Life Outside the Matrix

I'm reading lots about labor & delivery and about the stay-at-home/work-and-use-daycare decision these days. It's all starting to feel a bit overwhelming. Being pregnant is like a vacation from reality - everyone seems happy for me, I'm pleased and excited that my body seems to know how to grow another human being, it's fun feeling the baby move, I imagine that being a mother will bring feelings of fulfillment and an outlet for nurturing. So I'm just going through the days like "lallalala..." But in the back of my mind I know this isn't reality, and the occasional visions of the future feel like cold water in my face: glimpses of real life outside the Matrix.

For example, I imagine being in the middle of labor and realizing it's more than I can handle, after all, and feeling powerless and frantic with pain. Or holding a squalling newborn who just can't be soothed, meeting my husband's eyes with concern - "oh no, what have we done?" Or trying to run errands with a toddler, having my kid hit me or do something else "unacceptable" in public, and not knowing how to handle it, and feeling like a failure as a mother. Or maybe worst of all, seeing my husband's shoulders sag and feeling that I brought this all on him, that it's my fault he's getting worn down with responsibilities.

I still have the sense that parenthood was my idea. I feel like somehow it's my job to make sure it turns out ok, that having a baby around is "fun," that raising a child won't hurt our marriage and in fact will bring us closer together. What if these things don't turn out to be true? What if, through no fault of her own, she's a fussy baby or has problems or sucks all our time and energy so we never have any good time as a couple any more? It's not that he expects me to make parenthood a smooth ride when so much of it is beyond my control. All the same, if I fail, we might drift apart under the strain. And I can imagine that we'll both resent the control the baby has over our lives and schedules. So many of the nice things we take for granted now, like peaceful evenings shoulder-to-shoulder on the sofa, or fun outings with friends, will be thrown askew by the introduction of a third, needy, person to our stable dynamic.

And then there's the morass of working and daycare. I keep changing my mind about what to do. I feel concerned about trying to breast-feed for the first year if I'm working, and about being stretched too thin if I try to hold down a job, keep my marriage strong, stay in touch with friends and family, and be a great mother too. On the other hand it feels important to me to earn enough money to pay my own way, and to carry half the weight of our child. I'm also afraid that if I step off the career track I might not be able to get back on - and this isn't about just me and my ambitions, it's about our family financial security. I can't expect my husband to carry us all on his own. And I don't want to. If I quit working and stayed home, it would feel like something I'd have to re-justify to myself every day, and I'd constantly worry that I was less of a person for making that choice - in my own eyes, if not his or my friends'. No judgment on others here, every family does what's best for them. I just can't figure out what's best for us.

In a way I guess this just highlights the larger issue that I'm really not sure where my career is going, so I don't know how much of my energy I should be putting into it right now. The impending arrival of a baby just throws a spotlight on any preexisting problems a couple might have - health, financial, housing, work. Well, we will muddle through somehow. I keep reminding myself that, all things considered, my quality of life is probably in the top 1% of people in the world. Elsewhere, people are digging through garbage just to try to feed their kids, not worrying about the effect on their sense of self that parenthood will bring. That's what it's really like outside the Matrix. Really I have no excuse to be anything but happy.