Pregnancy Diaries, Vol. VI

Thirty weeks.

I think it’s time we that we all came out and admitted that I am not actually going to have a baby, because, am I? It was very magical, and sickening, and exciting, and la di dah ‘I’m having a baby whooooo so pumped, this feels so right, cannot wait’. And now it’s all very ‘what the hell, how on earth did I get myself in this ridiculous situation?’ It’s just all very well to be five weeks pregnant  and stoked that you made a baby, and twenty weeks pregnant,  partying that you’re half done but glad it’s a cute lifetime away. And then thirty weeks arrives and you’re waddling down the street being kicked in your cervix and holding your uterus up and wishing you’d invested in a pair of pants that actually fits your new fat deposits curves, and it dawns on you that you must have been in a deluded state for months on end to have been so unalarmed by the upcoming event.

It’s a familiar feeling, this ‘I was obviously in a coma, because how in my right mind did I get here?’ That was me the day before I made the best decision of my life, to marry Ben. It was fun being engaged, and not-terrified, and so extraordinarily sure inside, and then the night before, booom. I’M PROMISING TO LIVE WITH HIM FOREVER AND OBVIOUSLY I WAS UNCONCIOUS OUR WHOLE RELATIONSHIP BECAUSE I GOT HERE AND ITS MAD.  

I find myself in a very neurotic state of affairs. I’m madly nesting, attending birth classes, attesting to the fact that I cannot wait to meet our daughter, while simultaneously feeling a sense of being 20 hours into a flight to a foreign country with no return ticket, and no idea why I booked in the first place. I remember feeling that on my way to Paris, just as we left Heathrow airport, and suddenly there was only one hour till I was meant to be speaking my woeful highschool French, and living with a foreign family. At that moment, I was like ‘Wow. I totally got caught up in this, and I’m only just come to my senses now one hour before we arrive, which is a point of no return, which is unfortunate for me, and MERDE!’

I’m now looking forward to not being pregnant because I’m uncomfortable and absolutely exhausted, and every single time I verbalise this thought to Ben {which is a lot of times}, I remember OH, but not being pregnant means that baby has come out and I’m caring for it. OH. OK. Maybe I should just stay pregnant after all. OH. But you can’t stay pregnant; you have to have the baby. RIGHT. I see how it is.

And these thoughts have almost nothing to do with the uncertainty of whether I will be caring for a special needs child or not, they’re just part of ice-cold-feet-syndrome.   

I will always remember my Dad’s words to me the night before I got married. He said, “No, you have thought this through extensively. This feeling isn’t a sign that you’ve been unconsciously swept up for a couple of years Dee, it’s a sign that you understand the gravity of what you’re doing.”

And he was right. I was so acutely aware of the enormity of my decision, that I was momentarily overcome. Momentarily sitting with a concept which was too large to hold, and ready and needing to embark and live in the far-less-frightening daily reality. There is a time for thinking, and there are some thoughts which need to move into action or paralysis will ensue.

That knowledge makes my current thoughts sound more bi-polar, or can we describe them as balanced?

I am overcome by disbelief that I am on the brink of becoming a mother so soon, and simultaneously completely sure that it will be a no-regret situation. I believe in tandem feelings, in hormonal laugh-turn-crying, and never-been-so-happy-or-so-sad days. 

The uncomfortable complexity I feel is deliciously reminiscent of being on the brink of the best journeys I have ever been on.