Take this pink ribbon off my eyes...

It truly is amazing how people try to treat pregnant women as if they are china dolls who will break in the slightest wind.  As I've gotten bigger, people seem more and more concerned with my health and not wanting me to work too hard. I'm sure if I rode buses, people would be trying to give me their seats. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the concern and respect that these things imply!  But I think there is an unspoken rule in our society that pregnant women must be catered to at all moments.  We are told to rest as much as possible, demand foot rubs from our husbands every day as a "reward" of sorts from carrying their children, and turn up our noses when someone smokes within a 1-mile radius of our tender tummies.  I've gotten a vibe a number of times, especially from Brent's male (and often unmarried) friends, that they are shocked that he does not cater to me hand and foot.  The few times someone has actually said something, I usually respond, "I'm pregnant, not dead!"  I often had people tell me that I was a "trooper" for going out on the town with our friends, when everyone is having a grand time drinking and I'm double-fisting my Shirley Temple and water :)  It surprises people that I would rather go out and have the best time I can than play the "pregnancy card" and make us both stay home.  And that surprises me.

Granted, I went through a phase early in my pregnancy when I wanted to be treated like a princess and adored by everyone for the miracle of life growing inside my belly.  Who wouldn't?  But I've come to realize that treating myself like an accident waiting to happen, or enjoying it when others treat me that way, does nothing to mature me as a woman.  Sure, there will probably come a time, not too long from now, when certain things simply harder for me to do, and I may need some extra help.  But a slower, less active final month or so doesn't mean that I am helpless now.  As the weeks have worn on, I've shifted from wanting to be treated as "special" to pushing myself to take on challenges, however small.  

And I'm aware that I've had a really easy pregnancy, so maybe this is all too easy for me to say.  But, I'm no longer sure that an easy pregnancy is the great blessing I've been saying it is, even though I'm incredibly grateful for it.  I might have learned more during these past 6 months had I been sick as a dog!  I've come to see more and more that the greatest blessings come in the most painful of wrappings -- which is just one of many reasons I am praying for the opportunity to have a natural childbirth come November.  I can't control what will happen, but I'm hopeful that I will have the chance to face one of the greatest challenges there is, and to experience the great blessing that I know lies in walking through that challenge with God.

This is all to say that while I think pregnant women should certainly take care of themselves, I also think that this attitude of catering to our every need really does us a disservice.  The very concept of having time to be catered to must be a fairly new one; certainly pioneer men couldn't be expected to be giving footrubs to their pregnant wives on the Oregon Trail.  When simple survival took everything a couple had, there was no time for putting feet up on the couch (and no couch to begin with!)  While we look back at those more "difficult" times as primitive, something not to be returned to, I wonder if our easy lives are really the great blessing they seem.  Are we exchanging great spiritual and emotional blessings for fleeting physical ones?