It's All About Faith

I had three tough pregnancies. I’m not looking for pity or compassion I’m just stating fact. When I say I tough I mean 5-6 months of feeling like I had just been punched in the head, puking everyday sometimes 10 times a day and having to finally have home nurses come in and stick an IV in my arm so that I could have some fluid in my body. Suffice it to say that I did not fit the vision of the beautiful, plump, rosy cheeked pregnant woman that people compliment for “pregnancy glow.”

My husband Paul was taken completely by surprise by my body’s reaction to pregnancy. His assumption was that given that I am nearly obsessed with food, that pregnancy would be nine sublime months of watching his wife eat anything she’d like without the guilt. After I got pregnant the 3rd time and we found out it was twins, I thought my husband would turn tail and run for the hills straight from the ultrasound room.

Knowing how tough my pregnancies had been, those who knew me well could not believe I had gotten pregnant a third time. One friend asked me how I could do it to my body again given what I had experienced with Max & Natalie. While everyone’s experience with pregnancy is different, I believe the common denominator is faith. Acknowledge it or not, all pregnant women go on a 9-month journey of faith. It must take a nearly delusional amount of faith to grow another human in one’s body and trust that:

- you’ll know how to hold the baby

- you’ll know how to bathe a baby

- you’ll know how to survive sleep deprivation and not drop the baby in the middle of the night

- you’ll know how to loose the ass fat and flubby bits that linger around the waist (unless of course you are Heidi Klum – tall, gorgeous, German alien!)

- you’ll know what to do the first time your baby is sick

- you’ll know what to believe about vaccinations after hearing a head-spinning amount of medical experts contradicting themselves everyday on 24-7 cable news

- you’ll never curse, raise your voice or have horrible thoughts about sneaking your baby into an R-rated movie because you’re sick of Baby Einstein videos

- you’ll know how to love the baby and weather all things from teething to potty training to first time defiance to experimentation to dating to getting their drivers license and hopefully navigating them through the crazy world you’ve brought them into

If we could bottle the faith that women must have in nearly bulging abundance during pregnancy, could we sell it to the pentagon and find a way to end all matter of disagreement, war and genocide in the world?