Week 10: Emerging

Birthing Tub Parade

I woke up this morning at 3:45, sharing far too much blanket and body heat and awkwardly positioned between Andy and Merritt—who at some point in the night had pushed my second pillow to the floor to create a space he could sneak into.

I lay awake for a good thirty minutes before reaching for my phone and checking my email, and I was just beginning to look for news to read when the last 2% battery life was up and my screen went dark. I lay on my belly, a little bump emerging now, and tried to fall back to sleep. I gazed at Merritt for a few moments in the shadows—he's so long, so big, but he still rests his face on cupped hands when he sleeps and then he reminds me of his baby self.

Then I was suddenly ravenous and wide awake and ready to start the day, craving a spicy hummus veggie sandwich with cheddar cheese and milk, and wanting the sun to rise so I could go for a run, and mapping out the day knowing we needed to get groceries at some point because I forgot to order them online by the deadline the night before and our cupboards are always bare by Friday afternoon. (I very often have food on my mind.)

I'm beginning to emerge from my first trimester cocoon and after 4.5 weeks of solid sickness, the timing of this peace offering couldn't be better. Every new day brings a greater ratio of easier times than not, and I am so grateful to feel alive again.

***

A highlight from last week: hearing the baby's heartbeat. A few days following an episode of spotting turned bleeding and I entered my midwife's warm lair for an already scheduled first prenatal visit. She wasn't certain she'd be able to find the heartbeat on doppler at 9 weeks and so I had kind of written it off, my mind already made up and intent on getting an ultrasound to satisfy my curiosity about what in the world was going on in there. To our happy and tearful surprise, she found it quickly—strong and fast in the 160's—and that was good enough for me.

This afternoon I bought my blood moon baby a first gift: an apple park bat blankie, which Merritt has adopted in the interim.

Week 7: Regret

I'm catching up on a few posts today! 

Resting!

Oh we were so happy just seven weeks ago! Now six days into all-day-and-night morning sickness and I’m feeling worn down. Construction of the house is really (finally!) just around the corner, which requires decisions in the hundreds about interior design and materials, and Andy is beginning his predictable annual preoccupation with the business as slow-season nears. 

So many things to attend to and yet all I can do is sleep. 

You know how it is to take one step away from something and immediately wonder what the heck were we thinking? Well that was week seven for me. 

The spotting. The sheer exhaustion. The daily push and pull with nausea and food, the herculean effort felt in attempts to fulfill our normal routine. I do remember most of this pretty well, though I surely had forgotten the extent of it. Body issues flaring up and marital exchanges imploding. It’s a weird time and while I’m running on about 30%, the effect ripples out to everyone in the house forcing necessary adaptation.

I ruminated on the news of my cervix for the better part of the week, and what once felt like a relatively carefree jump into a third pregnancy doesn’t feel so anymore. Now the journey feels serious, and I’ve averted a lot of my mental energy to making sense of my last pregnancies, labors, and births: the way they played out, the conversations I had about them with my providers, the sense of my own power I felt with each one, and in parallel I’m grappling with the ways in which this new information has introduced an abrupt disconnect between my perception and reality. It’s a funny thing: here I thought I was a master birther but, in effect, my cervix just kind of opens up and drops my babies out when the pressure is too great.

I’m not trying to rewrite our history in a negative light or to rub out all that was truly wonderful from my stories of becoming a mother. I’m working through these moments of doubt, and allowing myself to be honest about the fact that maybe if I had been made aware of the likely trajectory of a third pregnancy and the interventions required to avert that path, we may not in good conscience have decided to try for a third. Or maybe we would have in spite of everything. I can only shrug my shoulders because I'll never know. 

Maybe I’ll read this back to myself when my new babe is in arms, my heart exploding with wonder and awe for how their entire existence will have been owed to these many mercurial variables of perfect or imperfect timing, and just smile to recognize in these words that my active pregnancy mind wasted no time taking hold this time around.