Here I am, sitting with my legs curled over a bunched up pregnancy pillow, trying to balance my lopsided belly because my little digger has taken a fancy to the left side this fine evening and is drilling her way through.
Or at least she thinks she is. Soon she will tire and wedge herself under my ribs in anger and stay there for what seems like an eternity of pain.
Cliched as it may be, it seems like yesterday when I saw pregnancy test after pregnancy test show a faint and then strong positive in my warm white lit bathroom, me muttering “oh crap” under my breath on the loop.
Not that I didn’t want this. I did. It was just so sudden. Talk about immaculate conception or what my husband kept calling all sorts of rude stuff like a “slam dunk” or a “hole in one”.
Strongest ever Defence Mechanism kicked in with the inception of this pregnancy, I don’t count eggs till they hatch, so perhaps waiting for this one to hatch safe and sound before I allow myself to attach to it.
Nine months of sub conscious assurance that something WILL go wrong and I can’t lose heart at it.
The first three months passed and I didn’t hurl the tadpole out.
The following three months passed and I didn’t trip and fall to bung its head on something, the last three months are over and done with too, without everything that could possibly have gone wrong.
Like everything else in life always does.
I am still holding my breath. I am still not counting the eggs. Will this be over fit and fine tomorrow?
Will she be okay? Does she really exist? And round and round we go around the merry go round of disbelief and blocking it all out.
Then there is this sultry (read: muggy) evening. My last evening as a pregnant woman.
I am having trouble believing by this time tomorrow, my belly will not be as big and the backache might be relieved? The heartburn too?
Perhaps replaced by new pains and aches but these friends through the past nine months will be lost for good.
So here’s bidding farewell to my pregnancy, to the nervous question mark of happiness or confusion that lasted a good few months, to ordering 10 books off of Amazon instantly to make sure “I got this”, to the first scan when neither of us felt a thing at seeing her heart beat, it just looked like a tadpole recording, to when we found out it’s a girl and it actually started getting real for us, to the first little t shirt I bought for her in Sri Lanka. It felt so odd. Buying small human clothes. I stopped at one. To discovering the kids section in (almost) every shop and discovering kids’ shops all over town, I had no idea there were so many! To making my own master lists off of “lists of must-haves” off of Pinterest for a newborn only to check every item off and find another new list pop up from some part of the world telling me that I can possibly not raise a child without having everything on THIS list, to end up hating all baby related shopping and eventually feeling victorious at walking into baby shops and walking out empty-handed because “now I actually do have everything”. To the sleepless nights and the truck’s life of turning in bed, the cervix punches, the bladder head butting, the fanny daggers, the ubiquitous acid reflux and never ending heartburn, the movement of my offspring inside me that began on Christmas Eve as a flutter that felt like bubbles popping and have now graduated to actually feeling her limbs push back at me when I press down and the contortionist moves she pulls on me every now and then that has perhaps bruised me on the inside but I won’t exchange that for anything in the world. Keep kicking away darling, as long as I know you’re doing fine.
Tomorrow we meet her. I still feel weird and can’t imagine myself having a child of my own. She kicks me day and night, yet it feels unreal. Like I am preparing for someone else’s baby. I don’t feel motherly. Not yet. Just mechanically apt. Is the hospital bag ready? Are the clothes washed? Is the food arranged for? Is the car to and from the hospital arranged for? IS THE HOSPITAL ROOM BOOKED? (yes I did that in the middle of a session!). Does everyone have work delegated for at least up to a few weeks that I might be busy figuring the new role as a cow and the only protector, provider for something as frail as a tiny kid that I am scared out of my wits to even hold? Looping back to the existentialist question, is there a baby or not, whose baby? What does it look like? Certainly doesn’t feel like mine. I feel like I’m just going through a medical condition.
I hope she likes us. I hope we like her. I hope we reach a nice agreement when it comes to timing things we both need to do, like eat, sleep, wake up, poop, shower etc. Things can be tough. They might most probably be, but I chose this. I choose her. Chances are there will be times we will both hate each other but then there will also be intermittent laughter. Which is fine by me.
It is… fine by me.
picture courtesy www.all-free-download.com
