The baby's arrived!!

I was recently talking to a friend that I haven't seen in ages and was reflecting over my pregnancy and how what happened throughout my pregnancy might have impacted on the little person we have today. I was telling her how during the pregnancy I had worked two jobs, finished my thesis and moved house, trying to get everything done and out of the way before the baby came.

My friend said something back to me so poignant and that has really stuck with me- 'you were trying to fit everything in before the baby arrived, forgetting that it had already arrived'. It was an oh my God moment. She was right. Our baby had arrived the moment we conceived her. She was starting to develop not only her physical self, but her spiritual and emotional self too. She was there, present with me all the time. Through my happiness, joy, sadness, anger, annoyance and stress. Whatever was happening in my world, was happening to her. She was exposed to all of my stress hormones and would have felt it too. Wow.

It's weird you know, I knew all that intellectually as I'd studied it and written papers on it etc. But even though I'd done that, I still didn't get it. I was already a Mother. It's hard to fathom and it's hard thinking back on it to figure out how I could have protected her more from the stress I was under with everything I was trying to get done. I know I'd try and reduce outside stress if we ever have a 'round two'. Not that you can completely remove stress from your life, that's impossible. But i know I'll be more mindful that the little person inside me has consciousness and awareness that I will nurture and protect. Don't get me wrong, we used to sing, read and talk to our little girl from the moment we found out about her. We told her we loved her from the very beginning and we did love her from the very beginning. But she still had a rough, stressful time of it in there, despite all that.

I'm still in the process of figuring out how my stress affected our daughter inside me and now that's she's out. I will always wonder if our difficult first 4 months with our baby would have been any different if I had of been more aware during my pregnancy. I guess we'll never know. And I suppose it doesn't matter as I can't do anything about that now. What I have learned, however, is that the nurturing we can provide after they are born can heal things that happened before they were born. But we have to learn how to listen to our babies stories. It sounds odd doesn't it? Listen to our babies stories. But they can't speak! I know that's not true now, we just have to learn how to understand their language. Boy is that the challenging part! That's the journey we are on at the moment and that I will come to share with you.