Queenspirational

NOTE: I’ve been going though my old Drafts, finding the blog posts I wrote but never published. This was written over a year ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, who only lived for an hour before he died. It’s like a little time-capsule of the things I was feeling at the time.

One of my friends hosted an ALIEN/ALIENS double feature the other day that really spoke to where I am in my life right now. Because right now, I’m five months pregnant, and I’ve just started to feel the baby move. Watching these movies, I felt a connection to the characters, as issues about pregnancy in the films seemed to speak directly to me.

I found myself with a great deal of admiration and empathy for the ALIEN Queen. I understand, now, that pull to nest, to make an environment your own, to clean out the unwanted and make a place where you and your family will be comfortable and prosper. How many times have I heard a parent say “I’d do anything for my family.” The Queen is just doing that – whatever it takes to help her family survive and prosper.

I have to admire her as well, for outsourcing the most difficult part of pregnancy, labor and birth. By creating a system where she does not have to deliver her own babies, she frees herself to make her home comfortable, care for the newly born, and to lay more eggs.

While my compatriots moaned with disgust when the Queen ripped herself from the gestational egg sack, I was delighted at the innovation! How many pregnant women have, perhaps just for a moment, wished that they could just stop being pregant for a moment – perhaps go for a nice run, or slay your enemies without carrying around the extra weight. How ingenious that she can do this!

Pregnancy is full of sticky truths, painful questions, and difficult answers. If you are the Queen, in charge of her own Queendom, choosing to have the babies you want to have, making your nest a home, then you feel happy to welcome new members into your family. But not all of us get to be in the position of Queen.