Relaxing means I'm starting to enjoy things a bit more. I'm daydreaming about all the awesome stuff- cute maternity clothes, being a MILF, watching tv or movies and having a baby fall asleep on me or Tim... all the sappy and wonderful moments. My artistic mind keeps looking around our house and trying to imagine one, five, ten years from now and how our furniture will change to accommodate a family, how our rooms will be reorganized, whether we've expanded onto our house or not... it's all looking to the future, now. Mostly, because even though I'm in this present moment, I can't see inside.
Or I couldn't see inside... until Saturday.
Because on Saturday I went to see Body Worlds 2 with Josh and La at the Maryland Science Center. Body Worlds is an amazingly beautiful synergy of compassion, art, science, medicine and community experience. People donate their bodies to Body Worlds for educational and aesthetic purposes, then they are plasticized and put on display. This gives the general public the chance to see the inner workings of the human body in all its magnificence, beyond what textbooks and videos can show you. These bodies are then posed in various activities from skateboarding, reclining, yoga, etc. to illustrate different parts of the body and its functioning.
The best part though, the part I didn't know would be there, was the Human Development Exhibit. This room was closed off from the rest of the exhibit, for those who could not deal with the idea, and consisted of fetuses from several weeks up to just before birth, as well as a woman who died while five months pregnant. The latter was displayed with the child in utero, revealing exactly how the baby is
situated in the womb, how the muscles and organs have moved to accompany it and the changes the body goes through in the process. It was amazing. My favorite part, though, was the embryos. They were in small glass tubes labeled with their week. This made me so excited, as got to scuttle over to seven weeks and squee with excitement. "That's what my baby look like right now!" I can't say how thankful I was that people donated their bodies and those of their children for this. It wasn't morbid, awful or cruel. It was just amazing. I kept finding myself almost to tears with happiness at being able to see just what was going on inside me. I was so reverential to the bodies and amazed at their gift of knowledge, the intimacy they granted the public. It was just awesome.
I've also been reading up on my Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy and From the Hips, which are both amazing books. The Mayo book is very well organized and addresses every concern you may have at various developmental stages in a quick reference system, then contains a more in-depth look later on. I also love how well they translate their medical information for laymen like myself. From the Hips is the greatest companion to this, as it's sassy, witty and funky. It has this no-bullshit way of talking about the wonderful and awful parts of being pregnant, giving birth and parenting in the first years. It also has TONS of direct quotes from women about their different experiences.
Am I still feeling flooded with info? Sure. Am I still daunted and a bit scared? Yeah, I won't lie. But I'm opening up, telling more people and settling into this Mommy idea a bit more readily. I'm also learning to have more faith in myself. Because I think I'm gonna be one kick ass parent.
2 comments:
Greg and I are planning on going to the exhibit soon (as soon as we can get a sitter for Amelia). I've always been facinated by the human body (was studying to be a nurse).
It boggles my mind when i think back about 2006 (when I became pregnant, around early May) to when Amelia was born; how did I not know what was going on in my body (though I tried to find out but all the pregnancy tests I took came out negative until the one Tuesday night in November 2006) and it saddens me, a littl, that I missed out on all that early excitment about being pregnant and then how I pretty much freaked out when I learned I was pregnant (and 30 weeks to boot).
Do you plan on taking weekly (or monthly) pictures of you growing belly and/or making this spot your pregnancy jouranl?
I can't imagine how odd and annoying it was not to find out until 30 weeks. It's so wacky how the growth hormone can create false negatives! But hey, at least you weren't hurling and feeling awful during the first trimester, enough to notice!
But on the good side, at least you have a very awesome and fun baby, so there's lots of memories now and in the future!
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