The Difference is This

It's weird to feel ready for a baby. Emotionally, I mean. I didn't feel that way with Archer at all. I felt confused. Excited but confused. Lost. Unprepared for a changed life. Unsure of myself as a mother, woman, human being. I felt like a child. I was a child. I had no idea what was coming but I knew it was huge and I waited, my heart in my throat, for my whole world to flipped off its axis. For everything to change.

I knew I was in for the emotional makeover of my life. Everyone, including myself, was telling me so.

All pregnancies are different, and I'm not just talking about weight gain. Becoming a mother is for many women, the time most matured. I aged ten years when Archer was born. Suddenly the things that should have always mattered, did. And the things that once consumed me blew away like red balloons.

"Growing up fast," I soon found, had nothing to do with High School girls wearing halter tops and piercing their belly buttons. Growing up fast is what happens when you have a baby, no matter your age. I have a feeling that had I waited until my 30's or even my 40's to have kids, I would have felt the same holy-shit-I'm-a-woman-now-shock that I did at twenty-three.

Hal, Archer and I: 2005

This pregnancy, quite contrary to my first has been one with few questions, less doubts and perhaps, most shockingly: no fear.

People ask me every day, "are you ready?" and the truth is: I kind of am. Something I don't know if I should admit. Because shouldn't I feel frantic, right now? Scared? Nervous?

God, I sure was with Archer.

There is nothing like a first pregnancy. Nothing like the unknown. The first dive into the pool... But there is nothing like a second pregnancy, either. Jumping into the water, semi-used to the temperature. I feel like I can swim so much faster now that I'm not shivering. I feel like I can swim all types of strokes.

Archer may have made me a mother but this new baby has made me a fearless one. And that is something just as special.

I'm not a little girl this time. I'm a confident, ambitious grown-up who has, in the past three plus years surrounded herself with people I highly respect. A million miles from where I was at this point in my last pregnancy. Utterly friendless and afraid that everyone was right when they told me that motherhood would exhaust me of every dream -- the opposite of the truth, I soon learned.

Of course, there's a good chance that I don't have the faintest idea what is about to happen (Clearly I don't, because who does?)

There's a good chance that I won't be able to work much these next few months. That my goals to turn in a script by Christmas and a book by next summer are unrealistic. That personally shopping a pilot with a newborn baby strapped to my chest is highly unlikely.

People spend a lot of effort trying to tell others how "impossible" it is to everything. I don't believe that's very helpful. Or true. What is possible is up to me. Up to all of us. That being, said, I am clueless as to how I will cope. Change. Learn. Fail. Succeed. I do know that right now, It's a huge relief not to feel afraid. Of labor. Of having two children-- another person for me to love more than myself. It's a huge relief to know that I am capable. That growing my family means growing my fire, my heart, myself.

I'm ready for this new person. This new life. Even if it means working harder, sleeping less... I can't wait to do it all. To struggle and fight and learn and love and grow and push harder. I'm ready to make new messes and find new ways to clean them up. I'm ready to bleed all over myself in a thousand different ways. I'm ready to catch fire and run full-speed to the nearest lake. I'm ready to admit to myself and everyone who asks, that yes, I am ready for this baby. I'm ready for all of it.

Bring it on.

GGC