Preparing
Daily writing experience - day 57
Preparing
There's nothing quite like preparing to have a child.
A 9 month pregnancy seems like a very long time to wait to hold the baby in your arms, if it's a wanted pregnancy. Yes, I'm aware there are many unfortunate, unwanted, and unspeakable situations under which conditions pregnancy isn't desired.
As I look back on my own pregnancy, begun in mid December 1998, I can appreciate how young, naive and unprepared to be a mother I was at 22 years old.
And at the time it felt like an accomplishment to have waited until 22. I grew up in a place where my peers began having children at 15.
Although in my family, my mother had her first child at 22, and my oldest sister also had her first child at 22. I guess I can not claim to be an innovator in this regard… I very much followed the pattern set in my nuclear family.
What was very different is that my son's father and I decided to move back to Los Angeles, California where we had met rather than stay in Guatemala where we're both from, and where we'd decided to get pregnant. We’d been trying to make it work to stay, live and raise our family in Guatemala.
I was in the running to get a promotion to move to my family's hometown of Quetzaltenango from Guatemala City.
The organization knew I'd be able to navigate the process of opening a branch there given my deep roots there.
For me it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to move back to the city I grew up in, have a good job as an English School branch director, and be surrounded by my family when I became a first time mom.
I made the fortunate/unfortunate decision of sharing that I was 1 month pregnant with the hiring manager during the promotion interview process. I wasn't showing, and they wouldn't have known if I hadn't shared until it was too late. And if I hadn't shared, I wouldn't have been able to face myself.
I was six months pregnant when I arrived in Fontana, California at my son's father's mother's house, the woman who'd become my mother-in-law within the year.
I arrived at a blended family home of 4. And I lived there until two weeks after my son was born in San Bernardino, California.
My son's dad arrived 36 hours before my son was born… My son and I had been patiently waiting, and l had to sign waivers in order to wait, as my son was two weeks late. And he was just in time.
Have you had the experience of something/someone arriving "late", but when you look back it was just in time?