8 Weeks Pregnant: On My Own 31st Birthday!

It's interesting, contemplating my own birth while carrying a growing one. It's been 31 years that I've been on Earth - feels short and long simultaneously. In some ways I can think back and even tap into the energies and emotions of high school (luckily I've healed most of the harder stuff, so what I'm left with is pretty fun) and yet, fifteen years has passed since I was a junior. Fifteen years ago today I was celebrating my 16th birthday, spiraling out of my last year at Lake Braddock High School, planning my route to sneak away to see Phish at Madison Square Garden for the upcoming New Years Eve show. I had slowly started to go to school less often, as smoking weed had become my top priority (ironically I always showed up for Child Care class.) I had begun to lose interest in theatre, chorus, softball, art...all my favorite things were dwindling away as a textbook case of the "gateway drug" was slowly filling up my energy field (by the way, this is not a "just say no" commercial - I'm simply relaying an experience that happened to me.)

Fifteen years ago was a turning point in my development. In retrospect I can see it clearly - the path I needed to take. I was given a durable and healthy body that could handle a certain amount of difficult living. I was given an intuition strong enough to guide me and tell me when I'd gone too far. And I was given the exact parents and living situation needed to give me the best shot at learning what I chose to learn in this lifetime. So when I got caught on the train to Rhode Island, flown home, and informed that I would be heading to military school the following semester, something inside of me knew it was the right course of action.

Fifteen years. How much life is experienced in fifteen years. At fifteen, looking ahead, I had a very different viewpoint as to what 30 would look like. And 30 in 1995 may have been different than it was in 2010. And I may choose to do it differently than the norm. Looking at my parents, who loved and continue to love the hell out of me, and the little rebellious self I was (and still am in many ways) I wouldn't have had it any other way. I needed to go against the grain and learn some of these things for myself. Will this be a challenging space to hold when I'm a parent? I'm sure more challenging than I can possibly imagine. But that intuition got me this far, and supported me in cultivating the kind of life I wanted to live. It kept me out of 9-5land, where I knew intuitively I would be lost (I'm not saying everyone is lost, I'm speaking for me and my particular life path.) I always did things "out of order" (I smoked pot before I ever picked up a beer or a cigarette.) Having a baby before I'm ready for marriage is totally appropriate for my style. And here I am, fifteen years later, about to be initiated into a new level of spiritual growth - parenthood.

Am I ready? As ready as I'll ever be (and still be able to produce eggs.) More ready than I was at 15 or 20. All I know is I know my inner flow and natural rhythm, and trust my connection to the Divine. I have that intuition as my guide, and even though many of my tools and defenses are slightly weakened at the moment from the first trimester initiation, they are still there. We'll do this however we do it. And if I'm still blogging by the time my child runs away to a Phish show (okay, any show) I will let you know how I handled it - good, bad, right or wrong. We're about to join the land of lawless rule, where no one really knows what's best, no matter what "they" say (kinda sounds like the rest of life) and all you got is a wink and a prayer, and a shit-ton of love.

My mom give us a tie-dyed onesie (however you spell that), my brother's girlfriend - a pacifier that says "namaste", and my boyfriend baked me a beautiful three-layer coconut cake with strawberries on top. My family and friends gathered to hang, eat homemade mac and cheese and watch the Redskins win the game. No nausea, just fun:) It wasn't my normal big huge birthday blowout (somehow inviting everyone over to watch them drink and smoke wasn't sounding too enticing) but it was perfect:)

Here's the 8-week update from BabyCenter.com:

New this week: Webbed fingers and toes are poking out from your baby's hands and feet, his eyelids practically cover his eyes, breathing tubes extend from his throat to the branches of his developing lungs, and his "tail" is just about gone. In his brain, nerve cells are branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive neural pathways. You may be daydreaming about your baby as one sex or the other, but the external genitals still haven't developed enough to reveal whether you're having a boy or a girl. Either way, your baby — about the size of a kidney bean — is constantly moving and shifting, though you still can't feel it.


Yeay BabyCenter - we still think it's a girl. We could be wrong, of course, but so we believe!

Love to Everyone!

peace:)
Meghan