Theme Thursday: Grow

This week's theme is grow; Theme Thursday is hosted by Clan Donaldson.  See the rest here.

I regret (only a little) that I didn't take more pictures of my pregnancy progress.  Those days, The Squirt was an as-yet-unknown entity, a gift in wrapping paper, keeping the secret of his sex and growing strong for the time when he would leave one dark, warm, safe world for a big, bright new one.

Even before I was a mother, I could never understand intellectually the pro-choice argument that an embryo/fetus was not the same thing as the new-born child.  It's a diseased reason.  Pregnancy and childbirth compounded this conviction.  It takes a convoluted abuse of logic to believe otherwise.  The presence or absence of want (as opposed to an "unwanted" pregnancy?  I find so much wrong with that phrase, but that is for another post on another day) doesn't change fact, any more than wanting to fly can change the law of gravity.

As you can see from the pictures, my son didn't always look the same.  In the very beginning, inside, he looked like very much like a sea-monkey   But if I pressed a rewind button on time, I would never come to a point when my son wasn't himself, except when he didn't exist, i.e. before the moment conception.

That's the connotation behind the word "grow."  It doesn't mean "change" or "come into existence."  It means to unfold, to be revealed, to become, as it were, more and more oneself.