40 months---er weeks pregnant

40 weeks pregnant. today.

to mark the occasion I am posting the few things that I can still find enjoyment in being pregnant. These apply to today not pregnancy in general.

1. and at the top of everyone's list, feeling the baby move. I love it when they are this big and they stick their feet out so your belly has a point on one side. I love to feel their exact position (head, back, legs) and pretend I have x-ray vision to match up what I feel.

2. I love prenatal yoga. Maybe because I enjoy the lack of pressure, knowing I don't have to push myself to exhaustion, like I do when I take a regular class.

3. I like walking among strangers and receiving smiles, doors held open... you know special attention. The kind you only get one you are pregnant.

4. my bed! crashing is so much more blissful when you are tired.

5. feeling a bond and deep love for a face you have never seen, and a hand you have never held

Maybe I will think of 5 more... or at least one more for tomorrow, and each consecutive day until Birth Day!

My Mantras

2010 was one of the most challenging years in our family. Adjusting to life with two children, my sister getting diagnosed with cancer (which still feels weird to say), and trying to get her husband to come over to the states and then the cultural clashes that ensued. That was the first year I ever felt really angry. I mean reallllly angry. The kind that just builds up so high that you have to release it with more than just hissing and horse lips. It needs a good f bomb or punch in the wall. And I promise that is not like me at all! Then there is the other side of that roller coaster and you come crashing down into sobs. It was during that year that I came up with the mantra "All is as it should be" and "All will be well" ... these two phrases seem to pretty well cover peace with the present and peace with the future.
They would ring through my head like a bell that cannot be stopped in times of being utterly overwelmed. Even when I didn't want to believe them, they rang.... all is as it should be... all will be well.

It may sound overly optimistic, especially to anyone who doesn't believe in a Greater Being with a plan for your life. But in times of difficulty you have to have something to grab hold of. Something that feels solid and hopeful, even though saying the words "solid" and "hopeful" in the same sentence sounds like a paradox.
You know when you are in a stressful situation but you are trying to teach yourself not to BE stressed? Well how can you? How is it even possible? In most cases you can't eliminate the stressing factors.... so you basically have to tell yourself that they are not stressful. All is as it should be. Even if it's awful, if you believe something good will come of it, somehow that can give the will to push through it. All will be well. Things won't always be so difficult. Maybe not tomorrow or this year, maybe it will be several years before a particular issue is long passed. The hope of a brighter day is the only we can get through the cloudy ones.

I have only recently had these mantras find a place in my mind again. 2011 was wonderful in it's own way, and though I have high hopes for 2012 I have had my share of stressful situations that I have had to mentally give away. Things I wish I could go back and change. Things that are to come that I don't know exactly how I will deal with.

... and yet I still hear it. All is as it should be. All will be well.