Dropping in

With an extremely round midsection.

Happy Friday! It’s been a while.

I started writing this on a June gloomy Monday morning after listening to a podcast about toddler control struggles while unloading an extremely full dishwasher and washing a load of table linens and tiny clothes.

I’m nine-and-a-half months pregnant. I recently wrapped work, and am dropping in hard to domestic mode.

Drop in: to commit, surrender, and enjoy

“Dropping in” is what Corey and Lua call the moment after he’s pulled back on the swing and before he lets it go, sending her swinging down and then skyward.

“I wanna drop in!” she yells. I love how extreme it sounds, like she’s paddling confidently as a wave builds behind her, or watching the tips of her skis hang off the precipice of an alpine gully, snow sparkling beneath them.

“I wanna drop in!”

It’s been really hard for me to drop into this pregnancy. At our first real scan, just before the holidays, the doctor saw swelling that might have been a harbinger of all kinds of frightening outcomes—several of which a genetic counselor listed after we sat waiting for what felt like hours but may have just been 25 minutes. We went back into the ultrasound room again that evening, this time for the doctor to watch the same screen as she inserted a needle through my abdomen, into my placenta to extract cells for testing.

This was a few days before we were scheduled to fly to Australia for Lua to meet my sister, brother-in-law, and her three cousins for the first time. And one day before I was supposed to drive up to Ventura to Patagonia’s corporate headquarters—a company I wanted to work for decades, where I’d recently been freelancing and was on the verge of a contract for a big new project.

Corey and I drove home in daze. My mom was waiting there with Lua. And although the whole time our doctor’s visit was unwinding all I wanted to do was see my daughter, I can’t remember whether she was still awake when we got home.

I went ahead to Patagonia in Ventura the next day, reasoning that working there was probably more like sitting on a couch (the recommended mode of procedural recovery) than chasing a toddler. I think it was that night, after I got home, that Lua completely lost her shit insisting that I lift her, and clamped onto my belly with all her might, screaming and squeezing me with her thighs while the needle insertion site ached beneath them and Corey attempted to detach her from my body.

That was a low point.

We went to Australia as planned, and waited for test results the entire time we were there. So instead of blurting out that we were pregnant over a celebratory BBQ, I waited until I was alone with my sister to tell her: I had some news, but it was complicated. We didn’t really know what was going to happen, or whether we should tell her kids yet.

But that was actually an upswing, because I was surrounded by my family at Christmastime, which is also summer in Australia. Seeing Lua with her cousins, auntie, and uncle was a balm for my soul, as was the freedom it gave me to just walk away whenever, to take a shower, to ride a bike to the public pool—or the beach!—to swim laps, whatever. Also: sun.

Soon after we left Australia, we received an increasingly encouraging string of test results, followed by a doctor’s visit that was whiplash-inducing in its normalcy. I wept on the way home, but not for nearly as long as I needed to.

Dropping into oneself (with help)

Later that month I made it back to Antara, the deeply healing group retreat in Taos, New Mexico I wrote about for Quartz in 2019. At Antara, the phrase “drop in” is also common, usually as a sort of invitation for a participant to “drop in” to their own body to wholly experience or explore a feeling.

Surrounded by supportive souls and spacious, snowy skies, I did just that, describing what I had been going through, and the dark grey, rolling waves I saw behind my eyes when the doctor inserted the needle into my womb for testing. Jan Birchfield, who leads Antara’s retreats, surmised that I left my body in that moment and hadn’t fully returned. That felt true to me. And it also felt true that Jan’s daughter Dillon, a healer, chef, and mother of three, was able to help me start that return with Reiki conducted beneath a window awash in winter light.

That weekend, for the first time, I felt the baby move inside me. I dropped back into myself a bit. It felt like a sort of homecoming.

That’s not to say the months to follow were entirely smooth sailing. I was desperate for time in nature and with friends—an itch often scratched by surfing. But my belly was rounding out, the rain was relentless, and I lost count of how many get-togethers were cancelled because of illness, whether kids’ or our own. My work also entered its most demanding stage since Lua was born. (But for Patagonia, so: silver lining!)

It was, as they say, a lot.

Friends dropping in

At some point during this winter, while I was sick and Corey was away, my friend Minh (a surfer mom who understands the desperation of feeling trapped at home) dropped a little bag outside my door with a few of her favorite things, including a box of frozen chocolate croissants from Trader Joe’s.

Reader, do not snooze on these. Following Minh’s instructions (also the box), I let them rise overnight, and preheated the oven the next morning before I got Lua out of bed. Before long, the house smelled like a bakery and we were munching flaky croissants oozing with warm chocolate at the dining table. No one was grouchy.

The more I’ve reconnected with friends this spring (sweet RELIEF!), the more stories I heard of similarly tough seasons, endured without the frequent release valve of kindness and commiseration with pals. Minh and I exchanged only text messages after her bag-drop, as she too, was handling a lot.

But still, she gave what she could. And this third kind of “dropping in”—just dropping in on a friend, whether with a message, call, or doorstep goody bag—can make a huge difference in a low moment.

The first part of this year was hard in many ways. The feeling that I just didn’t have the time, space, or energy in me to show up for friends the way I want to, the way they often show up for me, drained me further. Dropping in feeds both friends, I think.

With the summer solstice, I’m calling an official end to this season.

My prayer for this year’s second half, and beyond, is for more dropping in, in every sense. I want to drop in to this new stage of parenthood (and life!) with the enthusiastic energy and surrender of Lua dropping in on the swings. I wouldn’t mind bringing some of that to the waves—and to a new writing project—eventually too. In the meantime, I want to continue to drop into myself, physically and spiritually. And perhaps most importantly, I want to drop in on my people more.

I know this might sound nuts with a second kid on the verge of, um, dropping any day, but I’m playing the long game.

I’ve missed you, friends. Drop in with a line, any time.

Have a good day! xx

Jenni

P.S.

I intend to write a follow-up letter with a hodgepodge of body/mind/soul-helpers that got me through this season, in addition to those TJ’s chocolate croissants and the Antara retreat. But for now, I will leave you with this: the season three finale of Dave.

I only watch this show peripherally, as in, when I am passing through the room and Corey is watching it. But when I did that a couple weeks ago and Brad Pitt appeared, I sat down and made Corey start from the beginning. This was the greatest 46 minutes of television I’ve seen since maybe the Fleabag finale—and the best use of Brad Pitt since that roof scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I don’t think you really need to be familiar with the show’s premise or characters beyond the basics (Dave is an LA-based rapper looking for love as his star is rising) to fully enjoy the sheer daffiness of what goes down when a superfan/assistant (Tenea Intriago, brilliant) drops by Dave’s place, followed by Brad Pitt, just there to lay down some tracks. This episode is deeply hilarious and mildly horrifying, and I laughed, and laughed, and laughed out loud. It felt so good.