Celebrate the Woman Pregnant

By Ani Tuzman

A woman pregnant,

I long to be seen

belly protruding,

life invisibly visible

churning inside

I want to be seen

honored, revered,

Exalted

not as my person,

but as the Miracle itself

of life begetting life

of human birth

Celebrate the woman

pregnant

don’t set her aside

nor cast her off as disabled,

or ever less woman;

Revel with her

feeling her firmness

knowing her softness

Carve her rare beauty

in smooth white marble

Look upon her.

Celebrate the woman pregnant

Hers is to know

the creative moment

of Life incarnating

——–

This poem came in the pregnancy newsletter I get from Mothering.com and it reminded me of the “magic” of being pregnant. I love that feeling (I’ve written about it before in the “the pregnant glow“). After this new baby is born, we do not plan to have any more children (though I have said to my husband, “what if she’s just so awesome we want to have one more?”) and I’m trying to take special time to savor and enjoy that magic feeling of being pregnant, since I will likely not experience it again personally. I told a friend recently that I feel like maybe I’m not savoring as much as I “should” be and realized that I think when I think of savoring, I think I’m picturing sitting around for hours rubbing my belly—possibly making multiple belly casts and drawing some fabulous art as well. Oh, and making some sculptures. And, then sitting and rubbing some more—preferably in the sunshine 😉 I have been making a very conscious effort to downscale my commitments to allow for more of this. I’m also taking a leave from teaching birth classes—I feel like I want to focus on my own pregnancy, rather than on other people’s. I feel a real inward-draw and not so much like being “of service” to others (I’ve been feeling this inner call since Noah was born last year, actually, but it has taken a while to actually get to the downscaling part). I also find that teaching college classes “uses up” most of my available teaching energy and I don’t have as much to give to birth classes—I am not expecting this to be a permanent leave, birthwork is too important to me for that, but I want to heed my inward call. I’ll have to stick with “virtual” birth education via this blog for a while!

I’ve had a post pending for a while that I guess will never get posted, about life balance and feeling like I’ve not been living up to a good guiding quote—“the things that matter most should never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.” Instead, the things that had been getting cut from my schedule were things like hanging out with my friends, sitting in the sunshine, writing in my journal, rubbing my belly, snuggling with my husband, reading books to my kids, chatting with my mom—HELLO! Not a good idea. So, I’ve done some cutting, some saying no, and also just some mental readjusting about how I think about things (like my to-do list). I’ve also been doing a “conditions of enoughness” thing that I learned from Jen Louden, wherein you set some conditions of enoughness for the day—not, just keep burning until the day is used up, not, “I can probably do this one more thing” and likewise not a “bare minimum” approach, but what is enough on a given day. Usually, this does not mean accomplishing everything on one’s to-do list, and it leaves some time leftover in the day for self-care—which is the piece I’ve been missing too. While everything is not perfect, obviously, I feel better about my life balance in recent weeks. My main reason for this downshifting is actually in preparation to enjoy my new baby when she gets here—I want to be all “cleared out” to enjoy a nice babymoon as well as to be free to take good care of myself as well as my baby.

The picture above was taken by my friend Karen at the park last week. She has launched a new photography business recently and if you click the picture, it will take you to her Facebook fan page. She is going to do both pregnancy photography and birth photography and I hope to have some more pictures in another month or so 🙂

And, I actually have been doing a lot of drawing during this pregnancy. Here is one I did when I was starting to re-incorporate the pregnant identity into my life again, as well as to feel some of the joy of pregnancy rather than just anxiety:

I’ve done others as well and then after finding out she is a girl, I drew this one: