This post is dedicated to everyone who wonders if I’m writing about them. I am. 

Two and a bit years into motherhood and I finally feel back to myself.

A year and half after struggling through a long immigration process, I feel grounded.

Three years into this place, I feel ready to start talking about what making babies feels like again. Because as much as I like to keep some of these things to myself, there are still so many of you that are starting from the ground up ( which is a great place to start ). Coming off birth control, thinking about wanting to get pregnant, sitting waiting and hoping to be pregnant, feeling so ready or feeling ready to not be ready.

So what does that look like? I’ll liken it to the most magical love affair you can ever imagine. Picture him  – long dark brown hair pulled into a bun, a long necklace around his neck, never wanting to smile for the camera but when he looks at you, he can’t stop. It’s like the universe set out for you two to meet and fall in love. But it also wanted to make sure you knew it wouldn’t be easy. After you first meet you won’t be in the same city again years. Time feels as though it’s against you. You keep having these miniature love affairs where you pour everything into them, hoping and wishing to see it reciprocated. And magically, it is. You see all of the signs, you feel all of the love inching it’s way from your toes to the very top of your head. You now know what it’s like to truly be filled with love. But for some reason you can’t be together. Something keeps one of you from the other, or maybe one of you can’t commit to taking the leap. Someone fucks up and it feels like you probably should just stop talking and let it go, but there is that part that’s still in there. That teeny tiny part of your heart that is reserved just for them. It’s as though when you met one another you carved out a part of you for them to move into and they’ve just never been able to leave.

If you’re story is anything like mine, you know that sometimes trying to make a baby can feel like the most tragic love story in the whole world.

You have moments of feeling like you’ve got this, followed by the most brutal heartache. An insane desire to tell someone you love them so much even though they’ve hurt you. It’s just that imbalanced. It’s just that erratic. And yet you can’t seem to let it go.

The desire to get pregnant is one of the most primal feelings we have. Whether it’s been sitting inside you for a long time ( like that little corner of your heart ), or you just woke up one day knowing that this is something you want – it’s there, deep down inside us. Physically, it makes sense. The hormones we’re creating, the eggs we’re releasing, the pheromones we emit. All sending signals to our own bodies and to our mates that we are ready and willing to do this. To dive in. To ready to not be ready.

I remember when I first started writing, my goal was to chronicle all of the many things I was doing to help support my body to try to get pregnant naturally. And when I go back and read my old posts, I think I did just that. The supplements I was taking, the practitioners I was seeing, all the things I was thinking. Now that it’s past me, now that I have a real live tiny human sitting beside me doing “work” as sit here and I write, I don’t even know where to begin. Will my body get pregnant again? Will the magic and positivity that I built up last time carry through this time? I’m not always sure.

I keep feeling like I need to be doing more. Loving more. Doing more. Trying harder. Seeing more practitioners. Taking more herbs and supplements. But then I look beside me, at her – asking me where the purple crayon is and this feeling hits me. Like a more mild version of “you’ve got this”. More like a “you do know Val”. Even if you feel like you don’t at times, you do. You’ve got the knowledge and the love and the ability to make magic again. Just like in that magical love affair, there is a part of me that exists to solely hold space for this action. To give myself room to fall down, and pick myself back up time and time again. So that even in the moments where things don’t feel like they’re working out, I can dive inside and remind myself that there is that amazing mind blowing love reciprocated, working right there along side me helping me to just know that it’ll happen.

Even if it’s slow. Even if it’s hard. Even if I’m scared.

To quote a woman I adore ( Alex Elle ) “I’m still standing with the women, men, and couples who haven’t gotten their baby or rainbow baby yet. The journey to baby isn’t easy for everyone – it wasn’t at all a walk in the park for us. I have so much more compassion, gentleness, and appreciation for those of us in this world of “infertility”…I know some will say, don’t dim your light or hide your joy, but I look at it so differently. This journey has shown me and my husband so much. It has made us extremely aware of the miracle and magic it takes to create life. I will forever be sensitive to that.”