Surrender

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of surrender lately, especially when it comes to having another baby. It's so easy to be in a place of control with the whole baby-making thing. You can take your temperature and figure out when you ovulate and overdose yourself with supplements that might make your womb a more hospitable environment for a tiny person. You can get to a really obsessive, crazy-making place with the whole process. I have spent time in that place, and it's not at all fun.

I have realized that once you get to a place of surrender about having another child, and have given up any attachment to it, the magic seems to happen. Time and time again this has proven true, both for me and for people I know. I have a friend who had tried for over two years to get pregnant. It turned out she had fibroids that were probably causing the problem, and she got to a place of acceptance that she needed the surgery before she could conceive. Two weeks before she was supposed to go under the knife, she found out she was pregnant. No medical intervention necessary. I have another friend who couldn't get pregnant, so she and her husband decided to adopt. They had been in the waiting pool with her adoption agency for almost a year. She started posting on the message board where we got to know each other that she was so done with the adoption process and was starting to look at donor embryos to try to get pregnant. She posted messages about this all week. On Friday afternoon, her adoption agency called. They had been matched. She and her husband are expecting a baby girl next month.

My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at six weeks. I was devastated. I think the fear of potentially having to endure that again got me to a place of surrender with the whole trying to conceive process, and I was okay with it taking a while and physically and emotionally healing from that sad place. And as it turned out, I got pregnant on my miscarriage cycle. I let go, and there she was.

So I'm trying to get myself to that place with this baby. I think you authentically have to get yourself to surrendering any attachment to having another baby, rather than saying "Oh, I'm surrendering all this" and then checking your chart for the seventeenth time that day, and I'm not quite at that authentic point yet. I haven't obsessed about getting pregnant this cycle, and I'm not going to be devastated if I'm not pregnant this month, but I think I still have some letting go work to do. It's hard when I am absolutely certain there is another little one who is ready to enter our family. I just have to accept that God knows far better than I do about perfect timing. Baby, I hope you come soon, but I know you'll find the best time to be born!