My posts have been so inconsistent lately. Part of this has been a complete lack of time, deadlines I can barely keep up with and a house move that required most of my attention for a while. But a large part of it has been the shift in focus my life has taken. As though to prepare me for a lifetime of thinking of someone else first, this little person growing inside me has monopolised my thoughts and emotions for the last four months now. I can't write about much else, because in my life currently everything points back to baby. And for some reason, I can't find the words to write about this baby.
Some of the things I have been feeling have been wonderful. That first moment when I saw my little bean in the ultra sound was like nothing I had ever felt before. There he (for the purposes of this blog) was; he had arms and legs and a heartbeat, he was dancing and moving around, he was alive. Just as my miscarriage introduced me to the pain of true and uncontrollable grief, that tiny picture of a twelve-week old embryo gave me my first encounter with true relief and joy. In my attempts to keep myself calm during moments of panic - those times when the cramps I felt didn't feel right, or when I was worried I wasn't sick enough - I talked to my baby. I told him how much I loved him already, how I couldn't wait to meet him. I promised him things I am not even sure I could ever provide, but that I was certain I would try harder than I have ever tried at anything before. I named him, I rubbed my belly to soothe him, I prayed for him and pleaded with him. This made me feel closer to him than I felt to most of the people around me - and yet he seemed so unreal and so far away.
The first time I heard his heartbeat, the first time I felt him moving around inside me, the first time I let it truly sink in that this baby may actually be real - all of these moments have left me moved and overwhelmed, frightened and exhilarated, in ways I have never experienced before and could never really articulate. I have felt grateful every single day since I saw that pink line on a pregnancy test in July. Genuinely, humbly and heartbreakingly grateful. I was almost prepared for the intensity of those emotions, nearly prepared for the joy I would feel given the weight of the grief my previous loss had filled me with. But there were many things for which I was unprepared - many things that no one told me to expect.
The loneliness came first. Ironic, isn't it? For the first time in my life I am technically never alone, and yet I feel so isolated from the people around me. Suddenly it is as though I can't relate to anyone. Friends planning vacations or talking about going out for drinks seem so distant from my new life, my new priorities. I am all at once bored by and jealous of their lives. Small jibes of "you're hardly the first woman to ever be pregnant" or rolled eyes if I have to leave a party early have left me feeling misunderstood and, if I'm honest, a little pissed off. There seems to be a general acceptance that because so many people experience pregnancy, those who are pregnant have no right to visibly feel sick/tired/overwhelmed/incontinent/irritable. Just sit there and look cute, glowing and bumpy. I have never been one who is able to sit quietly and not react, so withdrawal has been my immediate response. Most of the time I would just rather be alone, and yet I yearn for company.
Introspection has taken over these days. My head has filled up with questions - Will I be a good mother? Will I be able to breastfeed? Will my child love me when he becomes a teenager? Will he move far away and leave me here with the life I have set up almost solely for him? The darker questions are harder still. Will I resent my child for the life I am giving up in order to have him? Have I done this too soon? Will I be mean or abusive? Neglectful and inattentive as I focus on the career that has for so long been my baby? Will I be jealous of this child as I fight him for my husband's attention? Will my husband still love me when I no longer fit in to the image of youth and beauty he has attached to me?
In her book about pregnancy, Naomi Wolfe talks about grieving for the woman who inevitably ceases to be when you become a mother. This is not a feeling I anticipated, but I find it haunts me a little more every day. Reality starts to hit hard when you're pregnant. Gone are the days when I could trick myself into thinking that a baby would not interrupt my plans too much, not throw my life into a complete disarray. Already I have been utterly merged with this little being. People no longer ask how I am without prefacing it with a glance or reference to my abdomen. What they mean is how is the baby, the pregnancy. Even the gifts I received for my birthday today have revolved around the baby - maternity clothes, stretch mark cream, essential oils to help with the symptoms of pregnancy (would you give your friend cold medicine for his birthday because you knew he had a cold?). This baby and I are now one in the same. There is no me without him, no him without me. For someone so fiercely independent, attaching another person on to every part of my life and being is frightening and frustrating, alien and profound.
My body and my life are no longer my own. Near-strangers and acquaintances suddenly find it ok to ask me about my breasts, my urinary habits and my moods. They question my dietary choices and chastise me for ordering a coffee (before they realise it's decaf). Suddenly the most intimate decisions I have ever made (Will I breastfeed? Will I find out the sex? Will I stay at home or return to work? Do I want more than one?) are fair game for every Tom Dick and Harry. My belly is the property of everyone, and most people do not hesitate to put their hands on my lower abdomen in such a way that would have caused my husband to punch them four months ago. Now he glows with pride as they man-handle me, beaming the silly grin of a father-to-be.
In a nutshell, I feel as though I have ceased to be myself. And while I know that when this baby is born I will become a new, better, happier version of myself - I can't help but mourn for the person I was before I became some one's mother. This ambivalence is crazy-making. Never at any point to I wish to no longer be pregnant - nor do I cease to be grateful for this miracle that is taking place in and around me. I already love my child more than I love myself, would already die in his place, and I long for his arrival with each breath. Even as I write this I can feel him moving about, reassuring me that all of this uncertainty will wither in the face of his presence - the person I have waited for since before I knew who I was waiting for, the love of my life.
Even still, will you afford me this brief moment of silence to say goodbye to my life before him? To cry for my privacy, my independence, my marriage as I know it, my stomach and breasts? Will you all think me horrible if every day, just for a moment, I remember fondly a time when I was the only person in my own skin?
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3 comments:
Of course it's only natural that you're giving so much attention to your baby and putting your own identity and plans on the back burner for a while. But keep holding onto your own identity and don't let it fade away. And whenever there's a chance give some time to yourself. Too many mothers seem to become so engrossed in their baby's welfare they become total airheads.
Isn't it a strange contradiction that people don't think you should be preoccupied with all the details of pregnancy (which after all is pretty important to you!) but on the other hand they feel free to offer all their gratuitous comments and casually feel the bump. Pregnancy seems to bring on a rather authoritarian streak in other people who feel entitled to tell the mother exactly what she should be doing and thinking.
Mind you, I seem to be doing a bit of that myself....
Love this post. Feel like I've been needing to express some of what you have here. Which probably explains my own blog hiatus that I'm trying to crawl out of now. What to say? One on hand, this is probably the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. On the other hand, I really, really loved my life pre-pregnancy as well.
And, like you, I think I had this, "whatever. We'll just keep doing what we used to do only with a bjorn or a stroller in tow," and while needing those items is still months away, I am most definitely shying away from social events I would have months ago loved to attend. Because people DO look at your differently when they envision you as a mother.
So strange, my friend Sarah said to me that once she became pregnant, she really did feel like she was connected to the rest of the world in a way she hadn't felt before - there's good and bad that come with that. There is an ownership that others seem to share when you say that you are expecting. And part of me wants to say to no one in particular, "oh really? Because I didn't see you around owning much of anything when we were surrounded by shots and meds and surgeries and BFNs."
Plus, I don't do well with sharing in the first place.
What a wonderful description! And to think, all those years ago, when I was pregnant, I thought surely I was the only woman in the world who felt that way.
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