Today it's cold outside and very gray. And yet the crocus have bloomed, the forsythia is a burst of yellow in the back and the daffodils are peeking their pointy heads out. My strawberry plants survived the winter and are rising above the leaf bed in the garden. My lavender is turning green and there are blooms on the pachysandra.
This is March. The month where the wind blows cold but the sun beats down warm and the sky changes each and everyday.
It has also been the month where I have experienced the most up and down period of this pregnancy.
I was hospitalized 3 weeks ago for severe contractions coming every 2 minutes apart. So the staff did everything they possibly could to keep the baby stable and in. They were completely successful and we came home safe but exhausted. I was in a lot of pain and very weak so my mother has come to take care of me which has allowed Daniel a chance to breathe and myself a chance to recover.
But now, it's week 36 and next week we all start wishing the baby out! I feel like the last 3 weeks have simply been one large pendulum on which I have had no choice but to hang on and swing. Nothing tragic happened, nothing horrible and yet I have a sense of loss. This loss has nothing to do with grief so I don't want to over dramatize it or ask for sympathy but I feel that it is important to mark.
Because 3 weeks ago I was charging ahead on my dissertation, I was writing every morning, commuting to the city for my job, swimming, trying to stay energized. And now, I find myself weak after a walk around the park (mom takes me for a walk every day to keep my legs and back strong), I fall asleep after a round of yoga (I'm still hoping for a natural birth so I want to keep limber) and I ache after the simplest of tasks.
I slept through most of week 34 and I think that's where the lack lays still.
Somehow in that week of recovery I found myself in a new position...one where the baby and I were not any longer in a battle of wills of which desire, need, or emotion would win the day but one in which the baby wins -every day, hands down, no question, I'm not even in the race anymore.
And I know -that this is part of parenting- that children take precedence and run your life and all the thousands of things that everyone since I've announced we are having a child has wanted to tell me "oh the trauma of having children!!"
But I'm not writing about the surprise at the feeling. I am trying to find a way to describe the feeling -not to overcome it but to understand it, to feel it fully. Right now, I still find myself lacking words, lacking the emotions even.
Also it is not enough to complain about it -this lack of control, of personal space -what do "we" do with it once it has possessed us.
I can't believe that it is enough to simply make it a cliche, "children run your life". Instead, as a part of the human condition -as a part of the familial condition we have a choice in our response to it.
And I ask as the March winds blow colder-what will mine be?
Posts
