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
Target Rock Family Session in Lloyd Harbor
Target Rock Family Session in Lloyd Harbor | Long Island Photography | Apollo Fields Family Photos
Northport Long Island Elopement Photography
Jamie and Allison's Crab Meadow Beach Wedding Portraits | Northport NY Photographer | Apollo Fields Wedding Photography
The birds of the beach soared over our heads, higher than the early morning rising summer sun, taking turns plunging into the Long Island Sound. Their impacts sent a sputter of splashes on the surface, wings flapping amidst the spray, almost like they were cooling off in a ceramic bird bath at the center of a peaceful garden. The air was fresh and only slightly saline as high tide swept up the shore, covering the thousands of small, hollowed-out sandy homes of Crab Meadow Beach with a shifting layer of foamy water. Allison and Jamie bowing their heads, gently closed their eyes, bringing their foreheads to softly rest upon one another like wings spread in the wind, floating above the earth, ready to take their dive at any moment.
Jamie and Allison took the proverbial “plunge” or “dive” a couple months prior under the tree cover of a forest in Maryland at the height of quarantine. They, like many other couples who planned to get married in 2020, had to decide what the celebration of their love would look like during a pandemic. It’s so hard to shift expectations when they’ve already been set, but if it’s anything we’ve learned from Jamie and Allison and the difficult situation in general, is that love, like water, will always find a way.
Jamie and Allison’s Zoom wedding celebration in June was intimate and endearing, heartfelt, and natural. Figuring out how to get hundreds of little faces to fill a series of screens on several different devices changes the physical landscape of the audience but not the nature of the celebration. Love is—and always will be—at the core of weddings, and we’re watching in real time how we are all adapting to our expression of it. While a few family members were on hand to photograph the ceremony and first dance on the day of, Jamie and Allison decided they would take a trip up to us in Long Island, NY, to further honor and document their love and connection.
The idyllic found a home in circumstances less than ideal that morning on Crab Meadow Beach. Jamie and Allison moved effortlessly in the sand in their stunning wedding clothes as we watched and snapped away in awe. Heather is a sucker for evening golden hour and sunrise wedding photography and our morning with Allison and Jamie further solidified her resolve. The golden shape of their smiles and the aura around their faces hit the lens and our hearts with equal emotion. It was hard not to be happy.
And that’s what many couples think they are missing during this tough time. There’s definitely some truth to it but Heather and I and Jamie and Allison are the silver (or golden) lining kind of people; we are the kind of people who know that our love and our effort will carry us through the tough times and lift us even higher in the lighter ones; we are the kind of people who commit and take a plunge when we need to but extend our wings and float in the breeze while we can.
Enjoy some of the pics from Allison & Jamie’s Wedding portraits:
