Pregnancy Diary | 37 Weeks

I’m currently 37 weeks pregnant. And the last 5 weeks especially have felt like they’ve contained such huge shifts for my psyche. I feel the veil is thinner for me, but also I’ve been experiencing lots of sleepless nights.. The sleeplessness has contributed to an even greater sense of porousness, like a dissolution of self, a gradual wearing away of the solidity of my identity and sense of being. 

It has felt purgative and renewing all at once. 

Literally purgative. I lay awake at 2, 3, 4 AM and my body releases burps, my gastric juices swirling. The burps smell of sulphur, which historically has only happened for me when my body is about to release the contents of my stomach.. But that doesn’t happen. Just the air, scented and foreign, not of my body but definitely coming from within my body, exits and spreads the awareness that something deeper is happening.. Some process of release that is necessary but that I have no control over. 

Google tells me: “Causes of sulphur burps - Pregnancy.” Ahh ok, let’s just leave it at that then. 

When I make the effort to actually get out of bed and wander around the house or yard during these middle of the night periods of wakefulness, I almost immediately feel better and the burping and gurgling stops. 

It’s as if nature and the moon and the stars are trying to get my attention. 

It’s working. 

When I go outside and plant my feet in the dewy grass, I stare up at the cosmos, envisioning my upcoming journey to the stars to fetch my baby. 

Where is she from, exactly? 

At least, I think she is a she. I’m open to being completely wrong. But the visions I’ve had so far, from even before this baby was conceived, have given hints of femininity. 

She, and the stars and the moon and the dewy grass and the swaying whispering towering cypress trees call me out, pull me out of bed, outside, to connect and receive and to dream while awake. 

Maybe this is what it’s like to be pregnant with two growing children. Maybe if I made time to connect and daydream and bond during daylight hours, I would be sleeping peacefully through the night. I think this while I’m standing awake half naked under the moon at 3:32 AM, and then I proceed through the next day exactly as I have been. 

I’ll blame that on the hazy-end-of-pregnancy-lack-of-sleep brain. 

I woke the other morning after a particularly rough night of falling asleep only to jolt myself awake, over and over and over again throughout the night, and the porousness was so real. I just stood in the shower crying and receiving messages from somewhere.. Heaven or the cosmos or my inner knowing. 

Shifts within my emotional landscape and my sense of being just.. Facilitated themselves.. As I stood there with the water pouring over my body. 

I didn’t have any resistance up. I couldn’t possibly put any resistance up at that point. 

I guess that is the point of all of this. This whole process. 

In that shower, I opened. I embraced expansiveness, deep unconditional love of myself and others, the shedding of my shell, the discontinuation of my contraction… 

Contraction. I feel in hindsight that the majority of this pregnancy has been spent in contraction. I called in the energetics of this myself, unknowingly on a conscious level at least, and allowed my spirit, my soul, my energy to be deeply influenced by the dynamics of the people closest to me. 

Again, in hindsight, I recognized the state I was in as a program from my childhood, a conditioned pattern of being that I used to cope at that time. Contraction. 

Empathic to the energies of those around me, and not wanting to draw attention to myself or to experience the struggles that go along with big emotions (or any size emotions at all), I put up my protective shell. I was safe behind my shell, my soft and vulnerable inner child was protected. 

Wow, here it was again as an adult, and as a pregnant adult at that. 

Holding it all in behind my shell, or just not acknowledging any real emotion at all, thinking (again, on a subconscious level) that I was doing those around me a favor… trying to hold this “perfect” container for everyone else.. Shutting down in order to cope with the intensity of reality.. put me into a dark place. 

Contraction, fatigue, self isolation, lack of compassion and empathy for others, disconnection from my vibrancy and my joy.. 

I’m very thankful to my soul for showing me this shadow, and for helping me work through it and shine light onto it. To bring awareness to it by showing me, as a mirror does, a version of myself that was not in alignment with my path moving forward. 

Hiding behind a program like this isn’t actually doing anyone any favors. Duh. 

Especially if I claim to really love myself and to love those around me as a channel for universal Love. Dimming my light and existing in a state of contraction is not showing the world what love is. It’s showing the world darkness. That’s not what I’m about. Or what I strive to be about. 

So here I am, 37 weeks pregnant, deepening into my connection with nature, with self, with my partner and my kids, with my community. 

Perfect. 

Thank you, Baby #3. Thank you, Soul. Thank you Universe. It all happened exactly as it should have. And it always will. 

Now I am preparing to embark on this journey of birth from a place of renewal. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still challenging.. I’m sure I’ll have many more weeks of lack of sleep, of feeling fragile, of being soft and vulnerable and painfully sensitive. 

But that is as it should be. 

I’m open again. I’m open to all of it.