Status Updates From Showing: What Pregnancy Tel...

Yup. Been thinking this for years.

“During gestation mother and fetus each transfer cells to the body of the other [to be retained for up to decades after the child is born]…Microchimerism is not thought to be limited to just the bi-directional exchange of mother and fetal cells: cells from older siblings and even maternal grandmother cells might also be transferred to the fetus.”

“Offering oneself in the service of another is the charity women offer to their children, to the ongoing course of human life on earth. That charity should be recognized whether women retain or erase the spots, marks, and scars of the experience.”

“To believe that God gives every person a soul, directly and individually, is to believe that each pregnant woman is a host to a kind of visitation from God, is honored as audience and collaborator, a watcher at a holy place, attending God doing something new.”

"Like ultrasound images, [baby] showers tend to make the baby more visible by setting the woman aside. She sits as the body between the gifts and their recipient, unwrapping the presents for the person wrapped inside her."