It Takes a Village

This past week has been pretty busy in a great, whirlwind way. All my projects at work made significant progress which made me feel much better about my job. This is something I imagine we all deal with- the feeling that we are just trudging along and to what end? Hitting a milestone is exactly the encouragement I needed to keep going right now!

At home we have been making crazy, progress on putting in our upstairs bathroom. I’ll share all the details on this later, but the gist is we’re going to be a 2 bathroom household! Tyler has been moving this project along at warp speed and it’s getting pretty exciting.

In addition, I’ve had the chance to see my lovely Wilmington friends so much this week! As a boring pregnant lady it’s pretty rare I venture out on school nights  (without drinking happy hour just isn’t the same, ya know?) but it’s been incredibly lovely this week to make an exception. Earlier this week during a birthday celebration (cocktails and sushi – another fun night to be pregnant) I was completely stunned when one friend blurted, “I can’t wait to meet your baby.” She wasn’t the first person to say this but she was the first person to say and mean, “I can’t wait to know your baby.” She wasn’t referring to wanting to know what baby B will look like or even playing and cooing over baby B. She was entirely referring to the person he or she will become and how they will become a figure in our little group of friends.

I was completely overwhelmed by this. Both overcome by the emotion of her statement we dropped the topic to more birthday dinner appropriate things but I haven’t stopped thinking about it. The idea that my child already has true friends waiting on here for him or her to arrive is too wonderful to express. I grew up in a small, quiet family of four that divided and shrunk early on in life. My sister went to college when I went into the third grade and my parents spent most of their time not speaking to one another before they separated when I was twelve. Although we had a few family friends that I would certainly consider part of our family “village” I rarely saw them outside of my mother’s best friend, Ed, who came into our lives in when I was in middle school. Going over to my friends’ houses with larger families and friends always around always left me envious. I would soak up the noise and chaos as much as I did the laughter and excitement. For baby B to experience the love of an extended family would really be a dream come true.

I am also embarrassed to say that I had not yet put a lot of thought into knowing baby B in the way my friend meant. I’ve been entirely preoccupied by the more superficial concerns of being pregnant. What do we need to purchase? Am I eating well enough? Exercising enough? How will we handle maternity leave or daycare? Although I have thought about what this munchkin might be interested in, I hadn’t yet really considered baby B a whole person. There is someone growing right now that I will have a chance to know soon. I can’t even imagine what it will be like to get to know them, little by little, more every day.

Twenty-three weeks, y’all. We’re over halfway and getting bigger every day.

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