All the Things We Wait For
How pregnancy teaches us about patience and finding peace in the temporary.
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Thank you for reading this weekly post. I hope you find what you need in these words. If this post resonates with you, feel free to share your thoughts. I’d love to connect.
To the Reader Seeking Comfort in Waiting
Everything about matrescence is temporary. Time is both a blessing and a thief. I am ready and then I am not. I need more time and I want time to move faster. I count all the milestones and wait my turn for whatever is next to come. There is peace to be found in the in-between, no matter what has preceded it.
I was struck recently by the realization that my baby will soon have her first day on Earth; how magical it would be to experience everything again for the first time! Every sight, every smell, every touch — all new and pure and kind. I sense that everything I have ever waited for is coming back to me tenfold in the mini human my body formed.
I have struggled with “patience” for a long time. What a silly virtue. I want things now! Seize the moment! Did you know you can seize the moment without running out of breath? I didn’t, until Joni taught me so in utero.
Pregnancy has forced me to slow down in ways I didn’t know were possible. I have learned that energy can be channeled into things that don’t have to move so fast. The absence of motion has grown a new life; how much faster can I run after that?
It is all so mesmerizing and soothing, albeit the pain and discomfort that preceded this sense of peace, at long last.
There are a lot of waiting phases in motherhood. The waiting to feel “ready” to create life. The waiting to see two lines on a positive pregnancy test. The waiting through each trimester, hoping for life to take root and grow within. The waiting I am in now as labor approaches, my home prepared for a baby, wondering how she will enter the world and if it will be violent or serene or both.
Everything is out of my control, I realize with each passing day. So, I make sure I celebrate every milestone to find new ways to honor this process. To grow with it instead of sprinting to find answers that are not ready to be given to me. There is no finish line. It is not a race. There are no trophies and ribbons. All this uncertainty and longing and pleasure; all of it is temporary and all of it is meant to be experienced exactly as it unfolds in its own right.
Waiting for Conception
Conception feels like chaos. So many microscopic collisions must occur in perfect sequence for life to form. Waiting for a positive pregnancy test felt like there was a panic attack monster crouching in the corner of my closet ready to scare me in the middle of the night for no good reason.
I was very blessed to have a short waiting period before conception. My husband and I did not have to endure fighting off the Shadow Creature in this phase and my heart breaks for everyone who has been waiting in a long and unfair fertility queue.
I do not know what it feels like to spend years wishing my body into conception, but I know what it feels like to feel like your body has failed you. And I empathize with anyone experiencing the heartbreak cycle that is stifled excitement and disappointment on repeat.
I’m not sure what magic spell banishes the Shadow Creature in this waiting period. I do not doubt that there is an absence of this so-called peace I have found in other phases of matrescence. But I can hope with you and sit with you in this wildly inequitable waiting and help you fight off the darkness from consuming everything in its wake.
Waiting for Implantation
I previously wrote about my early miscarriage in a prior post. For whatever reason, my first embryo did not implant in utero, but life gave my womb a second chance and made space instead to grow my Joni.
Making it past just Week 5 of pregnancy was a milestone worth celebrating for me.
Great job, little embryo! You did it!
Every moment like this one has felt like a wave of relief. Each wave gets smaller, gentler, and calmer the further I progress. Week 5 did feel like a crash. But it was still refreshing and cleansing, and every milestone I have met since gives me more power to feel like I can control the sea.
Waiting for the Second Trimester
Week 13 — you must always celebrate Week 13. That turning page of glorious renewal where the anxiety and disenchantment fades slowly into the background of your memory reel and you start to feel a little more like yourself again.
I did not find peace in my first trimester. I only feel this now in hindsight.
I couldn’t find any glimmers in the first trimester except the sliver of gratitude for each week that moved me forward in time. I felt like I was watching paint dry. I counted days. This made time move slower. I don’t know how to cope with this waiting period; I think you just bite down and endure it as best as you can. If that’s all you can do, I assure you, you’re doing great. It’s temporary, remember?
If you’re in the thick of it now, or if you’re still waging war with your body and trying to grapple with multiple losses, I see you and I feel for you deeply and I hope you feel the freedom to express all of your rage and frustration that consumes you without the need to figure out what it all means right now.
Waiting for the Belly
Where art thou pregnancy-belly?! I wanted to have a giant full moon belly the moment I found out I was pregnant. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to prance around like a bouncy fertile fairy. I knew that every body was different and that first pregnancies show later. But I got my wish, and I have celebrated my new body ever since.
There was something magical about Week 16. I felt teeming with energy. My belly made its debut. I felt Joni flutter. It was all happening so fast. I felt so grateful that I felt terrified I had traded these early bounties for a secret price I would later pay for. And so I reminded myself that I did make it to Week 16 and I do have visible evidence that I’m pregnant and I no longer have to stand in the mirror and wonder if the life I made is a figment of my imagination or a trick of science.
There was no more time for the Shadow Creature. So I turned on the light, and it was gone.
Waiting for Viability
The age of a viable fetus is 24 weeks. 24 weeks and a fetus can live outside of the womb (in NICU care) with a good chance of survival. That is mind-blowing to me.
At 24 weeks, two of my best friends sent me texts with confetti to celebrate this milestone. What a rush. I felt like throwing the biggest party in the world so I devoured a giant chocolate cake slice and told Joni she is doing amazing and tapped on her little head beneath my abdomen while she tasted the sweetness of my festivities flowing down her umbilical cord.
This time last year, I had no idea if my body was capable of conceiving life. Implanting life. Growing life. Holding life.
None of us know if we can do these things. Every time is different. We all simply try and dream and rest and fight and grapple with our bodies and nature and faith and all the things we cannot control.
These days, with every new milestone, every step closer to life, I eat a giant slice of chocolate cake and put on my party hat and sink my teeth into saccharine gratitudes until I am so full that I can do nothing else except chase the next sugar rush. There’s no point in fearing the future when you have no say over its form. We celebrate all the big and little joys in life because without them there’s no point to any of this at all.
Matrescence is a practice in patience and serves a vital lesson reminding us to find peace in the temporary.
Right now, I am waiting for my pregnancy to come to full term. I am two months away from labor and delivery — unless Joni has other ideas and decides to make an early debut. I have no idea if she will arrive tomorrow or next week or in two months when she’s supposed to. I simply must wait.
In my continued waiting, I am learning to ignore the image of the Shadow Creature that used to lurk in the shadows. I am learning it is only an illusion of the darkness. That a simple flick of a switch banishes it from existence. It was never real to begin with.
I have stopped waiting for answers. I have stopped running. I have stopped expecting to be consumed by anything other than light. I have started celebrating everything good and beautiful and sugary and candied because I have no choice but to be hopeful in order to honor the memories of the things I have lost.
Time has moved on. And so must I eat the chocolate cake and dance in the flower fields in anticipation of what will become of July.
Xo,
Violet Carol
“I have learned that energy can be channeled into things that don’t have to move so fast.” 👏🏼
This was very well said! Just keep celebrating the little Joni kicks 💕🤍