8.21.08

It's surprising just how early on you start to depend on your child. As soon as you find out you're pregnant, it begins. With mixed caution and excitement, you're already depending, deep down, on your little one to hang in there and keep growing strong-- "Just give me until I can hear your heartbeat, baby". For those who make it to that milestone, the dependence starts to stretch a little further. Next it's "Just make it through this first trimester, baby!" and then "Come on, baby, let's get halfway there", which soon becomes "Please, let's try for 10 more weeks" and so on. But all along, you build a dependence on your future and that future revolves completely around this life that you are begging and willing to grow healthily.

This morning I sat down to eat breakfast-- cereal and juice. A sip of juice is like a can of Red Bull for a fetus. Mine starts kicking and flailing about within seconds. But this morning? Nothing. All was still. I looked down at my belly and whispered in my head, "Please, sweetie. Just once." Without realizing how much I was depending on the teeny little 20 week old baby doing all it can to grow and survive, I felt one small kick. With that tiny kick, I felt immensley proud and comforted. That's my child in there! Doing the one thing he/she could to help poor Mom out.

I can only imagine how amazing it must feel to witness watching your child help someone up from a fall, bring home a good report card, learn how to swim, make it through the first day of school. We depend on our kiddies to make it in this world and to have millions of small successes along the way. Often, we probably don't realize that we are actually depending on them, but I'm sure it is clear when you see them bring home a terrible report card, push another child down, throw a fit and give up on swimming, and...I dunno, run away from school?!?! (ok, that one was hard) But parents also have an innate ability to forgive, forget and continue on wishing and depending as if nothing ever happened, and that has got to be a God-given blessing.

I guess what I'm saying is, I had no idea that parenting, and all the emotions associated with it, starts at conception. That fully invested, deeply in love, wholehearted wish for the best, webbed together, is a recipe for a little dependence here and there.