embracing enthusiasm, and other ramblings

Something I've learned about myself in the last few years is that I seem to have a hard time letting myself really get excited about things. I don't consider myself that much of a pessimist, and it isn't that I don't get excited about things, I just subconsciously hold myself back from fully engaging in the enthusiasm for some reason. I think about this periodically, and especially now with this pregnancy. I mean, if there is ever a time where I am allowed to be unabashedly enthusiastic it's while having the easiest pregnancy known to man, right?

With this in mind, I've been trying to make sure I'm more engaged with the little preparations I'm working on. But let's be honest, it's hard to be truly excited about something if it doesn't feel concrete, and in my experience, pregnancy didn't feel that concrete until I started feeling movement this last week. Now I feel like things are really rolling.

If I had known how long it would take before I started to
show at all I would have taken a "before" picture so you could
understand that this is showing for me.
I know it doesn't look like it,  but believe me, the raptor is in there.

I've discovered that time has a funny way of warping around pregnancy. All at once I feel like I have no time to learn about and decide on a million different things from the type of medical care I want to what baby stuff needs to be procured when, but also feeling like March is ages away and this little creature is still so small. I'm afraid that I might wind up giving Tim whiplash from my sudden changes in focus and stress, though I know at least some of that can be chalked up to hormones. As a side note: calf cramps. Why are these a thing at all, where to they get off happening in the middle of the night for no reason and hurting so badly that you wake up and then limp for the rest of the day, and why are they so commonly associated with pregnancy? Most physical changes and symptoms make sense, but that one has me completely stumped.

A week from today we'll finally find out what we're having, and I'm consciously working to embrace and feel the excitement that I can sense lurking below my surface. I can't say that I have any specific hopes; I'm just excited to have another ultrasound and get confirmation that everything's okay.

Of course, not everyone chooses to find out the gender of their children before they are born [I just learned recently that my mom didn't know for any of us until we arrived]. That's really a pretty cool way of doing things, and I can see how it might help some to focus on the blessing of each individual child regardless of traditional markers. For me, though, to develop attachment I need details, and I'm really looking forward to having this one in particular to help ground my growing understanding of this little one's personality.

In anticipation of this, I've started to shift my question from "who will you be" to "who are you?" As interesting as it can be to speculate on the first question, it also carries a measure of anxiety since I'll have a pretty heavy hand, at least initially, in the answer to it. Also, in this moment, the first question doesn't tell me as much. Children are not beings that we create from scratch, persons that we have complete power to mold however we choose. They are eternal beings. Parents have a vast degree of influence, true, but these little ones come to us already in possession of themselves. This raptor is new to me, but that doesn't make them new, and this is actually really encouraging for me to remember. It's easier for me to feel like I can connect, knowing that this spirit may be as old, or older than my own. Oddly, this comforts some of my anxieties about parenthood as well, because it gives me further direction. My responsibility of helping this child to become who they're supposed to be is more like archaeology than construction. All the pieces they need will already be there. We'll rediscover them together.