The Home Stretch– Reflections on These Last Few Weeks of Pregnancy

The Home Stretch– Reflections on These Last Few Weeks of Pregnancy | Third Trimester Pregnant Blog | Apollo Fields Wedding Photography

The Home Stretch

I didn’t realize what a mindf*** being 37+ weeks pregnant would be… 

It’s kind of like this:  I wake up in the morning and think to myself, ‘I could have a baby today’.  I also think to myself, ‘It also could be another 4 or 5 weeks before we have this baby’.  For someone who prefers structure and control, that’s a lot of variability.  

On the other hand, I do feel grateful to technically have made it to “term” at all, considering that at 32 weeks we had a very legitimate scare when my body started showing signs of potential preterm labor and we had our first taste of things-could-go-wrong this pregnancy.  Luckily, after a solid step back from working full-throttle and some much needed TLC, literally all of those physical symptoms reversed themselves (bodies are crazy).  

So I am–pregnant AF– and waffling between still loving it and being over the whole thing.  I had a good run of feeling pretty invincible and healthier than I have ever been, but this home stretch is REAL.  By the time the sun goes down, which unfortunately is super early these days, I’m getting pretty crippled.  My lower back tightens up, the baby begins assaulting my organs, occasionally getting a foot hooked under a rib, and no amount of cat-cows seem to do the trick anymore. 

If I drop something and I can’t pick it up with my toes, it stays there.  I now use the old lady bar to get my ass out of the bathtub.  No-shave-November applied for most of my body.  December doesn’t seem to be an exception.  I have like four pieces of clothing that still fit me and two of them belong to my husband.  In a nutshell, I’m not cute.  But then I step back and also realize that this is probably the most beautiful I’ll ever be.  I told you it’s a mindf***.   

Terrence is good at grounding me even through the most sophisticated mind/body tricks that I can play on myself.  “None of this was a guarantee” has become a bit of a mantra in our house, and that’s a pretty sobering reality, even for someone who has been sober for the last nine months.  He’s right though, it was only two years ago that we were in the midst of the ectopic pregnancy and having all-too-real conversations with our doctors about how complicated it might be to have a future healthy pregnancy.  

When I ruptured two Decembers ago, I didn’t just lose the baby but I also lost one of my tubes and a lot of blood.  I gained a mess of scar tissue and was left with a lot of “time will tell” answers.  We couldn’t have known it at the time, but I would end up getting pregnant again from the tubeless side (remember when I said bodies are crazy!?) which is crazy.  My dominant ovary is my right one, and miraculously my left tube was able to haul over to the other side, scoop up an egg, and drop it off in the right place.  Mind blowing, right??

Now, here we are, in the thick of this mess that is 2020, and also in one of the most beautiful seasons of our lives.  The days are slower than they have been in a long time, and while I busybody myself with organizing our drawers and turning our freezer into a soup kitchen, we have also been able to spend guilt-free evenings tucked up on the couch together just savoring the fact that we’re in this space together.  

Sometimes timing is perfect and tonight my dear friend Lindsey just sent me an article on this time of “Zwichen”, the in-between dimension of existence that is late pregnancy.  Putting a name to this transition period is surprisingly helpful, and quells a lot of the questioning about whether other women feel the same push-pull of living within two worlds at once.  

Everything feels like a contradiction and I’m learning to be okay with that.  Falling asleep last night, I was staring at the mound that is my belly thinking how foreign my body looks and feels, and yet being more at home in myself than I ever have.  How does that make sense?  “Pay attention to that feeling”, Lindsey told me, assuring me of the role this feeling plays in labor.  

There’s a heaviness and a lightness to these days.  A sense of anticipation and peace at the same time.  Wanting to work and be still run our biz like a boss but also wanting to nest and be home and hunkered down.  Trusting in the journey but also wondering WTF is going to happen.  So much that feels contradictory but necessary.  It is hard to label what this transitory time truly feels like, so I’ll just still to “Zwichen” and leave the rest to the cosmos.  

Photography: Mostly cell pics with a few gems by Lindsey Eden &. Lauren Wright

Here's to 30 and Quite Possibly The Best Days of My Life

30th Birthday Reflections | Third Trimester Pregnancy Blog | Long Island Wedding Photographers | Apollo Fields Photography

Here's to 30 and Quite Possibly The Best Days of My Life

I remember waking up on the morning of Terrence’s 30th birthday in a cabin we had rented on top of a mountain in Colorado.  He had woken up before me, and I went downstairs to find him sitting in a bay window, writing and drinking coffee.  He wrote a blog appropriately titled, “Turning 30– Am I Where I Expected Myself To Be?” and now that I am turning 30, I find myself asking the same question.  

Of course, my 30th birthday looks a little different than Terrence’s did a few years ago.  We celebrated his birthday by venturing out into the mountains, spending the day with a few friends, going to some breweries, and then driving up to a trailhead in the middle of the night to hike to our cabin.  We were guided by nothing more than our cell phone flashlights and good morale, but having the time of our lives. 

When I look back on pictures from then, I can’t help but think that we look like such babies.  We were engaged and planning our own wedding, living in Colorado, still figuring out each other’s place in Apollo Fields, and so full of adventure.  We could have never predicted how the next few years would turn out:  the ups and downs of moving back East, getting married, going through an ectopic pregnancy, traveling the country for weddings, running a small business during a pandemic, and eventually getting pregnant again.  

But here we are – in a totally different season of life – and yet just as happy and optimistic as ever.  We don’t look at things with the same carefree lens as we might have a few years ago, but we’re not jaded either.  We have a little babe who will be here in just a few weeks, and even as I sit here typing this out on my couch I can’t help but think that each squirmy little kick is a surreal reminder that shit’s about to get real real.  

So, as Terrence hashed out on his birthday, “am I where I expected myself to be” turning 30?  Literally speaking, probably not; but figuratively speaking I think I am.  I don’t think I would have imagined myself in a suburban Long Island home per se, but just about everything else adds up.  I love that we are able to sustain ourselves with a business built on creativity and authentic connection, and the fact that I am able to do it with my husband is beyond fulfilling.  

I feel a sense of pride for our marriage, for it is built on the pillars of open and honest communication but also contains a massive amount of silliness and zest for life.  I love our animals and the quirky little adventures that we all take and I can’t wait to bring this little baby into the mix.  

I will admit that I love this age for the gift to curate our circle of truest friends.  There is something freeing about understanding who is an acquaintance and who is a lifelong friend, and to not carry any guilt around that distinction is a wonderful part of adulthood that just doesn’t seem to exist in your early 20s.  

My relationship to family has evolved as well.  Of course, building a family of your own will put you on the fast track to developing that understanding, but I think this chapter of life has also been so conducive to realizing the role that family can play in your life if you nurture it.  Quarantine has brought a lot of us closer, especially Terrence’s siblings (all six of them!), and I feel especially grateful to have been able to bond more with both sides of our families during this year.  

I think many of us experienced a collective sense of both connection and loneliness during this pandemic, and as I look ahead to the winter and what postpartum life might resemble, I anticipate a lot of those same emotions coming up.  I’m not sure what the next few weeks, months, or years will look like, but I am looking forward to them.  

I think turning 30 can bring on a crisis of ‘I haven’t done enough with my life so far’ for a lot of people, and while my default is normally to shortchange my own accomplishments, I think I’ll shift that mode of thinking into feeling a sense of calm-- not for the things I have necessarily worked for or earned, but for the gifts of stability and connection that I have from the people around me.  

Cheers,
Heather

Photography: Cait McCarthy Photo

Oh, baby! Announcing our Pregnancy in 2020: Vulnerability and Optimism in Photography

Oh, baby! Announcing our Pregnancy in 2020: Vulnerability and Optimism in Photography | Apollo Fields

The first thing I see when I look at these pictures of my wife, Heather, aside from her powerful, natural beauty, is the expression on her face. The way that the curl of her lips bends ever so slightly toward a smile as her chin drops a little. I notice the way that her jawline and the curve of her shoulder become parallel, creating a window of light between the shadows. As my eyes move down her arms and around her body, I begin to read the story wrapped into her posture; the gentle grip of her hands and fingers as they hug her breast and belly, the baby bump that protrudes from her pelvis in a blanket of light. Yet sitting in the whites of her eyes, the tragedy of our ectopic pregnancy lingers, staring back at the lens through a fragile shield of doubt. Then, although we will never forget, it disappears in an instant—as soon as you swipe the screen—and all that remains is Heather’s steely resolve. This is my wife. The soon to be mother of our first born child. 

A couple years ago we shared a picture of us seated on the floor of our cozy cottage in Colorado, surrounded by cardboard boxes and cleaning supplies, crying as we were moving back east. We took great pride in this moment of vulnerability, in sharing the emotions that we were sure that anyone who has ever moved can understand. We shared it because we wanted to tell our story as authentically as possible, and to us that has to include the tears and tough times. We didn’t know that in the years to come we would build on this strength in vulnerability, and make it a cornerstone of our storytelling.

A couple of months later in 2018, Heather shared a post about her emergency surgery on Christmas Eve that resulted from an ectopic pregnancy. We now laugh at the image of our former selves crying on the floor in our Colorado home; oh boo hoo, I have to move. All joking aside, we recognize that a person’s vulnerability falls on a spectrum that is predicated upon their past, and that emotional walls stand to protect that which is fragile. We understand now more than ever that we must be careful with our words as they are symbols of our actions and beliefs. We have taken great care with how we deliver this personal message from our hearts to yours.

With the news of Heather’s pregnancy in early Covid-19 days, we were buoyed in quarantine with hopes of parenthood. Yet we each cast an eye of doubt at all of the good news that came out of the high-risk appointments, fully expecting another tragedy to land. Eventually, we made it past all those uncertain days only to see the tragic video of George Floyd’s death a couple days later. We watched as Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation and social media became even more flooded with animosity than it already is. Heather and I spoke everyday, rewriting take-after-take on what kind of message we should deliver in solidarity with BLM as Apollo Fields. We were trying to show our support for the movement while also delivering the news from our personal lives. 

We were scared that anything we said could somehow be misunderstood. We were worried that our brand hasn’t represented the black community enough. We were worried that putting our clients who are persons of color front and center would appear disingenuous. We were (and are) increasingly appalled at the demonstrations of systemic racism that still run through the veins of this country. We questioned the American ideals of freedom and democracy altogether. We were vulnerable. We are vulnerable. And we should be.

Heather’s face in those pictures goes from worried to resolute. In that instant, you swipe away all of the nights of tears that we’ve endured. I think as a nation we were taught that Abraham Lincoln in 1863 did the same thing for blacks in this country—that he swiped away all of their suffering with one swoop of the pen—in June 2020 it is very clear that he didn’t. 

I remember sending Heather into surgery on Christmas Eve, pulling words from out of thin air, trying to tell her that it’s going to be okay. I remember holding her hands when she got out as her purple lips trembled, her teeth chattering from the anesthesia. Are there any more blankets? She asked through her shivering lips. I remember just holding her hands—and looking into her vibrating green eyes—grateful that I could into them once again. I couldn’t imagine ever getting angry at her. I had never felt something like that before, like I momentarily understood the depth of human experience: there were no words, there were no feelings, there was just being who I had to be for someone else.

As I write this I am squirming in my chair, procrastinating by getting up to do household tasks I’ve avoided, diverting my attention from focusing on my own vulnerability. I’m grappling with the process of becoming a father amid a pandemic alongside the development of the BLM movement. It feels like I’m standing in a house and the walls are cracking all around me. Chunks of the ceiling crash into the wooden floor like meteors into the earth. I am holding my child under one arm, bowing my head over Heathers, trying to shield us as best I can. The open air in the doorway provides an escape but a support beam plummets down, blocking our path. There is no running. 

This is the state of the world like it is the state of my mind. It is a battleground for what we and I stand for.

I stand for BLM, I stand for my child, and I stand for vulnerability; for I believe therein lies the strength to carry us from tears to resolve, from rebuilding a broken house into a stable one. It all starts by tearing down the walls, embracing our vulnerability, and sharing our story with the world.  This is our life, the soon to be home of our first born child.

– Terrence

Announcing our pregnancy to family in the time of Coronavirus made for a lot of FaceTime calls but one very special social distanced trip to my 95 year old Nana.

Our celebration hike at Target Rock the day the doctors confirmed that we weren’t having another ectopic.

One of the only perks of being high risk was getting sonograms every few days and being able to see this little bean turn into a recognizable babe!

Still adventuring and still riding (bump in tow).

A slightly more predictable pregnancy announcement portrait. Could have dropped these instead but hey, that’s just not how we roll!