Four Months Old

One of the nicest things about babies, I think, is their sheer physicality - the delicious warm smell of their heads, the plumpness of the soles of their feet, their unselfconscious farts and burps and other noises. You can rub their bellies and get right up close to their faces and gaze at them for hours on end. You can't do that with adults, or even children that are just a little bit beyond babyhood - it's an invasion then. But babies welcome your attention and see nothing wrong with staring nose to nose. For them, bodies are full of possibility and occasionally frustrating in their limitations, but never embarrassing. Their breath is always sweet. They don't seem to have any body odor. Before I had one, I never knew how delightful they could be.

A Vacation From Awareness

Four days of maternity leave left - I have to go back to work next Monday. All summer I was conscious of how precious the time was, and of how I might never get that much time off again. My plan, if I recall, was to use this time to figure out a new direction for my life - find a career that really suits me, or something like that. Failing that, I was at least going to read a bunch of great books - all the classics that I somehow missed in school - and join mothers' groups, and go on outings to gardens and parks. I was going to finish my write-up of our honeymoon. And make clothes with my new sewing machine. And go to yoga classes. Oh well. I spent time instead playing with the baby on the bed, nibbling on her toes and kissing the top of her sweet-smelling head, having conversations with her ("goo!" "oh really?" "ahhh-laaa!" "you don't say..."), and walking with her around our neighborhood. It was time well spent. I just wish I had it all over again.

Having a baby has also, in a way, been a vacation from thinking about environmental issues, since that's what I do in my work. For sixteen weeks I haven't read the news or worried about the planet. I cranked the AC in the car (can't let the baby overheat!), bought inorganic bananas, and did copious laundry. I started feeling like since I wasn't thinking about them, the problems of overconsumption in an industrialized society had somehow mysteriously been solved, and everything was OK after all. I even felt subconsciously, in the midst of my joy, that I'd found the answer to happiness: It's having children and matching living room sets and a home in the suburbs, after all.

Now I realize that the decision about going back to work wasn't just spending time in the office vs. at home, but spending time worrying and struggling for a cause that may already be lost, vs. just relaxing and letting everything go. No wonder I wanted to stay home. Not that I have such a critically important job. I'm way down on the totem pole, just playing a minor role and one that someone else could fill if I left. But it's the principle of the thing. I had sixteen weeks off from awareness - now I've got to go pick it up again.

Crying It Out

First, a rapid-fire update:

The baby is ten weeks old! She's wonderful. In the mornings when she wakes up smiling and cooing, my husband and I lie in bed and play with her, and it's like some kind of idyllic vision of family life, like the Norman Rockwell version of a family (except that he would probably paint us wearing more clothes). It's the life I've wanted since I was first able to imagine leaving my parents' family and starting my own. It makes me dizzy with pride and joy to think that it's really true, and we built it ourselves.

I have four weeks of maternity leave left. It's rushing by so fast. I am lucky I was able to get so much time off - and my lovely, generous boss is letting me come back to work part-time instead of full-time, which is a big relief. I'm still not looking forward to going back to the office though. I would be so happy if I could just stay home indefinitely. Taking care of a home and a baby is what I want to spend my time doing. But going back to the office is the right thing to do, for complicated reasons.

Not everything at home is perfect, of course. The past week has been hard because we started putting her down in her cosleeper instead of letting her sleep in our bed with us. For the first nine weeks of her life, she slept cuddled up to my flank, knowing that I was right there to protect her. She could nurse whenever she wanted to, then drift peacefully back to sleep. But the pediatrician yelled at me for having her in bed with us ("bedsharing kills thousands of babies a year!"). I think we were doing it safely, but after that lecture I got scared.

So now she has to sleep alone, and she has to wake up all the way and cry in order to rouse me when she's hungry. It's hard on her. She starts crying as soon as we lower her into the cosleeper, and sometimes cries for up to an hour. And each time I feed her in the night, she cries when I put her back in the cosleeper. It wakes my husband up. I just managed to convince him to come in from the sofa where he spent the first six weeks of her life, and share the bed with me again. I promised him that I could keep her quiet enough at night that he would be able to sleep (he has sleep issues). Now, each time she squawks or whines at night, and he flops over uneasily in bed, I feel guilty. I'm afraid he will head back to the sofa.

So here I am between a rock and a hard place - trying to do what the books and the pediatrician recommend, but it robs all three of us of sleep and makes both of them frustrated and upset. And it's so hard listening to her cry in the evenings after we've put her down. I go in periodically to check on her, but my presence only seems to rev her up. Last night when I went in, she was lying on her side facing the wall of the cosleeper, eyes open, crying her heart out, and I felt such a stab of remorse for what we were doing to her. She looked so abandoned and miserable. I felt the tears spring up in my own eyes as I looked at her. This is a time in her life when she needs to feel safe and cared-for, and instead she may just be learning the hard lesson that sometimes no matter how hard she cries, no one will help her.

There are other times throughout the day that are good, of course - when she grins at us and appears to be a happy, well-adjusted baby. She gets lots of cuddling and attention from both of us. Perhaps I am just projecting my own issues onto her. I had a lot of sleep problems in my childhood too - I remember waking up after my parents had put me to bed, and feeling miserably lonely. Loneliness is worse for children, I think, because they don't have the emotional resources that adults do. They can't tell themselves, "It's ok, maybe you just had a weird dream - now go back to sleep." It feels like it's not ok at all. I remember not being able to fall back asleep until one of my parents had come in to reassure me. When I pick her up and say soothing words to her, and she gives a big shaky sigh and relaxes against me, her neck all sweaty from her crying jag, I hear my mother's voice coming out of my mouth, saying those same gentle reassuring words.

A quote I read recently: "Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." (Elizabeth Stone) Before I had a baby, I would have thought that was sappy. It probably is. But now it also feels true.

Ramblings on Motherhood

The baby is almost a month old now (I'm being weird and not wanting to use her name here yet). Her existence, and the fact that I'm a mother, are still so amazing to me. I thought parenthood would change me fundamentally. But I feel like I'm pretty much the same person as I've always been. I move through the familiar contours of my life, noticing everything in its place the same as always - my books lined up on the shelf, my calendar hanging on the wall, the guinea pigs rustling around in their cage same as always - yet here's this astonishing, thrilling, totally different thing, this baby, asleep on our bed in the middle of the afternoon! Can she really be ours?? I wonder how long it will take for the shock to wear off and for it to feel natural that I have a baby, for me to be able to take her outside without feeling self-conscious, or say, "my daughter" without the words sounding alien in my ears.

The past month has been full of discoveries:
- My husband is great with babies. He's actually better at soothing her and entertaining her than I am. I love watching him play with her. He is so tender and nice with her, sometimes I even feel a mild little twinge of jealousy - wishing I was as good with her as he is, or wishing he would play with me as whole-heartedly and inventively as he does with her. I think I'm incredibly lucky to have found a guy who is such a good father.
- The sleep deprivation isn't that bad. I don't even feel particularly tired during the day. It seems like as long as I can get 2-3 hours of sleep several times in the course of a 24-hour period, I'm fine.
- That said, we've had a few nights that were pretty rough, when she was just crying and crying, and I felt pretty much at my wit's end. Before I had a kid, I had no idea what vast amounts of patience parenthood would require. I am a pretty patient person, I think, and I've had a lot of experience working with animals, which requires patience since they have their own ideas about things, and you can't tell them directly what you want them to do. But soothing a relentlessly squalling baby in the wee hours of the morning demands patience on a level above what I've ever needed before. It gives me a whole new insight into what my parents went through.
- Breast-feeding has been a really interesting experience. I wasn't sure I would be able to do it, but it's gone smoothly. She makes these adorable little snorting and grunting noises when she's rooting for my breast, like a little piglet. It's tremendously satisfying to be able to feed her that way, and to be a source of comfort to her in such a fundamental way.
- I really don't want to go back to work. I've used up five weeks of my maternity leave so far, and I have eleven left. I know it's going to fly past. Every day my mind is churning, trying to think of a way I could manage not to return to work. It's more about self-respect and career path than finances. We could manage, if I stayed home with her and took the occasional freelancing job. But I'm worried about what my husband might think of my (lack of) ambition if I just stopped working. I don't want him to feel that he's carrying my weight because he's working hard every day and I'm not. I don't want him to feel funny when people ask what I do and he has to answer, "She doesn't work; she's home with the baby." From time to time I remark that I don't want to go back to work, hoping he will say, "Maybe you shouldn't," but he's not saying it.
- I'm extraordinarily inefficient these days. It seems like one task or outing, along the lines of a grocery store run or a weeding session in the garden, is about as much as I can hope to accomplish per day. It takes ages for us to get ready to go anywhere. I have to start the process of getting myself and the baby clean, dressed, and fed hours ahead of time. And there's no routine whatsoever - I can't predict how often she'll want to feed or how long she'll sleep. Maybe that's just how it is with a newborn. Somehow I imagined I'd have time during my maternity leave to do all sorts of fulfilling, creative projects during the hours of downtime I'd have each day. Ha!
- I feel so protective of her. Sometimes I just sit and gaze at her as she's nursing, memorizing her every feature. I wonder how her life will turn out, and I worry about the bad things that might happen to her, and wish that I could keep her safe from them all. She's so precious to me.

BABY!

Our daughter was born on Sunday, June 17th!

She came out healthy, alert, and wide-eyed. I was on such a high after her birth that I stayed awake the whole first night nursing her and gazing at her in astonishment - just the two of us together all night getting to know one another. I haven't wanted to be parted from her ever since (nor have I slept much since!).

I thought I would enjoy motherhood, but I never expected to love her this fervently, to find myself settling into my new role so easily, or to whole-heartedly enjoy taking care of a little human so much. The whole thing is magical to me. I'm trying to absorb every aspect of the experience because I know it's fleeting - she changes so much even day by day - and I'm simultaneously enjoying it and mourning that it's so limited. She's only a week old and already I am dreading having to leave her and go back to work.

Perhaps it's just hormones talking again, but I feel like this is pretty much the happiest time in my life. I'm so glad my husband and I are sharing this time together.

Still Pregnant!

I'm a week overdue now. Still feeling good, peppy and in pretty high spirits. I hope the baby comes soon though.

At my last appointment with my midwife, I had my membranes swept to encourage labor to start. I was prepared for it to be pretty painful, and... it was definitely uncomfortable. But nothing I couldn't handle. She said I won't have a hard time with labor if I can get through a membrane sweep with so little fuss. I hope she's right!

A Post That Is Not About Pregnancy

Today I'm thinking about money. Over the weekend we checked out an open house in our neighborhood - a small, 1950's era house with three little bedrooms, a nice kitchen, and a living room with a fireplace. It had dark wood door frames and glass doorknobs and a kind of creaky charm that reminded me of the house I grew up in. The real estate agent sized us up and told us it was "a great starter home." It was recently reduced in price ... to $740,000.

I felt a kind of reeling despair as we walked away from the house - not because I wanted that particular house so much, just because the expectation that at my stage of life I should be able to afford a mortgage like that is so far removed from the reality. Our combined paychecks would be less than the monthly payments (and that's assuming I go back to work full-time and find some magically free child-care). How can we ever "start"? We'll be tripping over piles of things in a one-bedroom apartment forever. Our child will grow up and go off to college and I'll still be easing open the closet door like there's a tiger in there, fearful of being buried under the avalanche of stuff that I know will leap out.

(I know. The second wolf is supposed to be on a diet. But he's cheating.)

Yesterday I tried to buck myself up a little - it's just real-estate agent talk, after all; it's his job to convince people the house is right for them. Then I read this article about money, which said that a typical college grad can expect to earn a starting salary of $40,000. I've been working ten years and my salary isn't close to that. My first job out of college paid $23,000 and I was glad to get it. I do the other thrifty things the article recommends, like not buying lattes. But I don't think that's going to be enough.

Life is about being happy, not rich, so it's silly to measure myself against this bar and feel frustrated that I fall short. I should just take it one day at a time and seek pleasure in the little things.

But lately (one last kvetch and then I'll stop, I promise!) all the little things have been chores. I've spent the last two weekends working, working, working. It's starting to feel like you can rotate the things, like you can stay home and freelance instead of being a cubicle drudge, or you can dig weeds in the garden instead of cleaning the kitchen floor, but still: all of life is things you don't want to do.

C'mon Horsie

My friend is having her baby today, RIGHT NOW, as I write. I am so excited for her and hoping everything goes well.

Pain is on my mind a lot these days. It was easier in the early days when I was reading about "childbirth ecstasy" and how marvelous it feels to be awake and aware during the whole experience, to say that I wanted to go all natural. Why would I drug myself up and miss out on such a powerful, earthy, life experience? let alone the effect it could have on the baby, and the risk that it would prolong or derail labor, or lead to the dreaded C-section. I felt pretty confident in my ability to get through anything under my own power.

But now I'm going back and forth a lot in my mind, and I can feel my resolve isn't strong. It's like being on a horse rushing pell-mell toward a fence, and feeling the horse doubting, feeling that it wants to refuse, and in fact will, if you don't tell it right now to go on. On a horse, you have to make a split-second decision to either have confidence enough for both of you, and communicate that through your body language, or else agree that yes, perhaps this fence is too high, and we ought to pull out now. I'm in the terrible wavering stage where I don't know which course is the right one.

Yesterday afternoon I got a cramp or something - not a contraction, I don't think, more like a muscle spasm - but it was painful enough that I had to breathe shallowly and hold onto the edge of the sink for a minute until it passed. I could feel my mind all clouded, like a red mist. Panicky little thoughts flitted through - "you're fine, just relax, it will get better in a minute" but I knew I was just grasping at straws. And that was just for a minute or two. If that sensation is going to happen to me repeatedly, over a period of 16 hours, and intensify the whole time, I know I'll crack and ask for an epidural. But after everything I've read about the risks, and all my fine intentions, how can I accept one? I really wanted to prove to myself and the world that I could do this.

I know that the labor experience is inconsequential compared to the enormity of actually having a baby, that I'll forget about the pain afterward, that no one will care or blame me for seeking pain medication even though I said I wouldn't. The rest of my life is on the other side of the fence and it's going to be marvelous. It's just... the fence does look awfully high.

Careening Toward Hippo-dom

It's starting to feel like a race. I know I have to keep eating - now's not the time to go on a diet. But the weight is piling on so fast, it's scaring me a little. I have to have the baby before:
- my feet and ankles swell irretrievably
- I gain so much weight I end up with a 9-pounder or more
I hope the baby knows to come out at the right time (and turn! turn, baby, turn! don't you think it would be nice to be occiput anterior?).

The Wolves

I read a story over the weekend that I really liked. A Cherokee grandfather is passing on wisdom to his grandson, telling him that in everyone's heart there is a war between two wolves. One wolf is patience, kindness, love, sympathy, generosity, etc. The other is anger, jealousy, bitterness, and greed. "Which wolf wins?" the boy wonders. The grandfather answers, "The one you feed."

Henceforth (at least for a while) I vow to put the second wolf on a diet - and stop bellyaching about how we don't have space in our apartment, don't live as well as all our friends, etc. I'm blessed with a wonderful husband and family, which is all I really want in life. This focus on materialism is new to me, the kind of thing I usually shrug off without a problem. But I would rather trip over things in our cozy little apartment and know that my mom is coming over to see me, than live in a country club mansion far away from my parents.

Independence

I come from a long tradition of upstream swimmers. My mom's side of the family is renowned for their stubborn independence, and has its share of coots who lived alone into their nineties, doing things their way and vigorously refusing offers of help. As an only child surrounded by solicitous older relatives, my mom also developed a resolute "I'll do it myself!" attitude toward life. My dad is maybe even more so. Once he makes up his mind about something, no amount of peer pressure will make him change it - it's even cost him jobs on occasion, when he clung to doing what was right versus doing what his boss wanted.

So why am I so susceptible to social pressure? Why is it that criticism, even mild, sends waves of hot-and-cold misery washing over me? And why is it that all the friendly comments coming my way, suggesting that our apartment is an unsuitable place to have a baby, get under my skin so easily? I wish I could muster up my mom's "the hell with that" attitude. Or even just respond logically, as my dad might, that babies have been successfully raised in smaller quarters, and that this baby, born into a middle-class family in a first world nation, will have more opportunities for health and happiness than most of the world's babies. Instead even the videos in our childbirth classes - with their depictions of spacious sit-com living rooms, two-car garages, and fully decorated nurseries - upset me. The underlying message is, "if you don't have this, you're doing it wrong." I can't imagine how much social pressure moms must feel who are single, or teenage, or in any other way bucking the norm.

Ai. Anyway. It does seem that the stubborn independence gene is making itself known physically, if not mentally. As the weeks go by, people are getting very solicitous of my health - rushing to offer me seats, telling me not to carry things or lift things. But I still feel capable of standing, walking, and carrying things. My body has a kind of inherent resistance to change, I think. It stayed about the same through various cycles of being vegetarian, being omnivorous, working out, not working out, being stressed or not, etc. I could lift weights every day for weeks and never gain any muscle. Now, although I have gained a bunch of weight, I'm not feeling that encumbered by pregnancy. When I walk, it doesn't feel that different. I still fill up my backpack at the grocery store and walk home just as I did before pregnancy. I shouldn't jinx myself... but so far, I'm not even peeing more than usual, let alone suffering all the other symptoms women at my stage usually do. All the fuss over me makes me feel mildly embarrassed.

The fuss is sometimes unavoidable, though - like yesterday when I wanted to move a table. It was a heavy table, but I didn't want to act all weak and frail and attract attention by asking for help, so I just moved it myself the way I would have before pregnancy - then attracted attention anyway as people told me I shouldn't have done it myself.

Here's hoping the baby will inherit not just the stubborn independence gene (which also runs strong in my husband's side of the family) but the ability to shrug off criticism and be happy whether or not she does what everyone is "supposed to" do.

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.

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.

Wide-Eyed Innocence

This morning my eyes seemed a little wacked-out, and my vision wasn't as sharp as usual - but I didn't think much of it, since they're often wacked-out. I do a lot of reading and other close-up work. Anyway, a few hours later I glanced in a mirror and noticed that my pupils were scarily dilated. Aha! No wonder so blurry. But - why? I was pretty sure the hallucinogenic mushrooms I'd consumed the previous evening had nothing to do with it. The concussion following that run-in with the circus thief in the back alley was also probably just a coincidence. I looked up dilated pupils online and found out they're a symptom of cocaine use, brain tumors, and various other scary things. "Get to a hospital immediately," was the general consensus. "If left untreated, the condition can progress to death quickly."

So then I tried to forget I had ever noticed my dilated pupils, and guiltily went about my regular work. Two hours later, my eyes seemed back to normal. Sometimes, I guess, dilated pupils are just a symptom of it being a Friday morning in March.

Facing Some Limitations

Pregnancy is finally catching up with me. So far, I've been humming merrily along, answering the daily "So how are you feeling?" queries with "Great!" and marveling to myself that pregnancy doesn't really feel any different. Aside from little things like having to roll to the side and push myself up with my hands (using my stomach muscles to get up seems to trigger sharp, sudden pains), I haven't had any inconvenient symptoms. I regularly walk home from work, which is about three miles, stopping partway to load up on groceries at the store. There's an element of pride about it for me - that despite pregnancy I can still do everything I did before.

But I think I'm finally getting to my limit. Recently I've been on my feet a lot during the day and have done an unusual amount of walking to various events in the evenings. The kind of thing I'd think nothing of if I wasn't pregnant. But at some point last night, about two miles from home, mildly lost, on a dark street in the rain, puffing as I hurried up a hill on my way to a movie screening, I felt the baby kick and suddenly felt a pang of apology for what I was doing. It's fine for me to skip dinner and hurry off to some event, when it only affects me. The equation is more complicated now though.

Later, after a marathon (not literally) amount of walking, I felt unexpectedly sore and achy. I could feel my stomach and inner thigh muscles crying out whenever I took a step, and my hip joints ached. I never used to feel that way before I got pregnant.

I've also reached the point where it's apparent to others that I'm pregnant, so when I get on the bus someone usually offers me a seat. I always say no because I feel awkward turning someone else out of their seat just because I managed to get myself knocked up. I feel like they're offering just to be polite - hoping I'll say no. But lately I've started wanting to say yes, and wondering at what point is it okay to give in.