Priorities

I have moved. It's taken me a long time, but I'm finally in my new house. Now, I'm looking at all the boxes, and wondering where I got all this crap, and where I'm going to put it all. This has led me to think about priorities, and how we choose to view things.

Since this is my Blog, and I can rant if I want to, I'm going to climb on my soapbox and rant for a while.

As women, we often haul about expectations that are unreasonable. I found this out three weeks ago, when I got a look at my new home. It's definitely a "fixer upper." As we were attempting to make a dent in the mess, a friend looked at me and said, "It's gonna be GREAT!"

I've thought about that a lot recently, and I start to see where I went wrong. It's not that I was afraid of the work, nor was it that I didn't know the possibilities. I looked at what I had wanted, and how it differed from what I got, and it colored everything that I saw.

Women do that a lot when it comes to the births of our children. Some, at least, look at the way we give birth, compare it to the way we wanted it to be, or the way our friends experience it, and see only what went "wrong."

We have, in our arms, a brand new life. We nurtured that life, and carried it under our hearts for 280 days. We dreamed about this little person. We changed the way we lived to accommodate this person, and we are disappointed because we had a Cesarean, or  felt that the doctor pushed something on us we didn't really want. Some are disappointed that we couldn't have the Water Birth, or Home Birth we desired, or we feel like our bodies betrayed us because we found it necessary to have a procedure that we didn't anticipate.

Let's try to look at it another way. What's coming ahead is going to be great! The first gummy smile is going to send you over the moon. Her first word or his first steps are going to be parts of a grand adventure. In the years ahead, you are going to be elated in ways that you could never have imagined, and it's all because of this little person that you and your partner helped create. In my humble opinion, that is way, way more important than the manner he or she came into the world.

I want you to have the birth that you want, and I, and women like me, all over the world are there to help you make that happen. It's and honor and a privilege to help, and we want it for you as badly as you want it. If it doesn't work out exactly like you want it to, or if what you envisioned has nothing to do with what you got, I still have one thing to say.

It's gonna be great!!