now 17 months postpartum with a baby on the way, he fits into a bigger universe which is our family. This is good for my son. This is good for all of us. And it will be good for the son that is coming to enter a family that knows how to make space for everyone.

And instead of feeling guilty about this, I’m challenging myself to see this as a good thing. My second son has a big brother. He has a more seasoned dad and a more seasoned mom. He has extended family members who understand the ways of our family and won’t have to adjust to the culture shock of ecological breastfeeding and family cosleeping. A lot of the firsts that come with a first won’t exist for him, but he’s arriving in a relational space that is more formed, stable, and ready.

I would love to have the time to knit my baby a receiving blanket, curate a pregnancy playlist, or do any of the other things I did with my first. But I didn’t have the lived experience and wisdom to prioritize the basics over the poetics back then. We painted a nursery that my son never slept in but didn’t have a meal train, a prudent reserve, or an established plan for postpartum. I was excited in my soul but I wasn’t ready in the groundwork of my life.

With this baby, I’m preparing in a different way. I’m considering finances, resources, and the family. I’m considering his birth with real questions about how to manage risk and the pain of childbirth because I’ve been through it before. I’m learning from my first experience and creating back-up plans and a clearer birth plan than before. I will be the first person to physically touch my baby when he’s crowning. I will bury his placenta underneath an apple tree in our yard. I will not let anyone else’s fear or guilt touch me.

I trust in this process of becoming. I trust my body, I trust this baby, I trust birth. That’s the gift of motherhood. We don’t become our ideals. We embody the version of ourselves who our children need and realize this mother we’re embodying is actually who we needed, too.

I believe in your becoming, and so do your babies,

~S

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