The Time Between Worlds

Late pregnancy is a threshold and this is how I'm surrendering to the unknown.

The word threshold comes from Old English, meaning the entrance of a doorway.

Psychologically speaking, to stand at the threshold is to make contact with two places at once. You aren’t fully entering nor entirely exiting. You’re holding the tension between worlds, which requires exquisite patience and trust.

In Reclaiming Childbirth As a Rite of Passage, Rachel Reed refers to this threshold space as the “liminal space.” She writes:

“The liminal space is neither the starting point nor the destination, it is ‘betwixt and between’ and is often considered a place of ordeal and chaos… a time of ‘symbolic dismemberment’ and of internal reorganization of the self… In the childbirth rite of passage, liminality is the phase betwixt and between pregnancy and the birth. It involves a profound opening and unravelling of the body and soul in preparation for the emergence of mother and baby” (p. 164-165, Reed).

In this last leg of pregnancy, I'm noticing the presence of liminality and a quiet call to move into myself.

I have one week left of work. I'm slowing down in my commitments to the outside world. I'm doing less, letting myself rest, and reflecting on this upcoming shift from one to two children. I can feel my body preparing for birth with the presence of more frequent Braxton Hicks. The baby has moved down further in my pelvis and his kicks and movements are still seismic, even though he has less space to stretch out.

In the end of pregnancy, when you're in the clear to safely give birth, but baby isn't quite fully ready, and every day you wonder, will this be the day?, is one of my favorite parts of pregnancy. Who will this child be? What will he look like? What will his birth be like? It is a time of wonder and reflection, a time of delicious unknowing and imagination, and a time to fall in love with the questions and surrender to life’s greater mysteries.

When you're at the beginning of pregnancy, or even in the middle, you still have a grip on your old life. Your body isn't as immobile and the awareness of what's around the corner feels like it's light years away. I was still doing heavy duty garden projects and long yoga sessions every day in my second trimester. When people asked me how I felt, I answered, “amazing!” I felt eternally positive, caught in good spirits, and energized.

Fast-forward to now, where I need at least nine hours of sleep at night and a nap every day to function. I switch the side I'm sleeping on at least a dozen times a night and I struggle to keep up with my toddler who thinks it's hilarious to watch me waddle-run down the driveway after he throws something he knows he's not supposed to. My embodied awareness fully holds the anticipation of my son's birth and I've already let so much of my old pre-pregnancy body and mother-of-one lifestyle go.

I can feel that I'm moving into a new psychological space with the upcoming birth, and in some sense, I'm already in one because I'm moving there, but I haven't quite arrived, haven't transitioned into the next chapter of matrescence or the ground of the re-organized Self.

In our society, we don't always honor the sacredness and wisdom of transitions. We're often rushing to the next place instead of appreciating what we observe along the journey, or even accepting that "the next place" is simply part of the journey, not the point of it, because we're always between in some sense. When I had my son, for example, there absolutely was a sense of "I have arrived, I am now a mother,” but this fixed identity has never stayed fixed. I'm always journeying to new places as a mother, because my son is always journeying to new places in his development. I continue to re-discover what motherhood means to me as what my son needs from me changes.

At the same time, the threshold of late pregnancy is a unique one, a particular kind of embodiment because you're standing between life and death. Even though my baby is very much alive, and I feel him kicking and tumbling in my womb, he hasn't drawn breath, he hasn't ventured into this world, and he’s tucked away in the in-between space of gestation. I’m never not conscious of the fact that my body holds a forming life and this awareness keeps me slightly apart from the world as I interact with it. I can feel that I’m within myself, that part of me is retreated, curled inward with my baby, sensing, connecting, and dreaming.

As mothers, we are portals between worlds.

Late pregnancy is a threshold. A space of becoming, the beginning before the beginning. A time to turn inwards, trust your baby’s timing, trust birth, trust your body, trust life. A time to lay your best plans at the feet of a bigger process.

We don’t know who we will become when we walk through the door of birth. Naievely, I didn’t know how much being a mother would change me when I was pregnant with my son. I envisioned my motherhood journey unfolding from the vantage point of my grandiose, excitable maiden-self who hadn’t yet died into the mother. I pictured the bright parts of motherhood — blowing bubbles with my son, sweet nursing moments, lots of cuddles — without understanding how these were entangled with the challenging parts — the sleepless nights, the postpartum rage, the psychological pressure that came with breastfeeding.

But now as a mother, I know the magnitude of what I’m going to walk through and how big the responsibility is on the other side. I have parts of me that are terrified and wonder, how the f*** am I going to do two under two? How will I ever be myself again when I have two kids pulling me apart with their needs? But the benefit of being a second-time mom is I can look back on my first experience and remember how motherhood rocked me and I survived. And not only did I survive, but I expanded. I became more soulful. I became more alive. I became more me.

We have to trust the threshold we walk through as mothers, even when it feels like death and dissolution. Wisdom always follows surrender to what is outside our understanding.

I do not know who my son will be.

I do not know what his birth will teach me.

I do not know how I will grow as a mother of two.

But I trust this mystery. I trust that I will be guided through the threshold and I am committed to bravely walking through the door.

After all, I have one son watching me and another waiting on the other side.

In the threshold with you,

~S

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