WHAT WAS IT LIKE?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the 9 months or so that I was in utero. I say “or so” because I have no idea if I was early, late or right on time.  If I had to guess, I would say early, as I am early for everything!  I don’t know what my birth mother liked to do or what she ate or if she talked to me. My story, some would say is unimportant and doesn’t matter. It matters to me.

Yes I had a good life and good parents in spite of not knowing this information.  That part of my story is important too. But how I began is what I am thinking about now.  Most people get to hear their story from the beginning, the pregnancy and birth. My story starts “When we got you………” which incidentally was 2 weeks after my birth. 

I've been thinking about what my birthmother did while she was pregnant. Did she listen to music, take walks or go out with friends. Is the reason I go to pizza and cookies as comfort foods because she ate that a lot? What was her labor like? Was it hard? She said she was drugged up and when she woke up I was gone.  

I will never know, she is dead and she told no one I know about me. Not her sister, not her parents, no one! I feel sometimes like I started this life in shame. I have a handful of letters from her the 2 years we communicated.  She never wanted to meet, she said she wasn’t well enough. I remember saying I am just going to drive to her house, I don’t care what she wants, and it’s so unfair she doesn’t want to meet me.  If I would have known we had only a couple years, I might have done just that.

I never heard her voice and I never, ever saw her face in person.   

I think about her walking around Capitol Hill in Seattle. Did she feel safe? Was she ridiculed? After all it was 1962, it wasn’t acceptable to be pregnant and single.  Since I was born in the summer this would have been spring and maybe a little warm, great walking weather. Did she finish dental assistant school? Did she drop out? All I know from her words, is that she babysat for a lesbian couples during that time. 

I can tell my son I ate chocolate chip mint shakes from Kidd Valley every day in my third trimester, we had Mexican food probably once a week for all of my pregnancy, I ate constantly to keep the morning sickness at bay in the beginning, I gained a lot of weight which was likely why I had to have a C-section and he was 2 weeks late. We nicknamed him one-eyed Jack when he came out, because one eye was closed. He gets to have his whole story and I am able to tell him. 

I wish I had an answer on why at my age now this is important. But it is!

Take a look at the TED talk that inspired this blog post:   https://www.ted.com/talks/annie_murphy_paul_what_we_learn_before_we_re_born?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare&fbclid=IwAR0DEuCCvlEaPUvbJIdH-Xn4quHYfBCWEt8EZDkG4fSIE4LybrO1VzjAXLk