I Didn't Cry at My First Ultrasound
Moments in pregnancy that didn't happen like the movies.
Last month, I asked my OBGYN how worried I should be about delivering my daughter in the passenger seat of my husband’s car. Like, if my water breaks in the middle of the night and now I’m in a race against the clock and my womb? And with what emergency object would I cut my baby’s umbilical cord after I catch her in my sweater — the car keys?!
“Ha! Do not worry,” she gently laughs, “That doesn’t usually happen like the movies.”
WHAT?
I cannot think of a movie or television show in which the pregnant character isn’t rushed to the hospital after her water suddenly breaks and a perfectly clean baby, fit for the eyes of the adoring audience, is presented in Lion King fashion just a few minutes after. In fact, the more pregnancy storylines I pay attention to, the more I realize Hollywood may have never gotten it right.
Lights, camera, hysteria! Five minute labors. Glowing third trimesters. Endless crass jokes by a husband about his wife’s uncontrollable cravings and lunacy. The absence of the waddle. Wearing six inch heels days after birth, back in the office, smiling wide. Slapstick vomiting without warning into a crowd. The complete neglect of the placenta’s existence. Seriously, who is writing these scripts?
Our lives don’t revolve around pop culture, but pop culture does inform and reflect, in some part, the human experience. Unfortunately, it seems that pregnancy is often used as a trope or portrayed as a mockery, and I’ve yet to see any diversity of pregnancy or postpartum birth stories on screen that don’t seek to ridicule (comedy) or shock (horror) without any realistic semblance on either end of the spectrum.
My expectations about my own pregnancy have been informed by what I’ve seen, read, and heard. Needless to say, it has been nothing like I expected.
Pregnancy is an experience of multitudes. It is life-changing. It is transformative. But for me, it has also been violent, painful, and rattling. It is actively practicing self-acceptance, often feeling stuck in a cycle of appreciating that my body is a home for someone else that I somehow love more than I can comprehend but no longer recognizing that home for myself. I feel cute today, but I didn’t feel cute yesterday. Yesterday, I was a monster to myself that would make Medusa herself turn to stone.
Pregnancy is looking in the mirror and commanding yourself to see what is beautiful before self-doubt and self-criticism consume you. It is tracing the stretch marks that have begun to multiply exponentially all over your hips, thighs, and belly and reminding yourself that those marks detail an artful timeline of the last nine months. It is ridding yourself of guilt when you feel ugly and unworthy because you know you are not but you are human and everything about you is changing and it takes time to understand all that you are becoming.
These multitudes are held and changing all the time, but they are not what have been asked about in my journey. Instead, I am discussing milestones and moments. The ones others have seen in the movies, too, and the ones that are safe to talk about without diving too deep, like that first ultrasound that makes everyone cry.
I didn’t cry at my first ultrasound. Because pregnancy is not like the movies. And I’m writing to anyone who has felt bamboozled by a failure to meet the expectations of how to “act” during pregnancy.
Short answer: you don’t act. You just are.
Independence Day Baby
My baby is due on July 4. This is also the same day I met my husband six years ago. It is poetic serendipity. It is a fun fact that I love sharing with anyone who asks. But it doesn’t really mean anything except calendar kismet because only five percent of babies are actually born on their due dates.
In other words, baby comes when baby wants. And baby is unpredictable.
37 weeks? Baby wants to arrive to the party a little early and scare mommy because she’s a little jokester. 42 weeks? Baby probably needs an eviction. 39 weeks? Baby is feeling mighty timely.
I would love to bring my daughter into the world in the backdrop of a sparkling night. I will tell her every year the fireworks are for her.
The First Ultrasound
I didn’t cry at my first ultrasound. So many people asked me if I did, told me how emotional that moment was for them, asked me if I was brought to tears. But I didn’t cry. I uncontrollably laughed. For the entire appointment.
I felt so much relief that there was a little peanut alien growing inside of me that there was no room for anything other than unbridled joy, which apparently manifested in my body as a laughing fit. My husband teared up as I wiggled my stomach so hard that my OBGYN had to keep rediscovering my baby as my laughs moved the transducer up and down my abdomen like a giant slip-and-slide.
And on the screen? A PEANUT-SHAPED ALIEN. STARING AT ME. TURNING HER HEAD AND BEARING HER STRANGE EYE SOCKET POCKETS AT THE SCREEN. Doing a little dance! Wiggling like a floppy fish! Looking like the cutest silly bean I’ve ever seen!
When I got home, I started feeling guilty that maybe I should’ve been more emotional, as that has been the experience of so many others. This was the first time I have ever seen a baby in my womb on screen — proof of life. How can I not cry? I don’t know, but my experience wasn’t tears. It was laughter. And nothing has made me feel so whole during this pregnancy than holding onto laughter.
You don’t have to cry at your first ultrasound to have any sort of external validation that you love your baby. Love comes in many forms, howling included.
It’s a Girl
I did cry when I found out that I was pregnant with a baby girl. I don’t know why. I thought that moment would be relatively inconsequential — I thought that I wouldn’t care what the sex of my baby would be as long as my baby was healthy.
But I bawled my eyes out when I found out she was a girl, because she went from tiny peanut alien to human in a matter of one word — girl. I would be bringing a daughter into this world. To teach her to follow her passions and live boldly and love fiercely. To teach her that her dreams know no limits and that no one can take away her power. To have her say “mommy,” and me “daughter.”
My husband and I stood in our kitchen, opened my laptop, and read the results of our genetic blood test as a November sky turned from lilac to orange sherbet to navy blue. We held each other while I cried. We danced. We sang. We cheered. We went to bed dreaming of little soccer uniforms and science experiments and all that may come for her.
I am a daughter. And now I have my own, too.
The Baby Shower
I opted to skip having a baby shower for this pregnancy. My best friends and family are scattered around the country, and it felt unnatural for me to celebrate matrescence without them. Everyone just recently travelled thousands of miles for my wedding celebrations last year. And with so many planning trips to see Joni after her birth, I didn’t feel the need to simply create another event when I already feel so celebrated by everyone I love in their daily actions.
Instead, I had a small picnic with my best friend who lives in my city, my husband, and my mother-in-law. It was a Mother’s Day picnic filled with sweet stories, flowers, and my favorite treats. It was perfect, thoughtful, and exactly all that I needed to carry me into the summer of my first born without overwhelm.
I have the best friends in the world; I don’t need a baby shower to remind me of that. But curiously, many have been shocked by my decision to skip this “milestone,” from acquaintances to strangers at Target.
A few weekends ago, my husband and I were stocking up on baby essentials, mostly diapers, baby wipes, first-aid items, and onesies. Three different cashiers asked me if I was having a baby shower upon check-out at three different stores that day. I should’ve said yes so I could avoid the explanation of why I wasn’t having one. Instead, I said no, and that my husband and I were just ensuring we had everything we needed in case of an early arrival. Every single one of the cashiers said, “Your friends should be buying these things for you.” What? When as a society did we come to expect other people to pay for our babies, and why is it out of the ordinary to buy my own baby her first diapers?
My husband and I made a baby registry for planning purposes. It took days to sift through the exorbitant amount of superfluous products and marketing to find the “safest!” and “best!” items that weren’t going to burn a hole in our pockets. We sent our registry only to those who asked. We don’t expect anyone to purchase “things” for our child. We appreciate gestures of all kinds — support is not just monetary, and if baby showers are being thrown for the purpose of expecting gifts, we’re not collectively focusing on the right things in preparing the mother for birth.
We should celebrate our loved ones having their first babies, second babies, and third babies. We should also celebrate our loved ones graduating with their master’s degrees, getting promotions, and breaking up with partners not meant for them so meaningful love can make its way in. We do not make friends so they can pay for our babies’ diapers. And if our friends buy our babies’ diapers, we thank them for the kind and selfless gesture and know that’s simply one more box to check off our to-do list.
I am almost 35 weeks into my first pregnancy, and every week I have learned something new about myself. I have learned how to manage expectations, how to guard my heart and my mind, how to overcome temporary pain and embrace temporary joy — and how to find contentment.
I have learned the importance of a support system that prioritizes my actual needs. I have better learned how to support others’ actual needs. I have learned how to approach uncertainty with gentleness before pointedness and discerned what is well-meaning advice versus unsolicited opinion. I have learned that the more I learn, the less I know, and the more I should relinquish control.
I have learned that outside noise is just noise, and I will do everything I can to protect my physical and mental health so I can be the best mother I can be.
Pregnancy is not like the movies. I do not have a permanent smile plastered onto my face or a baby-holding addiction or tears of joy for every week that passes. I have had tears for a lot of things during this process: discomfort, anxiety, restlessness, uncertainty.
But I also feel my heart growing. I feel it beating onto my baby’s tiny bum as she sits in a transverse lie across my abdomen and I feel it expanding to meet hers as we beat in time, holding each other, ready to meet each other against the tint of a navy sky, sparkled with stars, exploding with fire.
Xo,
Violet Carol
More words from Violet Carol can be found on Instagram.
Older Mother Love Letters posts can be read here.
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