Let me be naive.

Some more thoughts on the world's willingness to share, overshare, and share some more when it comes to pregnancy, childbirth, and the like... 

I'm in this time in my life where everything is changing. My clothes don't fit; I can hardly lift myself off the couch; everything takes more effort than it used to. I am aware - so aware - of things being different because there is not a single thing remaining that is the same. I haven't been on a run in months; I can barely lunge forward let alone touch my toes in yoga; and I no longer remember the last time I enjoyed a happy hour beer out there in the world. Things are different as far as my world is concerned. That doesn't necessarily mean they are bad or wrong or I miss the old routine (though at times I do), but it does mean that I am aware.

I know that I had better sleep now. I know that even if I have trouble sleeping now, trouble sleeping on my own accord is much different than trouble sleeping because a newborn wakes me up every hour.

I know that I better enjoy these days, weeks, however long, of me and Chris doing as we please when we please.

I know that things will become more difficult, take more time, not feel as free.

I know that there is a distinct possibility that we will get a baby that screams all night and sleeps all day and spits up every moment in between. I also know I will be covered in said spit up.

I know that life will not be the same after as it was before. It's already not the same. But it's a different that we chose, and a different that we want.

So please don't tell me all of the horrors that are to come. Please don't tell me my life is no longer my own, that I'll yearn for the pre-kid days, and that we had better enjoy these minutes while they last. It doesn't negate the negative statements when in the next breath you tell me how wonderful this will be and that Mango will be the biggest blessing we have ever experienced and the purest form of joy we have ever felt. Just as I know that I won't sleep for a while (a LONG while), I also know that I'm on the brink of something incredible. 

So let me be naive.

This is the one time in my life where it doesn't matter what illusions I have in my mind about what being a mother will or won't be. In due time the illusions will fade into realities, and I will know first-hand what is wonderful, what stinks, and what really stinks. But that will come. For now, just let me sit in a little puddle of pregnant lady daydreams, thinking what I will and being blissfully naive to what I have yet to learn.

But if you do want to tell me something, tell me that a friend once told you that you can always tell a pregnant lady not by looking at her belly, but by looking into her eyes, because pregnant ladies always have sparkly eyes. That would make my day - or make my night, as it did the other night when a kind stranger told me just that.