From lawyer, to doula… A mother’s journey. (Part 1)

I don’t believe in coincidences. I think you are reading this for a reason. Whatever that reason is, I honor it and I thank you for sitting with me right now, like two good old friends who just need to catch up because life has gotten busy but it will never be busy enough to get on the way of connecting!

So where do I want to start? Let’s see… Oh, yeah! “Law is not for me!”… Wait, what!? Okay, let’s back trace for a sec. Do you remember my story? No? That’s OK, I’ll share a bit! I was born in Colombia, South America, in a relatively small city where people’s favorite thing to do is gossip about each other’s lives and looks (oops! Sorry, not sorry. Yeah… I love my country and my people, but this is VERY true) in a very “traditional” family. You know, the catholic type, the middle class type where life is supposed to follow a specific path: go to school for a whole 13-14 years of your life, graduate high school, go to college and get “a good degree” (law, in my case), get married, have kids, make a decent amount of money to send the kids to a good school, rinse, repeat. Over and over, generation after generation. Luckily, my family, regardless of being traditional, was also very “worldly” if you will. They wanted us, the children, the next generation, to experience “better” things, to travel the world and maybe even to find “a better future” elsewhere. So when I finished high school, at 16, having no clue what I was doing but thinking that I wanted to be a lawyer and having already been accepted to a good law school in my city, some of my relatives whom I love dearly and am forever grateful to, invited me to France to visit them for three months so that I could study French and learn about French and European cultures. WOAH! I had already traveled out of the country, but always with my mom and sister or with my family in general, not “by myself”. To say that this trip opened up a whole world of possibilities for me, is an understatement. I became fascinated with France. I wanted to stay there, I loved everything. I loved the train rides, I loved the language, I loved the food, I love the way I felt. “Mom, I think I want to stay in France!”, I called my mom and said. But, that ended up not happening. I went back to Colombia, graduated law school and met my husband in the U.S. when I came as an Au Pair for a year. We got married, moved to Colombia for a few years, had our daughter there and then moved back to the U.S. when she was 6 months old.

When I got pregnant with her, my husband and I were doing a fun little “Euro trip” for 6 months. We had experienced a pregnancy loss (aka “miscarriage” but I do not like that word one bit) and then the whole world shut down! Yup, 2020. Right before it happened, we had decided to go back to Colombia and cut our trip short. I remember it was late at night, we were in Warsaw, Poland, I went to the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror and knew I was preg”nant. I went to the room “I am pregnant”, I said to my husband. He believed me, he knew I knew. After Poland, we went to Turkey and while being there we were living in a cool little farm with an elder couple from the UK learning all about sustainable living but, some of the things were a bit too much for me personally (I love nature and I am a teeny bit “crunchy”, but I am still a city girl!), long story short, as I mentioned above, we decide to cut our trip short and go back to Colombia. I remember I texted my mom and said that we were coming back, even though we technically still had 3 months left… “Why? Is everything ok?” She asked. “Yes, mom. Everything is ok, but… I am pregnant. And there are certain things here that I’m not liking and I don’t want to put myself or the baby at risk”. She got excited, but also a bit concerned. She didn’t want me to “get my hopes up” after the devastation of having lost our first one 3 or 4 months before this. Long story short once again, we got back to Colombia and confirmed, via blood test, that I was indeed pregnant. I went for my first ultrasound at around 5 weeks. It was probably one of the most nerve racking experiences. I had the previous experience ingrained in every part of my body and brain. Having heard, months ago the words that nobody wants to hear when they go to meet their baby for the first time on a screen: “we can’t find a heartbeat” kept playing in my head over and over. I knew this time was different. A mother’s intuition is strong, I always felt something was quite not right with the first one, this one felt different, but… If I was wrong? If they couldn’t find a heartbeat… Again? I had been the first woman in my lineage (according to me) to experience this type of loss… Was it truly my body’s fault? What if everybody else was right and I really could not carry a pregnancy to term because I was “too fat” for it? The thoughts were constantly racing. The anxiety grew when the doctor said “It is still too early to see something. We are seeing exactly what we would expect to see at 5 weeks: the sac. You can come back next week and we will take a look again to see what we see”… It was the longest week of my life. My mind wasn’t stopping. I knew everything was right, because I could feel it, but the trauma was bigger than I can describe.

A week passed, we went for our ultrasound, my heart beating so fast and so loud that it felt as if it was going to get out of my chest. “Angela Vargas?” They called me. My thoughts went wild again, my chest was tight and it almost felt like I couldn’t breathe. I lied down, teary eye, a total mess, waiting to hear if this time, there was a heartbeat… “THERE’S THE HEART! I SEE IT BEATING!” my husband said as tears covered my eyes and my body started to shake “Stop! Don’t mess with me! Let the doctor tell me!” I said (or thought? I don’t remember at this point!), seconds later, the OB doctor did indeed confirm that he was seeing a strong and healthy heartbeat and that I was a little over 6 weeks. I started crying, this time, out of joy and not of pain and devastation. My whole world changed this day.

But since I know you have things to do and places to be and we agreed to just catch up over a quick tea/coffee, I will leave it here for now. I will tell you the rest of my full term pregnancy journey in the middle of a historic year that forever changed the world… 2020.

Thank you so much for sitting here with me today and reading this first part of my story! I absolutely look forward to catching up with you again soon! If you enjoyed this entry, please let me know :) I’d love to hear from you! And stay tuned… My story is just the beginning of “The Angel Journal”, but there will be so much more to come!!

All my love,

Angela