Baby on Board

I realized today that I haven't posted anything on here since being pregnant. I am 15 weeks and 6 days pregnant. As of tomorrow, I'll be 16 weeks pregnant. There has been so much going on in my life recently, and I'm not sure where to start.

I am graduating with my bachelor's of science in speech and language pathology in about 3 weeks. Not only am I graduating with honors (summa cum laude), but I've been accepted into the graduate program of speech and language pathology. Such a small percentage of the people who applied were accepted, so this is a great honor. My hard work has paid off. Of course, graduate school is going to be very different though and I will have the extra job of being a mom. However, in a situation where I would typically respond with anxiety, I feel absolute joy and happiness. I can't even begin to explain this feeling. It makes no sense at all. I've been nervous about graduate school for a year now, and of course I'm nervous about raising a child. Instead of the logical equation of nerves + nerves = anxiety, I've been faced with an illogical one; nerves + nerves = intense happiness and excitement.

The only way I know how to turn this into something resembling logic is to state it this way; I've always wanted to be a mother and the type of nerves that I feel towards this aren't truly nerves at all. I'm not sure how to explain them. I'm just ready. Now, when I say ready, I do not mean prepared. Nothing can truly prepare us to be parents. We are going to screw up. We will make decisions that we will look back on and wonder what in the world we were thinking. But, we are ready to learn and make mistakes together with love encompassing our lives.

This all relates back to graduate school in the sense that even though I am a little nervous about it, I don't have to be afraid of failure anymore. I recognize that my fear of failure is ignorant since I've never truly failed at anything in my life, but recognizing this does not make that fear go away. But knowing that I am going to be a mother and that my life feels more complete than it ever has makes me, for once, not be afraid. If it doesn't work out, I still get to come home to a husband who truly loves me and our child who has given me a new purpose. No matter what, they love me, and this reality somehow makes me love myself a little more.