The first kicks and flips. Your doctor announcing boy or girl. Hearing his rapid heartbeat. These are the magical moments you hear people talk about when you share that you’re pregnant for the first time. Followed by, “I bet your parents are ecstatic!”.

However, there is a less talked about moment that in my opinion is the most magical. It’s the moment you realize you’re starting your very own version of a family.

There is a quote from A Wrinkle In Time that goes:
“Do you realize how many events, choices, that had to occur since the birth of the universe leading up to the making of you? Just exactly the way you are.”

This is where my mind goes when I feel those kicks and flips. There’s a person growing inside of my body who is about to be born into the world who only exists because of a series of very specific events.

So what kind of responsibilities come with that as parents? I started going to therapy three weeks before I found out I was pregnant. I decided to go after I lost my temper with my husband right after we found out his Grandmother had passed away. I realized I was reacting based on some inner-childhood thought patterns that needed to be addressed so they didn’t continue to bleed into my marriage.

We began bibliotherapy with the book, Healing The Inner Child Within. As we discussed my childhood, chapter by chapter, I found it amazingly beautiful how closely the psychology shadowed another book I was reading, The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children.

We know our parents did the best they could based on their parents doing the best they could. With that came learned thought patterns designed for survival in their environments which of course we are then heavily influenced by as children. And somewhere along the way we all can lose the person we were born to be.

So when I think about this momentous time in life I think about my husband and I choosing one another and our son choosing us and us choosing him. I think about my role as his mother to love him for exactly the person he already is rather than my ideas of who he should be. And I think about how much he is going to teach me about living, being and growing with an open mind.

And without having even met you, I am so grateful for you baby James McCallum III.

Photography by the talented: Coley & Co. 

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