Book #6: Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother by Beth Ann Fennelly

I read this book when I was pregnant with Dane, and I loved, loved it. I wanted to be sure to read it again during this pregnancy because of how sweet and real and reassuring Fennelly's advice was to me during the first read-through. Part of the strength of her letters is just in the beauty of her style of writing, and how open-minded and far away she is from the common "mommy wars" and "birth wars" that seem to be implanted throughout most baby books. She doesn't advise all-natural birth or C-sections or anything; she just writes about her experiences for a younger friend pregnant with her first baby and gives her the opportunity to hear what it's like from someone who's gone before. After reading this again, I felt uplifted and a lot more ready for having a baby again. I AM so excited for this baby, but like I was with Dane, I'm nervous and scared too, especially for the birth process. But there were a few parts of this book that stood out, which I wanted to write down this time:

About this fear of giving birth and the pain of labor: ""You are a warrior. You are a warrior, and for your whole life your body has been warming up for this great fight. These last months have been consumed with training everything inside you, all of the hormones and the loosening of the joints have been in preparation for this, and you are ready. You know, more or less, the day, the place, of your battle, and you will meet it because you are destined for it, it is the greatest challenge your body will ever know. . . . You are stronger than you know. You will split open your body to free the tiny god who will be caught and held up like a hero. You are the hero. No one but you can do it.
. . . Remember this when the contraction comes and your whole belly tightens like a shell about to be cracked. All the muscles in your belly, muscles you don't remember having, will grow rigid and fused like the carapace of the ornate box turtle. After some moments, it will pass, your muscles unclench, and again your flesh will feel like a taut sail propelled by more wind than it can take without tearing, but still your flesh Then you know it won't be long until your ordinary, miraculous flesh, your warrior body will be victorious" (190-191).

About her miscarriage: "I stopped comparing my pregnancy which ended so early to friends' stillbirths and other tragedies. I stopped trying to rank sorrow, realized that the world has sorrow enough for all of us, and when some of it falls to you the best hope you have is letting yourself suffer through it. I suffered through it. I suffer through it. I allowed myself to think of the child as exactly that, a child. It wasn't nothing; it was never nothing. That's why it's okay for you to ask me about that death, as I've learned to think of it, and talk of it. For so long I told myself to get over it, was impatient with my weakness. But now I see it was weakness that kept me from grieving how I needed to grieve. And now I know that I'll never "get over" my miscarriage. I've stopped wanting to. I'll carry it and carry it and never put it down" (97-98).