Confession time:

I never had a huge amount of faith in my body before I got pregnant. That scares me to write that – and yet it’s true. I love my body… and yet I never felt we were working on the same team.

I’ve always felt heavy, cumbersome, unco-ordinated. Always been unable to get the body to do and look like what I wanted. I was somehow not fully attached to my body, and didn’t feel totally confident in it. I always thought it would take me a long time to fall pregnant.

I wrote in a poem when I was sixteen:

Inside doesn’t look like outside should

Clearly I see now I’m misunderstood.

And I don’t know why I remember those two lines so well… but I just do.

So I got really surprised when my body took over eight months ago. It became pregnant. It started hurling up. It started detoxing everything out of my system. It made me stare at my hands, too sick to move, for five weeks. It put me into a mama’s cave, a cocoon, for the right amount of incubation time. It did everything that was needed.

Without me needing to control it. Without help from my ginormous brain. Without me needing to know what needed to happen, it did its own thing.

And it grew a little mermaid – a little mermaid who is so strong and healthy and happy in there. She’s just doing her thing, living her life, growing in her body inside my body.

I feel stronger and healthier and more in tune with my body than I ever have… we’re now *so* on the same team.

Every time Little Mermaid does her full body rolls, or bounces around, or lets us hear her strong heartbeat, I get so filled with pride. This warrior goddess is making a new warrior goddess. She is strong all of her own accord, and healthy… and that completely and utterly amazes me.

Today I went to our midwife appointment. I’m now 31 weeks – nine weeks to go or so before Little Mermaid is due to arrive in the world (whenever she chooses to come is perfect though). I asked our midwife when Little Mermaid needed to make her way down to be headfirst, and asked if she could tell me now how Little Mermaid was sitting.

And I lay down, and the midwife put her hands over my belly and prodded around, and showed me how Little Mermaid was lying in my belly – head right down, back curving around to the left, feet in my right side. Perfecto.

And yes – it’s still early days – baby’s usually settle down by about 36 weeks. But right now, she’s heading in the right and perfect direction.

It totally blows me away and cracks me open though… that Little Mermaid is doing what she needs to do though.

After all the lack of faith I had. After all the thoughts I had about my body.

You know how I wrote about being utterly okay with imperfection? My sweet mama even said to me: Darling, you sounded more surprised than anything that your pregnancy lasted to three months… you were so prepared for things to not go to plan.

And I think a part of that being okay with imperfection – and actually being surprised to be a three-monther – had a little bit to do with my lack of faith in my body. Some of it was about faith in the path, but a lot of that was lack of faith in my body. That somehow I saw my body as flawed, unhealthy, and unable.

When it’s so abundantly not the truth.

So maybe that’s the lesson I need to learn now…

to have that faith.

to see that my body can do amazing things.

to be surprised when things are going along perfectly.

And that’s the part that makes me laugh – at just how beautiful this world is, how beautiful Great Spirit is… and how we get given the lessons and medicine we need to learn.

I was so open and accepting of things not going in that “perfect” direction… that I am now being taught how to be open and accepting and trusting of natural perfection too.

After feeling like my body was just that thing to be ignored around me – the thing that had its own life – I am finally starting to feel like me inside my body. Like there is a goddess inside here, and a goddess on the outside too.

Yus… Great Spirit gives us just the teachings we need…

to fall in love even more with ourselves… with this world… with this journey… with each other.

No matter how things go,
that is the truth.

I’m glad you are you.

P.S. If this presses any of your buttons, I’m truly sorry. I know all subjects around perfection/imperfection and mamahood are challenging ones. What is perfect for my journey may not be perfect for yours… and that is the beauty of all of us living our different, gorgeous journeys.