caution- living here will make you pregnant

When Jeff and I moved into our neighborhood we completely fell in love with it. Nice quiet streets with young couples walking their dogs, some with children, some without, and some with bulging pregnant bellies. We thought we'd blend right in with them, what with having a dog of our own.

And within two weeks of moving in, we got pregnant. As my belly grew we started to feel like an even better fit in the neighborhood. The belly opened up a whole new world of friends to make. When you're pregnant other pregnant ladies want to chat and compare notes, and the moms want to relive simpler days, when their babies were safely tucked inside where the worst they could do was (relatively) easier to take than the havoc the babies cause once they're out.

Now, just a handful of days shy of Asa's first birthday, I'm finding that newborns, new moms, and expectant first time moms surround me more than ever before. And I'm loving it! The newborns take me back to the days when we were first meeting Asa in person, sleepless and clueless, we fumbled thru the first few weeks and months in a blissful daze. Talking to the new moms I'm reminded of the horrors of breastfeeding, the pain, the leaks, the pumping, the endless cycle of keeping the baby fed and trying desperately to work a meal of your own into the day but also of the sort of adrenaline-induced euphoria that holding your new baby gives you. And then there's the pregnant moms. The excitement and amazement and totally lovable innocence they still have about the whole thing. Hearing the baby's heartbeat, going for the ultrasound, those days are so far in the past for us now, but the excitement is still fresh in my mind when I take a moment to cast back to 2009 ...

The whole circle of life is really incredible. I used to just think of it from a death/birth perspective; as one life begins, another is ending somewhere. The balance of the universe. But now I see it as being a vastly busier circle, like one of those crazy traffic circles that has lots of roads feeding into it ... New lives are starting all the time, joining the hubbub of life with new parents and veteran parents, children and grandparents all zipping around, enjoying the shared thrill of the ride.

Special congrats to all the newly expectant moms, as you already know, it's a great thrill and it only gets better.