38 weeks

Feeling ready!  What a difference sixteen hours makes.  Just last night as we were going to bed, I was telling Tyler that intellectually, I know we're about to have a baby (I've technically been considered "full term" for the last nine days, since turning 37 weeks), but viscerally, it just hasn't felt that way in my body.  Like the xkcd comic, it just felt like I'd continue at the current rate towards infinity (link here).

Yet somehow, right at this very moment I'm actually feeling ready in my body, mind, and soul for the first time since crossing the "full term" line.  Still no physical signs that this birth will happen imminently, but I'm feeling like the boxer jumping around in his corner before the fight with his trainer pumping him up -- "put me in, put me in, I'm ready!!"

Because here's the secret that I realized: there's part of me that will never be ready.  How can I be?  As much as I've been wanting this, I can't possibly know what it's like to have a baby -- to deliver a baby, to care for a baby... for my life to change as fundamentally as it's about to.  And that's okay.  Today, I discovered the very freeing concept of ambivalence -- which I realized I never actually knew the definition of, much less internalized; Miriam Webster defines it as "the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory feelings about something or someone."

A big part of our birthing class has been to identify our fears around birth -- around which I realized I had many.  Inspired by the ideas of wise friends (starting with my roommate in Hyderabad -- still recall the night we started to "draw" our futures), I began to draw out all of my fears in graphic detail over the last several weeks... something awful happening to the baby, something awful happening to me... the worse pain possible, rusty tools, blood, death, and sadness.  I meditated on these, visualized "throwing" these fears away... only to get disenchanted and hard on myself, realizing that the fears still lingered.

Intellectually, a big piece of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place during our baby CPR class the other weekend -- which I took with Tyler and our new nanny.  As our CPR teacher went through the many ways that something can happen to the baby (SIDS, drowning in the tub, choking on a grape -- a GRAPE!) -- I realized that these fears of death clearly don't stop after the birth and delivery process.  Like the xkcd comic -- they can continue -- maybe even exponentially as the world becomes a place of exponential possibility -- good and bad.  I'm sure 32 years later, Tyler's mom still fears the worst can happen on his motorcycle, even just a bit at the back of her mind.  That thought knocked some sense into my conscious mind.  I could continue to fear the worst -- even things I can do absolutely nothing about (just after entering the third trimester, I kept having a recurring fear that the baby's heart would all of a sudden just stop beating).  OR I could focus on areas I could actually control -- like drinking enough water, eating healthily, and getting exercise (I now swim and do yoga three days a week each).

But being the recovering perfectionist that I am, this new-found intellectual mindset of freeing the fears led me to also feel that I couldn't possibly be ready for birth until all of these fears were fully released.  

Hence, the freedom of ambivalence that I've somehow managed to internalize today: the state of holding contradictory feelings.  And more importantly, the realization that this is at the root of all things -- certainly all human relationships.  Of course, this doesn't mean the mixed feelings are 50-50.  I can be 80% excited for this birth AND 20% scared.  And that's okay.  What I'm coming to realize is that, despite what all the positive psychologists and folks evangelizing the "law of attraction" say, giving voice to my fears isn't a path towards manifesting them and making them come true.  

Rather, it makes me human.

And with that, I say, "Put me in coach! -- I'm ready."

[pics at 38 weeks and 1 day]