My Daughter- Knitted Together within Me

Ever have one of those moments when you truly felt like life was happening around you and not to you? I had one of those moments last week when the doctor told me we were going to have a daughter. In my mind, I already picked out HIS bedroom, HIS name, and I felt HIS kicks. 

. Our appointment was marked in big blue letters on my calendar, and it had been something I had anticipated for months. The BIG appointment. The 20-week ultrasound that examined every limb, organ and…eh…other regions. I had taken various on-line gender predictor tests and researched all the wives tale signs and everything pointed to a boy. There was actually no doubt in my mind, and I think I even convinced everyone else that we were having a boy too. I started the morning off getting a filling at the dentist, which left my mouth numb and sore. I ran errands. Cleaned the kitchen from last night’s dinner party at our house. I tried anything to distract myself as I anxiously watched the clock. John admitted that he couldn’t think about the appointment because it made his nervous, anxious and excited. I felt the same way. I think I felt this way because this was the moment when everything was truly validated. For months now I’ve watched my stomach grow; I’ve felt sick; I was tired; I knew I was pregnant, but the mystery of what was actually growing inside of me would finally be revealed. Would he/she have all the limbs? A spine? Would we have a son (like I truly believed) or a daughter? 

As I laid down on the ultrasound examining table, John reached over and took my hand. Suddenly, on the screen appeared fuzzy images. I anxiously tried to figure out what I was looking at. A head? A leg? What was it?! The doctor proceeded to examine each limb, each organ and measure the growth of me. John and I scanned the screen, straining to spot the one organ that would confirm that our baby was indeed a boy. “Wait.there it is!” 

“Nope, that is only the umbilical cord.”

Where is IT!? Where is IT?!!

The technician looked at us and smiled. “You guys are having a girl.

A GIRL?! John looked over at me and smiled. His gaze met mine, and in them he was saying to me, “Well, let the adventure begin!.”

I stared at wonderment at the screen. Our daughter.

I was amazed how each vertebra, each finger, each part was so masterfully crafted. How did all this happen?! I just get up everyday, eat food and go about my business. Yet, during all this, a human being was being created inside of me. The other day I read Psalm 139, a verse I have read so many times before. Yet, it hit me differently this time, and as I looked at the ultrasound pictures of our daughter, I actually had tears form at the corner of my eyelids. For you created my inmost being; 
   

you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 


 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 
   

your works are wonderful,  I know that full well. 


 My frame was not hidden from you 
when I was made in the secret place, 
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 


 Your eyes saw my unformed body; 
all the days ordained for me were written in your book 
before one of them came to be.

 Never in my life have I felt such immediate affection for someone. This life, this child was the epitome of innocence. It was being formed and created within me and it had no say whether it lived or what was to happen to it next. My instinct was to protect and care for this baby, and I suddenly felt the overwhelming sense of responsibility that it was the job of my husband and I to teach this child right from wrong.

Suddenly I saw the world differently.

During the next few days as I was trying to process having a daughter, everything around me was tinted pink. The women in the magazines were too sexy and airbrushed. The men gazed too long at the pre-teens in the short shorts at the mall. The statistics on the news about the young girls being sold into the sex trade were suddenly terrifying. The world  suddenly became the enemy; yet, I don’t want to view it this way at all.

So now I begin to think, and wrestle, with how to raise a child in this world without her being consumed by it? Is it possible to preserve the innocence that I observed as she nestled within my womb? She will come without an instruction manual. 

But as I sit here and type, this daughter within me is kicking around, reminding me that she is going to immerge eventually. So ready or not, here she comes. And I couldn’t be more excited.