That’s a mommy!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

I had my baseline ultrasound and bloodwork this morning and it went great!  It looks like we are all set to begin egg-making injections on Saturday!  Today is technically DAY TWO of my pregnancy!

As I was reviewing my well-being checklist last evening I got to the line “BE”.  It was an invitation to be present in the moment; to simply be.  Was I truly present in any moment today?  I wondered.  I can be present right now in this moment, I thought.  And I was.  And as I was, I had this overwhelming sense that it was a significant day.  I realized it WAS a significant day.  In technical pregnancy counting terms, it was Day One.  Day One.  Wow.

What a gift to be present to Day One.  An often unknown, unrealized day in, I would imagine, almost every pregnancy.  It is, after all, a day where a mother-to-be is not actually pregnant yet — the first day of the last menstrual cycle.  So how would anyone know to reflect on it for what it is…for what it might be…even if they thought it would be?  Trust and belief must be present to relish the day as such.  Trust and belief have never been more present for me.

I am sitting in Starbucks this morning, reading up on Masterful Coaching, when a mother and her tiny child come in.  The child stops five steps into the coffee shop and looks at me.  Stands there for almost a minute looking at me.  I smile.  She eventually joins her mother at the counter.  They come back a few minutes later to sit at a nearby table.  The child again looks at me.  Stares actually.  I smile again.  Present to the innocence and beauty of children.  So pure.  Uncorrupted by the heavy chains of disempowering beliefs and social norms.  Unaware that intuition, trust, and authenticity are not the most socially acceptable ways of interacting with strangers in our current culture.  Her mother knows.  Her eyes never connect with mine.  Almost like a game of “pretend” in which she does not see me, does not know I am there; does not know her child is staring at me.  Underneath this make-believe, I sense her unease in her child breaking a social norm.  Unease that perhaps it is making me uncomfortable.  It is not.  Quite the opposite.  It is connection.  Pure love as it is meant to be experienced.

And like a sweet little bell ringing at midnight on Christmas, the child begins to speak to her mother about what she sees, never taking her eyes off me.

“That’s…a mommy,” she states emphatically.

“…That’s a mommy!  Mommy…that’s a mommy!”

Her mother replies, “Yes, shh, that mommy is reading.”  A quiet echo follows, “That’s a mommy…that mommy is reading.”

My eyes well up with tears on this day, this Day Two of my pregnancy.  Indeed, young, wise, intuitive one.  I AM a mommy.

And I have always been.