Longing for Normalcy

I am 15 weeks pregnant now and so far so good.  Except that I’m still feeling nauseous and I’m still feeling tired (rumor has it that stuff is supposed to go away at 12 weeks, never been the case for me).  I am also growing quite large and gaining weight rather rapidly.  I am busting out of my typical clothes, but my maternity clothes really don’t fit yet either.  My hormones are all over the place, I’m an emotional basket case, laughing or crying at any given moment.  I feel completely out of my own skin.  I do not feel like myself much of the time, physically or emotionally.  You see, I’ve never worn pregnancy well.  It’s always been a tough road for me, even before it was really tough.  When I was pregnant for the first time, when I was pregnant with Wyatt, I often cried to Rob and told him I couldn’t do this anymore (as if I had a choice), I bought books such as “Pregnancy Sucks”, and scoffed at women who proclaimed that they loved being pregnant.  Don’t get me wrong, I was excited that I was bringing a life into this world, but it was challenging to watch my body morph into a big blob, it was brutal being so sick and so tired, and it was stressful being the one that had to be vigilant, responsible and alcohol-free to boot.  Of course, at the time I had no idea how stressful it could really be and I had no idea what vigilance was really like.  I had no idea.  No idea at all.

After the tragic day of October 6, 2005, after I had carried that beautiful baby for 40 exhausting weeks and then watched him slip through my hands and through my heart in an instant, all of these thoughts, these complaints, these ridiculous rants of mine came back to haunt me in full force.  And they came back in the darkest of forms, in the most distorted shapes, as they came back and changed their images into nothing other than the purest of all guilts.  How could I have thought all of these horrible things, how could I have tainted my mind with these unappreciative thoughts, how could I have not realized how blessed I truly was to be harboring and holding a life inside me?  How could I have been so selfish?  How could I have been so insensitive?  How could I have been so ungrateful?  Maybe if I had displayed more gratitude, maybe if I had complained less, maybe if I had basked in this pregnancy instead of dwelled on the negatives, maybe, just maybe the outcome would have been different.  Of course, my rational mind knew differently, but my emotionally scathed and brutally scarred mind couldn’t help but consider this as a possible option. 

So after this loss, my scoffing at other women transformed.  Instead of turning my nose up at the women who glowed during their pregnancies, I found myself screaming my internal dialogue at those who complained.  At my sister-in-law’s wedding just three short months later, a fellow bridesmaid was pregnant.  And as if that wasn’t hard enough in and of itself, she complained to me about how horrible this wedding was going to be because she wasn’t going to be able to drink.  Whaaa?  Hold the phone.  First of all, insensitive bitch, you have to know what I’ve just been through.  And you have no idea how lucky you are, how blessed you are, how grateful you should be that you have been given this amazing opportunity.  You have no idea how fortunate you are that your baby is still alive and that he still has a chance of being yours to keep, and that you have been given the opportunity to nurture him, and dream of him, and hope for him.  You have no idea what you are complaining about and how ridiculous your complaints are to me.  Fool, you have no idea.  No idea at all.  And at the time, I thought I was completely justified in these thoughts, and I wanted to throw each and every one of them in her face, but I didn’t.  I just smiled and nodded, as I often did when confronted with someone else’s ignorance of the possible tragic outcomes of pregnancy.  I was the Queen of “You have no idea” and most certainly uttered this under my breath to most pregnant women who crossed my path.  It hurt to see someone else’s dreams being realized when mine were crushed, and I longed to be back in their shoes, to be able to take hold of gratitude and hold onto it as tight as I could, in hopes that this clinging would be the saving grace that I longed for it to be. 

And when I was pregnant with Abigail, just six months later, I’m certain I embraced this gratitude and held it like hope that my baby would be safe this time.  But the reality is, my memories of this pregnancy are sometimes cloudy, especially when I try to remember my emotions.  It was wrought with fear, anxiety, and continued grief for my son.  I also know there was hope, excitement, and positive thoughts for a happy ending this time.  But the details are blurred by the swirling and often conflicted emotions.  What I do remember quite vividly, however, is how I felt after Abigail was born.  When I was pregnant with her, I remember many people trying to tell me how difficult those first couple weeks or even months would be.  And I remember my internal dialogue once again scoffing at their ignorance:  You have no idea about difficult.  You don’t know challenging.  I have just clawed my way out of hell and you are going to tell me what is hard?  Ha, you have no idea.  No idea at all.  So I was convinced that after everything that I had just been through, this parenting thing was going to be a breeze.  And I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Holy hell, was I wrong.  But the real struggle wasn’t that I was excessively challenged as a new mom, no, the real challenge was that I felt like I didn’t have the right to complain about how tired, exhausted, frustrated or incompetent I felt.  I had lost a baby, he was no longer here, but I was given the gift of life this time and I thought the only thing I was allowed to feel was gratitude. 

So, this time, I feared your inner dialogue.  I feared whining and complaining on my part would conjure up judgment and misunderstanding on your part.  And I find myself feeling a similar emotion today.  I want desperately to tell you how miserable I am still feeling and how tired I am of chronic exhaustion.  I want to let you know that I can’t stand my roller coaster of emotions, my often sleepless nights, and the horrifying varicose veins that are beginning to pop up on my legs.  I want to be able to tell you how I almost cried when I packed away my skinny jeans and pulled out the gigantic elastic-waisted preggy pants that I will soon fit into.  But I am afraid to tell you these things.  I am afraid of the reactions and thoughts that will pop into your head.  I’m afraid you will label me ungrateful, judge me unworthy, scoff at my unappreciative nature.  And maybe it’s not really you I am truly afraid of, maybe it’s not really your internal dialogue that brings about my fear, maybe you are not my worst enemy.  Maybe you would embrace my complaining, understand my overly-emotional state of being, maybe you might even convince me that all of this whining is very normal.  Oh, how I long to be normal.  How I wish that I could go through this pregnancy with the ignorance and naivety that so many women get to experience.  I wish I could be okay with myself sometimes being irritated with the symptoms of pregnancy, with the challenges that pregnancy presents without the guilt quickly following, without feeling the need to swiftly qualify my annoyances with gratitude.  Because I am grateful.  I am extremely grateful that I have been given this opportunity once again, that I have been given this life to nurture and hold within me.  My appreciation far exceeds my need to complain on any given day.  But sometimes I wish I would just let myself whine without the fear of your judgments, without the fear of my guilt, without the pains of my past coming back to haunt me again and again.  Sometimes I wish I would let myself feel normal.  Oh, how I wish my innermost and darkest thoughts wouldn’t morph into my worst enemy.  I do not like being my worst enemy.  There must be a way that I can be gratefully irritated or irritatedly grateful without completely beating myself up.  I just haven’t quite figured out how to do that.  Yet.  But I have about 5 ½ months left to try to figure that out.  And then years of parenting after that…. I feel like I have just recently gotten there with Abigail, so there is hope for me still, there is hope on the horizon for me to feel like a normal mom, like a typical parent, as crazy and complaint-ridden as the rest of you, with this baby-to-be just yet.  There is always hope, and hope has always been my friend, and hope is most certainly nothing to complain about, so for now I will just hold onto that hope.  Hoping for normalcy, hoping for peace and hoping to be easier on myself in the days to come.