My Un-Pregnancy: Weeks 15 and 16

I'm embarrassed to admit how terrified I was throughout the first trimester of my pregnancy. I had a doctor tell me once that the closer I got to my 30th birthday, the less likely I'd be able to "get pregnant, stay pregnant or survive pregnancy." At 25-years-old, I had struggled to get pregnant and once I was, those words hung over my head. I remember one time in particular, when I was just starting to feel what I know now was my uterus growing and stretching, how scared I was to move from the couch. I just knew that if I stood, I'd do some type of damage to the baby. It was irrational but I was so afraid of losing the baby.

Once the second trimester came around, I felt more secure. I realized then that things could still go wrong but my outlook changed quite a bit. Rather than trying to fight off every bad possibility in my head, I just enjoyed the moment. I lightened up. I appreciated the experience of feeling that baby grow.

I'm going through that again. Ada is almost 6 months now and when I think back over her months here with us, I am amazed by how scared I was in the first weeks of her life. It wasn't motherhood that scared me. I felt like that came naturally to me; it is the most comfortable I've ever been in a life role. It was other things like money, childcare and people texting on the highway that suddenly put me on edge. Looking back, I lived my day white-knuckled, bracing for all of my bliss to come crashing down around me because in the back of my head there was this little voice that said this is too wonderful to be true.

So here I stand on the other side of Ada's first months and I've endured the stress of leaving my full-time job to start two home businesses, the fear of losing a steady paycheck and all of the other new-momma stresses, from blow-out diapers to unsolicited advice, and I'm finally starting to realize that I need to just slow down some and enjoy this time for what it is.

I can thank Little Bit for that.

She's been sitting up on her own for the last few weeks. This morning she was sitting on the floor and we were playing. She started to topple over and of course, I rushed to steady her but before I could catch her, she caught herself. She put one confident, little arm down and found her balance. It made me think that if this fragile baby girl can be filled with wonder about her world and eagerly approach each new challenge knowing that she is limited and can fall over, then so can I.