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Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Honesty at long last
I just spent the last 2-3 hours having a massive crying fit.
I finally hit my breaking point. I started crying because I am no longer "me." I kept saying to Mr. W that I don't know who I am...all my time, all my thoughts are spent focusing on our son. Focusing on how to do everything right so that I don't hurt him and that maybe we'll have a decent chance of coming home with him. I told him about how I want to be happy and actually complete a baby registry and start researching pediatricians, but that doing so indicates my acceptance that I'm having a baby and my fear is that if I let myself become happy it will all turn to shit. How I fear that because every time I've let myself be hopeful when pregnant before I was devastated so horrifically and with such rapidity that I barely had time to process it all before it was over. I cried and cried. I told him that even though I don't really think I'm leaking amniotic fluid (I'm sure I'm peeing myself in tiny drips...I make you all more and more jealous of my life at every turn, don't I?), I just can't believe that everything really is fine. I cried because with the position my son is in (and has been in for most of the last week) I can't feel many hard kicks...just bouncing feelings on my cervix, colon and bladder as well as twisting-turning sensations. He just won't face in a way that lets me have many of those hard kicks to my stomach that Mr. W can see and feel too. And I hate that because it convinces me that things aren't right even though I have no reason to think they aren't. He is still quite active.
In all honesty, I think it's just the strain of having been in my bed for 9 weeks and 4 days. I've tried to be positive and happy and tell people what they want to hear. "How are you doing? How's the baby?" "Fine. Nothing new...no changes, so that's good." I can't bring myself to be honest and say what I mean, "Nothing has changed so I'm sure he's still good, but I'm a wreck. I just can't stop worrying. I can't just be happy and I would give anything to be able to be happy and optimistic -- to dream of a future with my son instead of never thinking beyond the next five minutes. How are you?" Because that isn't what anyone wants to hear.
My grandparents want me to tell them that I'm good, that the baby is good, that everything is going to be alright. It's what they believe, but then, they're optimists like that and are trying to help me be optimistic. I get that.
My mom is convinced that if I had never lost the first 3, we wouldn't have known about the unicornuate uterus and would not have monitored cervical length. She believes that this is just what it is and it isn't going to change regardless of what I would do -- that I could be living a normal life of a normal pregnant woman and it would be just the same. Who knows...she's probably right. Obviously neither of us are willing to put that belief to the test. But she wants that to be so and doesn't want to hear that I'm having a rough time because she's so sure it will be fine.
Mr. W is tired of being scared. He worries all the time as well but instead focuses on what life will be like in January after our son is at home with me. He focuses on what it will be like to come home and hear me talk about how he smiled a real smile at me or how he did the cutest thing while lying in his crib or his joy at discovering the soft fur of our cats. He thinks about after the spring thaw when I'll tell him about taking our son to mommy & me yoga classes or how he slept in his stroller while I perused books at the local book store or took a knitting class and then how we went out for lunch...how I took him for a walk along the lake... All the things that we both want to be thinking about. Yet somehow, these thoughts are enough for him to push his fears out of his head. And so even to him, I lie and say that things are fine.
But they are not fine. Or rather, I am not fine (the lowercase is, don't take that wrong). I am tired. I am emotionally drained. But, at last I feel a bit more at ease because I was honest about how not fine I really am. I told him how scared I am, how lonely I am living in a new city stuck in bed, how I wish that my friends could come and sit in the chair beside my bed and watch movies and talk to me. I told him how I feel like I'm failing at being a mother because it's so hard for me and how sometimes I wonder if this has all been worth it (or if it will in the end because I still can't see a positive outcome much of the time)...how guilty I feel about having those feelings because mothers are supposed to be so in love with their babies that they can't imagine anything else. But the fear that grips me makes it hard for me to let those feelings through even though I know they are there. I told him how I feel that attempting to not fail as a mother makes me feel like a failure as a wife. I can't help around the house; no cooking, no cleaning. I can't do the nice little things for him that I used to do (making cookies, packing little treats to send with him to work, setting up a romantic dinner, going out shopping with him, etc.). I haven't had sex since the week we conceived this little one. Once I was past ovulation, I was put on pelvic rest for the first trimester. They never said we could after that but they didn't say we couldn't...yet we were both afraid to. And then came the bed rest from the cervical measurements and the pelvic rest restriction was fully back. In all that time, I've felt cheated. I wouldn't do anything for him since I couldn't have any fun on my end. And then I lost interest all together. And then I wanted to but couldn't and it made me cry to even think about it. So...I'm just really feeling like a failure as a wife on every level.
But hey...at least I finally was able to be honest. That's gotta count for something, right?
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