In my recent post about “the tentative pregnancy,” I mentioned feeling the urge to make some birth art. Coincidentally, I have several blessingways/mother blessings coming up and also needed to make some gifts…so I put the two needs together and made some lovely (if I do say so myself) polymer clay birth goddess sculptures. I’ve made quite a few in the past, but this was the first time I’d tried using pigments to color them. I also boiled them instead of baking them, which works really well (and they are just as hard and plasticky as when baked—not rubbery or anything as you might expect—but there isn’t any weird fumes from the oven or a need to have an oven heating up the house on a hot day). I think the pigments turned out nice, though I was hoping for more color.

I hope that none of the pregnant mamas for whom these are intended will read this post and have the surprise ruined! (the blue one is actually for me, I thought as long as I was creating for others, I would like to create something for myself as well)

In my earlier post, I’d also mused about my feelings that my pregnancy loss experiences have impacted my ability to connect with the “pregnant identity” during my current pregnancy while at the same time still being constantly aware of being pregnant. Interestingly, I was skimming through my old pregnancy journal from my first pregnancy in 2003 and found the almost exact same sentiment expressed (6 years PRE-loss experiences). I wrote (reflecting on earlier in the pregnancy), “I felt almost constantly aware of being pregnant, but not fully connected to being PREGNANT. This feeling changed after I started feeling the baby move on a regular basis.” Ah ha. So, perhaps my current feelings have more to do with the normal developmental tasks of pregnancy than with having been wounded by loss? (it is probably a combination of both, really, but it was reassuring to me to see that this is not a completely “fresh” feeling!)