I am finally pregnant.  I’ve waited 38 years, 18 weeks and 5 days to say this, and I cannot believe it’s finally true.  Well, to be fair, I didn’t want to be pregnant when I was 25, or 30, or even 35.  I just wasn’t ready, emotionally, psychologically – simply put, I wasn’t mature enough to move beyond healing myself to focus on a new, completely dependent little life.  It took me 31 years to get my first cat, for godsakes, because that seemed like such a responsibility.  It took another four years to get the second cat (double the responsibility, and a kitten to boot!  Terrifying!  How would I keep her alive?).  Something as huge as a child, well… I just had too much of my own baggage to sort through, too much soul-searching and growing and healing to do before I could even consider it.

As you might have guessed, I was slow to emotionally mature in my 20s.  I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, couldn’t decide on a grad school program, had fallen into a corporate job that paid the bills but bored me, and had gone through quite a few failed relationships, several of which I had believed were “the one.”  In the meantime, nearly all my high school and college friends began careers, got married and started families in that decade.  By the end of our 20s, most had had their second child, owned houses and were “adult.”  I was woefully behind.

When I moved to Boston at 27, I met the man I would eventually marry, but for the first five years of our relationship children were the last thing we thought about.  We were busy surviving two extended periods of long-distance between Boston and Chicago, one of which was because his father had been diagnosed with terminal lymphoma.  After a year of caretaking and watching his father suffer through long, intense chemo treatments and many trips to the ICU, we received a diagnosis of unexpected, full remission and F. was able to move back to Boston.  We got married fairly quickly after that, realizing that if we could survive that, we could probably survive most anything.  And, it had already been five years.  Did I mention I was slow at everything in life?

Once I hit 34, I finally started to feel it – the baby fever they always talk about.  I had only been married a year but had been with F. for six, so our relationship was solid, happy and healthy.  But I was scared of becoming a parent.  Quite simply, I was absolutely terrified to change my life in such an enormous, permanent way, to embark on an adventure that millions have embarked on, survived, and even thrived.  I was terrified I wouldn’t be good enough, would have no idea what to do, would somehow permanently and irreparably damage a little vulnerable being with my ineptitude.

I have never been good at change, even the normal milestones that everyone expects to go through.  Graduating 8^th grade made me cry.  Graduating college sent me into a panic; leaving the safe bubble I’d created was unthinkable.  All through my 20s I hung onto jobs, living situations, friends and boyfriends for dear life, unwilling and unable to flow with the flexibility and understanding that life is CHANGE.  It is always change, and the more you resist, the harder normal evolution becomes.  I dug myself in and rooted down, to the point that I was almost always brutally upturned from my self-made nest instead of gracefully moving from one situation and relationship to the next when it was naturally time.

All of this is to say that though I started to feel maternal urges at 34, it took another three years for me to become mentally prepared to take the plunge.  The good news is that during this time I did finally find a grad program and a career path that filled me with passion.  Finally, I had something on track.  Oh, and also, I was happily married, and we had two beautiful healthy cats – a little family of sorts.  But adding a baby to the mix still terrified me.

And, in a typical twist of fate, once I’d finally opened up to the possibility of becoming a parent, it took us another year and a half to get pregnant.  All this time I’d been resisting change, and then when I finally decided I was ready, the universe decided I wasn’t.  It is usually the way it works.

And now here I am, one day shy of five weeks pregnant, still in awe that there is a little tiny tadpole-shaped embryo growing like a boss inside of me.  As I start Week 6, she will begin to form her eyes, ears, nose and mouth.  Her internal organs and nervous system will be growing to completion and her tiny little heart will be beating like a hummingbird’s.  Her arm and leg buds will begin to form, miniature nubs that will grow into paddles and then appendages.  She is quickly forming into a teeny, tiny little human.

I am in awe.  I am a bit in shock.  And I am bursting with joy!  My little baby has finally joined us in this world, and I cannot wait to meet her.