I have the tiniest bit of boob leaking. Not a big deal at all. Some of the ladies in my due date Facebook group have been stashing colostrum for weeks, lots of other ladies haven't seen a drop. There is a continuum of human experience.
Still, I found it to be very, very exciting! I did absolutely nothing to make that happen. It happened on its own. My body is doing its own set of preparations while my conscious mind is just out here living my life as normal (or worse, to be honest, my nutrition has a little bit, um, lapsed recently).
Then I had a few dribbles of fluid down my leg. I mean, could be anything. Pee, vaginal discharge, bath water, or . . . amniotic fluid??? Once the thought had arisen, my conscious mind was playing things out. WHAT IF THIS WAS IT???
On the one hand, I would be so happy to have him in my arms tomorrow. I worry about him in there. I wish there was a portal that I could peek into his space to check on him. Part of me wants him to exit ASAP because I have it in my head that I will worry about him less when he is on the outside--but of course that is a fallacy. I can't keep him alive; God sustains him.
The other hand, the wiser part of me acknowledges how much easier he is to care for on the inside: no crying, no diapers, no feedings. He deserves the warm, comforting enclosure of his womb for as many more weeks as I can give him. And I am in no hurry for the trial of labor.
But this is what the leaking and the dribbling taught me--first the dribble. It made me imagine with sincerity, for the first time, that moment when my water actually does break. And I realized I am sooooo not mentally ready. (Well, of course not, I am 34 weeks, after all.) My prevailing emotion was panic.
Then I remembered the leaking, and it made me realize, my body can do all kinds of things without me. When I read in my birth book that pushing is quite involuntary, I have to suppress the impulse to scoff at that--it can't be true, right? But the leaky nips really reassured me--some things really can happen on their own.
That is not to say there isn't corruption in our DNA. There is a reason I struggle to trust my body. It has let me down before. In His mercy to humanity, He gave us science and medicine and hospitals, because there is a need for them. But the fallenness of the world does not mean it is good or right or true to assume that my body will wholly stop functioning as it was designed.
