Mother's Week: My First Mother's Day

This is my first Mother’s Day as a mom, and you know what the best part is? I get to celebrate and sleep through the night. 

I’m currently 25 weeks pregnant with the first child for my husband and me. I am enjoying the beautiful rite of passage many women are fortunate enough to experience. Even though every time I experience a belly twitch, leg cramp, or pain in my back I acknowledge that I already am a mother, celebrating without a baby in my arms still seems a bit hasty.

Initially, I told my husband that the only Mother’s Day celebration I wanted was to have my dessert of choice on Sunday (I angle for this on most days, though, so it isn’t too unique). But the more I thought about it, I decided we could do something better. 

I want to approach Mother’s Day in as holistic a way as we have been approaching everything else surrounding having a child – I want to go for a hike. I want to be out in nature with Mother Earth—Pachamama as my Peruvian friends call her—and share in the energy of what it means to give life. I want to connect with the feminine spirit of all things that are gentle, peaceful, and incredibly strong simultaneously.

This mindset that power and feminine energy go hand in hand is the state of mind that I want to have throughout these beautiful nine months and beyond.

Our number one goal during this pregnancy has been to avoid turning the birth of our child into a consumerist extravaganza. When deciding whether we wanted to know the sex of the baby, my husband repeatedly asked bewildered family, friends, and coworkers—who didn’t understand how we could not want to know—to give him one reason we should find out that wasn’t commercially motivated. What color to paint the walls, what bedding to get, which outfits to buy … all of these things seemed so trivial compared to preparing our hearts and our lives for the little one who has already changed us.

Being “easy going” while you know your life is about to be turned upside down is easier said than done, though. I love to prepare and find great joy in a well-organized spreadsheet, but I have been challenging myself on a regular basis to not rush this experience of pregnancy by only focusing on the end result of holding the baby in our arms. 

It’s easy to feel anxious or unsure of this new experience I’m going through, but it’s a lot less foreign than I expected. It feels so instinctive and I’m looking forward to the natural celebration of giving life this Sunday and for the remaining 3.5 months of this joyous period where I get to celebrate and sleep.

Amber Hill is Administrative Director at Sojourners.

pregnancy illustration, Pim / Shutterstock.com