(Excuse me while I go all “philosophical” on you.)
You’ve spent the last week swinging back and forth between feelings of anticipation and feelings of dread. One minute you’re looking at baby shoes with a heart full of hope; the next minute you’re gripped with disappointment, trying to convince yourself you are not pregnant so you don’t get your hopes up. The truth is, in your mind, you are neither pregnant nor not pregnant. You are in limbo; you simply don’t know. You are aware that limbo cannot exist when it comes to pregnancy, but you are too uncomfortable with truthfully answering the question, “what if I’m not?”
What if you are not pregnant? What if you spent the last month taking your temperature, charting the status of every bodily fluid and dragging your husband to the bedroom at the exact moment of ovulation, and none of it matters? What if the sickness you’ve felt was nothing more than nerves? What if that due date you circled in your calendar (just in case) never happens? What if you keep moving that due date one month later, every month, and what if it never comes to pass? Isn’t that your deepest fear – that your conception journey will end in vain?
In reality, most of us will become parents… one way or another. Becoming parents is bigger than our journey, however; there’s a whole other life at stake here. Do you believe in fate? In destiny? Do you believe that a great deal hinges on the exact date that your child is born? When we conceive will impact our child’s life more than it will impact our own. Their date of birth – or year of birth – will determine when they go to school, who they meet in life, which elections they will vote in, and what wars they will fight in (or protest). If you believe your child’s life has a unique purpose, then your journey to conceive that child takes on a whole new meaning. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter if you conceived this month or not. What matters is that you will conceive on the exact day you are supposed to. Doesn’t that change everything?