Pregnancy is a 40-week practice in trust, patience, and management of never-ending expectations.

There are the expectations of yourself and your body. Then there are the expectations that everyone else places on you. Expectations of what your body can do, expectations of what you’re capable of, and expectations to express all these feelings in a few short words when everyone asks how you’re doing.

There’s the trust you need to develop in your body. The trust that your body will work to create a healthy human being. The trust that each pain, each ache is all for a purpose. All while your body is working overtime inside, but you don’t have the physical proof of that yet so for now it’s just an unnerving trust that everything you’re feeling inside and out is “right”.

You hear so many stories of how nature, fate and our bodies don’t always work to create the outcome we want. So many women whose path to motherhood is dotted with tragedy. The first weeks of pregnancy were a scary balance of trying to find a middle ground between excitement and caution. What would make me lucky enough to have a different outcome?

It’s patience. Patience as the weeks go by that everything is OK. I’ve known I was pregnant as soon as you can know. So for those 8 weeks after I found out, all I could do was pray and hope and dream that you would keep growing and growing. It’s the most scared I’ve been and the most relieved I’ve been when I heard your heartbeat.

It was the best song I’ve ever heard, and I wish I could hear it all day every day as a constant reminder that you’re OK.

About 18 weeks in, and it’s starting to feel more real as my body starts to round. But emotions and trust and expectations are still a work in progress. I am happy, content, scared, excited, nervous and exhausted. About 20 times a day.

But I know that when I see your face, I’ll know that every doubt, every ache, every fear, every overthought thought, every worry and every emotion was worth it. It will all be worth it to see you soon, baby boy.

-Sandi