04.18.06
Mid April already
As much as I liked my Winter Girl layout, it is decidedly not winter anymore and so she had to go.
The weekend was nice, although an emotional rollercoaster ride for me. Liam came early Friday morning and stayed til Monday evening. We went to the park lots, we ate well, went to Ottawa on Saturday, hung up a clothesline, put together a change table which was an unexpected, unnecessary, and totally appreciated gift from Steves relatives in Ottawa, put together the whipper snipper and lawn mower, played Bocce ball, cleaned up dog poop on the lawn and went to church on Sunday. It was nice and sunny and relaxing and for some reason, I was close to tears on more than one occasion.
Maybe it was seeing Liam and knowing next time I see him I will be a mom, maybe it was the fact that it was Easter, maybe it was the nice weather, or maybe my hormones have been jumping up and down because did you know we are really almost there? I mean really almost parents and we got approved for a mortgage and we might buy a house and with a child and a house, forever seems so much more real.
Steve asked me if I was not excited about the whole mortgage thing, because I never seem to be excited to talk about it. I told him that in all honesty, I was pleased and happy that we got approved, and I am looking forward to living someplace that we own and that is worth putting some effort into, but lately my brain is at least ninety percent occupied with baby. It took me three days to remember to buy cheese last week.
And yet there is this sadness that lingers, just out of sight. Because my pregnancy really is almost over, not that is has not been long enough, because some days it feels like I have been pregnant for a lifetime. But not only will I miss these kicks and movements, I will miss this secret that I have, this inner dialogue that I have with my child on a daily basis. She is mine right now, and I know she is safe. I am constantly providing for her, constantly feeding her and rocking her to sleep when I walk and waking her up when I laugh and she feels all the same emotions that I feel, because we are connected. And I guess that part of me worries that once she decides that it is time to come out, time to become a person, there will be all of these things that I do not know how to do. Right now my body provides for her without me knowing, and has been since the day that she was conceived, long before I had any idea of what was going on inside of me. And when she is born, she might not want to nurse and she might cry and cry and I will not know what to do. And for the first time in almost a year, not only will I be only me again, I may be unable to give my child what she needs.
There are so many changes that have happened in the last eight months, physically and otherwise. My body has never been like this before, more round and genuinely feminine than it has ever been, but also more tired, more strained, more fat pockets hiding in between my legs and under my arms.
The nursery is almost ready. We are going to hang the pictures on the walls soon. We have to buy diapers and some wipes, I want to buy some little boxes to put on the shelves of the change table. We are going to buy a baby monitor and a diaper bag. I have to send away my information to get our cord blood collection kit. And yet, my next Midwife appointment begins the once a week schedule. And yet, my ticker says only 43 more days. And yet, it still seems surreal to me somehow.
So I guess my waves of emotions have been based around all of these different feelings. Of realizing that I only want Steve with me at the birth, and the consequent realization that every year my mother becomes less of a mother and more of a friend. And maybe somewhere deep inside there is the fear that my parents will not see this child grown, because being parents to grown children did not seem to be as big a factor in the age game as being grandparents, who are eternally old.
And then there is me. A mother. Is it a struggle to keep my own identity after next month, like my mom told me, or will I lose who my own sense of self like Steves mom told me? Does what my apple pie tastes like somehow on some scale determine what type of mother I will be? Does the dust and dog fur in the corner mean I am not ready for this? Because the thing is, there will always be dust and dog fur. There will always be laundry piled up in the corner of my bedroom. I do not think that I will ever want to vacuum or mop the floors.
I guess this is all a little scattered, but welcome to my brain lately. And now it is time for laundry to be hung on the clothesline, the floor to be swept and the dog to be walked.
wunderwuman at 10:54 a.m.