Pickles and Ice Cream.

A rant, ode, and overview of pregnancy.... like pickles and ice cream, the salty and the sweet.

When we first announced our coming joy, I was asked by several if I would write about it, blog about it, journal about it.  I know their thought was wanting to be supportive and "listen in" about how this time was for me.  At the moment, I said no to their words for lots of reasons.  As this season has sprawled on, those reasons are an even firmer resolution for why.

Though I'm open about so many things, I'm also private about so much.  Writing is a way of seeping through that privacy, hearing the inner voice while unknown or unspoken words leak out.  Pregnancy, for me, as been a time about guarding, protecting, learning, seeking.  It has been a time where I have needed to build more and stronger hedges around my little family, and also a time where I have needed a few special friends within those hedges.  It's most intense moments are only known by me, and sometimes, shared with Mark.  Its prodding questions and concerns lay in the searching of Google and mini prayers, kept safely there.

For me, pregnancy has been about shutting out lots of voices.  Both those wanting to be supportive, and those who simply speak to speak.  Voices are overwhelming, opinions are often shared as if they are fact, women portraying their experience with pregnancy as the rule.  Supportive tends to feel suffocating when unprompted, or unasked, and creates tension between receiving the offered and blocking the invaded. Manny voices lend to insecurity or indignant me, remarking on belly growth, organic food, epidurals, sleep schedules, and clothing choices.  Still, a few voices have allowed empathy and comfort - laughing with Kelly over breastfeeding mortification, Kates' careful words concerning nurturing spiritual hearts, and mom friends who allow TV and cookies and spanks.

Then there is a separate cringing and shame from voices -- those who fluff pregnancy to be a billowing, lovely, spiritual experience.  It feels like pressure, hearing the women reminisce about their pregnancy with such awe and wonderment, like Anne Geddes angelic clouds floating around, while instead I really just feel fat and heave over the toilet still at 36 weeks.  Here's the honest inside: I hide most side-shot selfies because of the agnst I turmoil in seeing others'.  I've got compression socks on to keep my blood flowing, take pills to try to semi-control my restless leg, and chomp bananas to stop the muscle cramps in my calves.  I keep Tums at my bedside, my desk my purse pocket, and still swallow Zantac when its the worst.  I've got veins showing on my butt, toenails I can't reach to cut, and nausea pretty much every day.  I've thrown up in school bathrooms, grocery store toilets, and more plastic bags than I can count.  I dangle over the pew in church and have laid on the floor a few times there too.  I feel no warm fuzzy about baby laundry and this is is only the start of the things I'm willing to share...

Back to pickles and ice cream.  It's true.  I could devour an whole jar of Claussens in ten minutes in the first tri-mester, and now eat ice cream at least every night.  Add potato chips in, and the menu is set.  Yet, I see pregnancy woes as mostly myths:  I haven't craved anything crazy or sent Mark on midnight burger runs;  I haven't cried randomly or gone emotionally wacko or found hormones leading to my uncontrol;  I could have slept the whole first trimester, but now am energetic like a twenty-year-old at 37 weeks.  Mostly, I just try to tutor well, and watch a lot of HGTV.

My mouth stays pretty closed, my heart careful to share, because as a woman, I feel an authentic connection and privilege to quiet my complaints, minimize my voice, and trap my emotions regarding the whole situation, because life is messy, and pregnancy is messy, and sometimes our messes are less important than walking in the messes of others.

Pregnancy is like pickles and ice cream, fulfilled in salty and sweet.  After years of struggle, my sister rejoiced in Jaxson, but lost the second baby at 5 weeks, and Kaylin's twin after the ultrasound.  I think of a couple at church who lives in five years of hope, yet knows each years' deferral.  I think of friends who are just hoping and starting to "try" for babies, and want to be joyful with them, and also the friends who are waiting a while and need the freedom to enjoy that opportunity.  I think of the women who feel pressure to be pregnant to "keep up" with the couples around them, and I think of how God calls us all independently and his timing is the uniqueness to our stories.

I think of one week in February, when one friend brought home her baby girl after 40 days in the NICU and still faces the concern of breathing and surgeries to come.  Another friend had a healthy baby boy, while a third was told that her son wouldn't survive outside the womb.  Meanwhile, a fourth delivered a dark-haired little baby girl who nursed and came home just as planned.  These are the stories of pregnancy.  These are the stories of woman, both salty and sweet.

These are the stories which put puking into perspective, and people's gender preferences to my inner mocking and anger.  These are the stories curve shopping habits, and bring reality to fear and joy.  These are the stories which renounce hair and eye color preferences, and speak strength to prayers of health.  These are the stories blended into my pregnancy, creating the experience less individual than the whole.

Perhaps I'll have pregnancy dementia and look back on this season with more affection than I have, and perhaps I won't.  Yet, perhaps too, pregnancy is much like pickles and ice cream: the salty and the sweet.  The salty twinges of fear and anxiety, of voices protruding space.  Salty tears in sharing heartache or from nausea I just couldn't keep.  The sweet of friends blessing me at showers and pink softness hanging everywhere.  Sweet in honesty that allows reality and a husband who prays while I sleep.  Pregnancy, for me, is pickles and ice cream: lots of salty with hints of sweet.