Urgle

I'm having a little bit of a rough day.  Rough week?   Rough time?  I guess not really a...

Wait.  So. I'm used to being pretty lucky, overall.  And the internal monologue that runs things over in my head usually tells me I have nothing to complain about!  Look at how everything is working out ok!  I'm not destitute, or alone, no one in my life has died super recently.  When my problems are things like gaining too much weight, then overall my life is on the plus side.  (Not to derail where I'm going here, but that's a very individual comment about myself.)  

Next week I'll be six months pregnant.  I've heard endless horror stories about the pregnancies of others, sickness and issues and all sorts of stuff that can go wrong.  Everything is going pretty well for me - I'm generally healthy, I haven't been super sick, and overall things are starting to come together - we've got some stuff, for instance.  More is coming.  It'll be fine.

If you, dear reader, can just know that I am aware I'm lucky, could I just trouble both of us to put that aside for a second?

Because I currently feel terrified and guilty and worried and out of control.

First, I feel a lot of guilt at just plain getting pregnant.  It is super hard for a lot of women, especially women my age.  It wasn't simple for me - we'd been at it about three years before it happened, so I'm not one of those oh-as-soon-as-we-decided-to-do-it-it-happened-as-if-by-magic!  (I feel as if those people should be kicked.  If it's easy for you, great, but no one needs to hear you brag.)  But even though we are pregnant now, it's a little like finally getting picked for the volleyball team only to find your friends haven't all made the cut - you feel guilty, even if that choice wasn't yours in the slightest.  I mean, why me and why not everyone who wants this?  

This leads me to worry about some of the people I had to tell.  When we were trying, I had moments when someone would tell me they were pregnant when internally I would cringe, because here was yet another person who had somehow gotten something right and I couldn't.  I don't ever want to make someone feel like that, but I'll bet at least one of the people I had to tell recently probably did end up feeling bad about it.  I hate that.  I don't ever want my success (especially one I didn't control) to make someone else feel less successful.  

That dilemma leads me to something else: I don't need anyone else to be excited about this baby I'm having.  I needed my parents to be excited, and happily, they are.  But everyone else gets a pass.  Don't get me wrong - I find it incredibly generous when people are excited for us, and I appreciate it.  But our culture places such value on having kids that everyone feels like they have to go ape-shit for every baby that's born.  You don't!  If you're not into kids, more power to you!  Congrats!  Whatever you decide to put your energy into, that has value as far as I'm concerned.  (Well, maybe not internet porn or your membership in some hate group, but everything else.  I can get behind crochet and bird-watching, for instance.)  I do not expect everyone to adore my child just because it is a child.  That's my job.

Right now I'm living in the middle of all of the no and none of the yes.  There are all these things I can't do - I have to turn down endless auditions, I can't drink, I can't eat sushi, I am slowly losing the ability to lie down on my back, I can't exercise the way I used to, soon I won't be able to see my toes.  And I fully expect that these slight denials will be balanced by the hopefully wonderful experience of having a child.  But I don't know that yet because I don't have the child yet.  So I'm turning things down right and left, all for some perceived future benefit.  This is fine.  This is called delayed gratification.  It is also really hard.  As human beings, we don't handle delayed gratification well, and I am no exception.

All I can see is what isn't, and I have nothing of what will be to soothe the blow.

Still - I'm terrified that I'm not giving up enough - am I eating too much? (Yes.)  Am I doing all the right things to keep the baby healthy?  (No idea.)  Will some tiny thing I do thinking it won't matter too much have some irrevocable impact on my child's life? (Who knows?)

Also:  I'm terrified because people have endless endless expectations of parents.  Many of which I don't agree with.  We had to register because someone is kindly throwing us a party, and all I could think was, why don't you just give us your old stuff?  Why do we have to go through buying new stuff?? Will the baby be that aware that other people have slept in this crib, for instance?  Or read these books?

Don't get me started on how stupid it is that nothing for babies is gender neutral.  We don't know whether it is a boy or a girl, but everything is classified and produced either in pinks with bows and flowers or in blues with trucks and dogs.  What would be so very horrible about a line of clothes in greens or reds or yellows with animals on them?  We tell ourselves that gender typing is biological but we treat ONE HOUR OLD INFANTS differently depending on their gender???  We registered for clothes that were pretty gender neutral but most of those are labeled "BOY" - so now everyone in the family thinks we're having a boy.  Which hey, we might have, but we just don't know.  It. Is. Infuriating.

That's just the stuff.  People have expectations about what you'll do, how you'll manage, how you should run your life, whether you've planned where the kid will go to school, EVERYTHING.  

Aside:  One of the first comments we got from one family was, "You need more money, of course."  Really??  We're not flush, but we can feed, house, and insure ourselves.  I think overall a lot of people have kids who can't do those things.  Are the most successful kids you know the ones who grew up with the most money?  No, they aren't, are they...

Then.  My body isn't my own anymore.  It belongs to some tiny being with apparently really long legs (we don't know the gender but this child's femur was in the 95 percentile for length) that I don't know and I'm not absolutely positive I can handle.  The fact that it is hanging out and using me as a growing platform means my body is flooded with hormones I can't control, and I am at the mercy of its whims.  It doesn't feel like kicking to me, but I get these pulses of movement, not painful but very distracting.  It's gotten harder to sleep.  It's gotten more uncomfortable.  And this is just the beginning of the discomfort.  It will get a lot worse before it gets better.

Worst: I feel all of the above - terror, fear, anxiety, irritation, etc. - but somehow those all feel wrong.  I should be blissfully happy at all times, right?  I should be thrilled and excited!  I am, sometimes.  But not always, and every time I get more nervous, I feel I've betrayed this child before it even gets here.  

And, hahaha!  I was feeling all of this for months when I couldn't tell anyone why.  Because miscarriage is a reality, as common as one in three pregnancies for women my age end in miscarriage.  That is terrifying.  I couldn't talk about it, I couldn't open myself up telling anyone about it when it could end so suddenly.

So I'm having a little bit of a rough day.  I hope it will pass.  I still expect it's all worth it.  I just don't know yet, and that's terrifying.

Shock

I'm in shock and there's no time to absorb it.  Oh, I'm fine - I just woke up this morning in London and will go to bed in Chicago and tomorrow I'll fly to Washington, D.C.  I'm a little travel weary but basically surviving.

Yes, the rest of the trip continued to be wonderful.  What I lacked in personal reflection time I more than made up for by seeing people I adore, who seem to continue to feel the same about me, stunningly.  And they all live extraordinary and creative lives, even the ones who think they don't.  It's pretty humbling and inspiring to see.

And those were the folks I had time to see!

More eventually.  First, laundry, repacking, a little work catch-up, dinner, and BED.

Almost a fairy tale

Gorgeous day.  It's hard to realize that people live like this, live in this city every day and can enjoy it.  Of course, a lot of London is dirty and unsafe, but lots of it is parks and pubs and structures that date to the eighteenth century or farther.  Even if you don't live in a luxury flat with a Thames view, you can leave your grimy bedsit and go off to any one of the free museums that look like palaces.  We were in the Natural History Museum today, and it's gorgeous, ornate and yet restrained, multicolored stones and stolid skeletons, stuffed birds and wild sculptures.

I went up to Hampstead, my very first stomping grounds, looked in the window of the Worrell House (my first ever London address) while a ginger cat sat on the ledge and watched me watching some student practice guitar.  I walked down over Primrose Hill (Sylvia Plath lived nearby at one point), then down through Regents Park.  I went over the canal bridge that runs through the Park.  I wanted to use the path along the canal but I was worried I wouldn't have enough time for the long way.  I like the canal path because it backs up to the London Zoo, so as you trot along you have every chance of running across the odd wild horned animal peering at you through the fence.

I used one of the rentable bicycles and manuevered from Baker Street (the line of tourists outside of 221B Bake Street was comical, not least because they were all wearing yellow hats - a school group, I presume) all the way to Exhibition Road, which boasts the NHM as well as the V&A, which I wish I'd had time to wander through, if only desultorily.

After a truly amazing Salgado photography exhibit, I ended up picnicing by the round pond in Kensington Gardens, looking back on Kensington Palace, the place Victoria lived before she became queen.

It was beautiful, all of it.  Did I mention it rained most of the day?  Didn't matter.  It was beautiful.

The wood

I must must must go to bed, but today I went to a magic place that I will try to describe in more detail later - a ten acre ancient woodland owned by some friends of mine off a canal near Basingstoke.  Ancient woodland means the trees have been there at least 400 years - not these same trees, perhaps, but there is a particularly lovely yew tree that may be 300 years old.  It's magnificent.  We made a fire and cooked an amazing dinner over it (roasted portabellos, grilled cheese, sausages, salad, bits of lamb, hummus, irish soda bread, cheeses - incredible), and went boating on the canal in a boat that unfolded out of a bag and that came out of a neighbor's shed - the neighbor has a house with a thatched roof, some donkeys and some decorative sheep.

The whole thing was really out of a novel of some sort - the idea of what England is, only this was really happening as if it is completely normal and everyday.  I was...I was delighted.  Charmed.

Now I must go to bed.  Sigh.  So few days, so much to stuff in them.

Ah, yes

I'm sitting in one of my favorite kitchens in the world, a sunny, bright yellow and green l-shaped room smack in the middle of Chiswick, London.  It's glorious, and wonderful, and odd.  It feels so much like home and yet I haven't lived here in 13 years, plus I haven't even visited for five.  I spent the day with my friend Maeve yesterday.  We haven't seen each other properly for eight years (on skype occasionally, but not in person), and yet it was almost as if no time had passed.

Yet I miss my husband, and I am here knowing I have been incredibly lucky the past few years, and that being happy here is partly the result of having made some happiness at home, in my actual life, with my lovely husband, who it must be admitted I miss dreadfully.  (He was spectacularly supportive about me coming to visit here, then when I booked the ticket he started moaning about how sad and lonely he'd be without me. Awww.)

Also, I think everyone knows now, more or less, but I don't think I've mentioned out loud here that I'm pregnant.  Which is exciting, but changes things.  It's also why I'm here - it was a pleasure to tell people in person, but more importantly, I can't imagine I'll have an easy time traveling for a few years after the baby comes.  In January.  Of 2014.

Yep.  Gonna have a baby.  A life-changing, possibly life-absorbing baby.  It seemed a good time to go haring off across the globe and check in with a self I left behind about twelve years ago.  And more importantly, with all the folks who are important to me on this side of the pond, not just myself.

It feels very natural to be here, not forced or strained.  There's just a hint of uncertainty before arriving somewhere or seeing someone for the first time, the pause of do-I-remember-how-this works? and then it eases, and all is well, and I am content.

I picked a time back home where there was no specific work scheduled, but of course, people keep needing things, which is annoying.  Or perhaps more annoying is that I can tell they need them, since my iPad works just fine and email comes through.  Oh, technology, keeping me tied to obligation.

More soon - mostly it's been old friends and very ordinary experiences that I am thrilled to go through - buying biscuits, riding the underground, looking out the windows of trains, getting a proper calendar in the stationery shop.  It's all regular and non-touristy and non-epic and I love it.  Hopefully there will be epic things to report soon.  I'll try to keep a log.