Through the Window

Last night I saw a baby I wanted to kidnap. We were touring the maternity ward at the local hospital. The venetian blinds were down covering all the windows of the nursery, but I peeked though a gap at the corner and found myself looking right into the face of a new baby lying in a bassinet on the other side of the window. She wasn't all red and wrinkled like I thought a newborn would look - she had round cheeks and rosebud lips and big, long-lashed eyes. She looked right back at me, our faces just a few feet apart, and jiggled her arms up and down, as different expressions went across her face. I wanted to pick her up. Actually I wanted her to be mine. I can't decide if I'm fickle because I'm so ready to be disloyal to my own baby and steal this other one - or if it's, again, hormones misfiring, telling me to fall in love with the next newborn I see.

Missing in Action...

...a pair of shapely ankles. Last seen sometime last week. This week, there is a direct segue from my legs, which increasingly resemble tree-trunks, to my feet, which increasingly resemble boats. Bemused, I have taken to wearing sandals - thank goodness it's finally warm enough outdoors.

My angelic husband packed up the contents of some shelves that were taking up space in the bedroom, and we've put the cosleeper there, so now there's a placeholder of sorts in the apartment for the baby. Just seeing it there in the corner of the bedroom makes me happy. It's physical evidence that we have made some preparations after all, so now no one can accuse us of being wholly unready.

I also took a look at myself in a mirror recently and realized that I'm enormous. So all my early fears about not being able to gain any weight were unfounded. All this time I was rushing, rushing, rushing to try to eat enough protein and gain enough weight, and now that I've proved I can do it, I suddenly want to put on the brakes. I want the baby to be big enough. But not too big...

Seven weeks to go and it seems like an eternity. Practically speaking everything is easier right now than it will be after the baby's born - right now, her needs are met instantly, whereas after birth keeping her happy will involve complicated shenanigans with diapers, wipes, breasts, blankets, rocking, swaddling, and who knows what else. And despite our best efforts there will probably be times when she is inconsolable. But I still long for the time when she's out and I can see her and hold her. I also look forward to getting my old limber self back. I remember being able to spring lithely up from a seated position, or at least get out of bed with a modicum of grace. It will be great when I can do that again.

Just Hormones, I Hope

A lot of things are vaguely upsetting me these days. Hopefully it's like Calicat said and just hormones. Here's the run-down - not to be a whiner, just in hopes that writing it all down will give me some peace of mind:
- Smoke. Someone in one of the adjacent apartments smokes like a chimney, and due to some quirk of the ventilation system, the smoke always comes right into our apartment. Opening all the windows just seems to create a vacuum that sucks it in more vigorously. This morning I woke up and the first thing I noticed was the smoke hanging in the air, permeating everything in the apartment. I just felt desperate to get ready for work and get out of there. It's one of the reasons I wish we could live in a house - even if that's less environmental than an apartment, and we'd have longer commutes, at least we'd have a little more control over the air quality. It makes me so intensely upset - to the point of anger - that I'm trying to do everything right in this pregnancy, that my husband and I don't smoke and never have and even if we did, would have quit prior to trying to get pregnant - and yet I still breathe smoke all afternoon and evening when I'm home. I just hope that it's not at a level that is harming the baby. (If I did some research online I'd probably discover that there is no safe level of exposure.)
- Paint thinner. I was at work last week when I suddenly smelled a really strong odor like paint thinner or varnish, something sprayed from an aerosol can. I put my sleeve over my nose and breathed that way for a while, but I could still smell it. Based on some thumpy construction-type sounds I heard through the stairwell, it was something building maintenance was doing. I felt trapped, sitting at my desk at work breathing in this stuff that was probably killing off brain cells right and left - mine and the baby's.
- Cold. This isn't unhealthy, it's just something that affects my mood. I feel like it's been winter for so long, and it's never going to be spring, ever. It's just going to be cold and miserable and rainy forever. Last night the wind was howling around the apartment like it was going to tear the screens off the hinges, like it was a living being full of hatred that wanted to get in and punish us. I don't have any warm clothes any more that I can fit into, either, so every day I think, "What will I wear?"
- Space. The final frontier. If I hear one more story about how I should be decorating "the baby's room" or if one more person asks me why we're not moving, I think I'm going to burst into tears. We have no place in our apartment for baby stuff, and yet the baby is coming inevitably. Maybe it's just a frustrated nesting urge turned on itself. I want to have a room - even half a room! - even a few square feet! - where we can set up the crib and a changing table and a dresser to hold the baby's clothes. And instead there is no place for any of that stuff.
- Breast-feeding anxiety. I really want to breast-feed for the first year. But I'm preemptively worrying about whether I'll have enough milk, whether I will get the hang of feeding, whether I will be able to keep feeding after I go back to work. I don't have an office of my own where I could close the door and pump, and if I use a bathroom stall to do it, there'll be constant traffic in and out around me. I wish we could afford for me to just stay home with the baby, and feed in privacy.
- Not being able to confide in my husband. He's under so much stress of his own right now that I feel like it's my responsibility to deal with baby-related problems by myself, and not drag him into it. But labor and delivery and parenthood are bearing down on me, and even though abstractly I know that his stressful time is going to pass and then he'll be involved and supportive - and even though he is being pretty much perfect these days and so loving and nice to me -, just because I can't worry aloud to him right now it feels like I'm facing everything alone.
- The knowledge that emotional stress adversely affects the baby. I have to somehow make myself feel happy and secure, even when I'm not feeling that way at all.

A Top Ten List

In the spirit of Sophia's list, here are the things most commonly said to me these days:

"Hi mommy!"
"How's the baby?"
"You're getting big!"
(These three are actually said to me every morning, in this order, by the same person. I'm running out of ways to reply creatively... maybe I'll just fall back on "hi, good, yep" every single day.)
"How are you feeling these days?"
(This one is nice; it leaves it open-ended whether I want to just say "pretty good!" and leave it at that, or delve into pregnancy-related talk.)
"So do you have your nursery all set up yet?"
(Argh. No. Our plan is to be terrible cruel parents who scar their child for life by denying her a theme nursery.)
"How many months?"
(This one always throws me off. How many left, or so far?)
"When are you guys moving?"/"Why aren't you moving?"
(You would think we were the only people ever to consider having a baby while living in an apartment.)
"Do you know what you're having?"
(A human, I think...)
"Excited?"
(Yep!)
and of course the inevitable
"Was it planned?"

Sometimes I feel glad that my personhood is currently subsumed by this project of ours. I don't have to prove all the time that I'm an interesting, creative, smart person. All I have to do is sit around, being pregnant, and people are automatically interested in me. It's nice always having that topic of conversation available.

But in the back of my mind I know this is temporary - pretty soon I'll be back to just being me, with the responsibility to be interesting on my own account. Then I'll have to find time to write, and go to dance class, and see art movies, and do other things so that people don't think my whole identity is "mommy."

And sometimes I get flickers of irritation that everyone is so focused on the pregnancy. I want to be liked for myself, not my burgeoning belly. It feels like I'm wrestling with people, trying to guide the conversation to something - anything - other than pregnancy. I feel like saying, "I'm still in here, you know! Still the same person you've always known!"

Soothed

I'm feeling better about things. Perhaps due to:

• A nice encounter with a four-year-old who came over to see my guinea pigs at the park, was shy at first but warmed up to me and was soon bringing me flowers to put in my hair, feeding the guinea pigs grass, and asking me questions about them. I love it when kids warm up like that - you can almost see the moment when they decide you're okay and start returning your smiles.
• The realization that we can get along fine in our current apartment. Even if it's small, it's close to all of these things that will be good for a baby (and new parents) - walking distance to a community garden, a library, two grocery stores, a couple of playgrounds, a yoga studio, restaurants, coffee shop, etc. People who live in big houses in the suburbs may have color-coordinated nurseries, but they have to load the kid into the car to get anywhere. Besides, the four-year-old's family lived in our exact same apartment building from the time that she was born until she was two years old - so it can be done.
• The prospect of a lot of free time this summer to spend with my husband. It looks like we'll both be home with the baby for a few months, so it will almost be like an extended vacation for us. We can relax and glide into parenthood together.
• My seven-month appointment with my midwife, who confirmed that everything looks great and the baby is right on schedule.
• Sudden, out-of-nowhere confidence in my body to know what it's doing and get me through labor. I'm used to viewing my body with a bit of skepticism, being sometimes frustrated that it didn't measure up to my expectations - but it seems to know exactly what to do when it comes to building a baby. I've had a super-easy pregnancy. Maybe the final stage will be likewise - well, I don't expect it to be easy - but ...doable.

Doubt and Stuff

Today I feel full of doubt. I started reading natural birth stories online, because those usually buck me up - after hearing over and over that other women have done it, and been flooded with euphoria and satisfaction afterwards, I can usually envision myself coming through labor successfully. But today it didn't help - I just kept picturing myself stuck at some advanced stage of labor, wracked with relentless contractions and stuck, and feeling helpless and trapped and panicky. What if I just can't get the baby out? I've never felt trapped by my own body before.

I think giving birth scares me because there is no way back, or out of it - once things are underway, I've got no option but to go forward, through something that seems physically impossible. With ten weeks to go I'm already starting to eye my belly nervously. It looks so large. How will I ever manage to give birth to what's in there? In the moments when I have empathy to spare for the baby, I think with fear of how she will experience the birth. Maybe to her, it will seem impossible too.

I know I ought to be feeling confident and dreamy, looking forward to the birth, and having long conversations with my belly where I bond with my baby. According to all the books and articles I've read, I also ought to have a color-coordinated baby nursery set up by this time. Instead, I go home every day and look at our one-bedroom apartment, which is packed to the gills with all of our stuff, to the point that there is no wall space where we could even put a crib, and feel a wave of anxiety. Where will we put this baby? What were we thinking, getting pregnant before we had a home of our own? Maybe this is why everyone is asking, "Was it planned?"

(I hate this question. It implies that, like thoughtless teenagers, we were just too stupid or careless to prevent a pregnancy, and that there is some doubt as to whether it would be a good thing for us to have a baby. We're married adults in our thirties, after all, and neither of us has any genetic disorders - why don't people assume that we intended to get pregnant?)

But back to the space issue. I've always been resolutely committed to not acquiring stuff. When I got a baby catalog in the mail a few months ago, full of glossy pictures of $500 cribs and matching duckie-print drapes, I laughed at it and tossed it in the recycle bin. "We don't need all that stuff," I said. But now everyone is asking about our arrangements, and when I say we haven't really made any preparations, they raise an eyebrow and get concerned expressions on their faces.

So now I feel jealous of my pregnant friend who has her own house - a whole five-bedroom house, with a garage and everything. She and her husband have room for all their things. She can keep her clothes in a closet, instead of heaped in piles on top of a bookcase. She has a crib, and a diaper genie, and a rocking chair. She also has decided to be a stay-at-home mom, so she's not racking her brains with worries about insurance or employment or daycare. I feel like I'm supposed to be where she is, but there's no way I can get there.

Added to these worries is the nagging concern that in June my husband's job will wrap up, and we will both officially be unemployed (well, I'll be on unpaid leave). While we have enough savings to coast for a little while, the uncertainty about what we'll do and where we'll live is enormous.

Yesterday I talked with my parents, my closest friends, who always know how to make me feel better. They tried to reassure me. "We'll go shopping next weekend and get a crib at the thrift store. If worst comes to worst, you can put it in the middle of the living room where the coffee table is," my mother said cheerfully. She said all I need is a couple packages of cloth diapers and some clean towels, that the toys and Moses basket and stroller and monogrammed receiving blankets my friend has stocked up on are not in fact necessary for infant well-being. She said I can carry the baby in a sling made out of a sheet. I listened to her and gradually my hyperventilation slowed down to a normal rate of breathing. I hope she's right.