The best days

For those of us who have had a rough pregnancy, it's safe to say, the state of being pregnant must feel a LOT like bipolar disorder. Heaven help the ones who love us when we don't get enough sleep. It must be like being partnered with Sally Field in Sybil. 

Today I woke up feeling pretty happy. 

I sent Amanda off to work, steaming thermos of fair trade coffee in hand, and set out to clean. 

By noon, I was blank & grey as midwestern snowfall. I looked around the house, and all I could see was filth. I looked at the animals, and all I could see was trouble. I wanted to burn everything down. 

By four o' clock, nothing had changed, except I had cried several times, and cleaned all of the picture frames with windex and coffee filters. 

Whoever says nesting comes right before labor lies. The entire nine months, I have been cleaning weird random shit I never would have considered cleaning otherwise.

Now it's nearly eight. I have a sense of calm about me that is almost euphoric. I am covered in a fine sheen of perspiration from pureeing root vegetables for a soup, and hanging up new baby clothes. I have even tinfoiled the corners of the couches to keep the cats from scratching. 

Life feels so glorious, I need little else at this moment to survive. 

Every night before I go to bed I wish silently for myself that tomorrow will not bring hours full of tantrums, crying spells and completely unjustified & angry rants. I just wish for peace. And Every few days I am granted a break from them. Those days are the best days.

9 Pills a day

Weekly check at the Doctor yesterday. She tells us we are 3 centimeters dilated and 50% effaced. She asks if our bags our packed, if we've had the hospital tour. We tell her it is scheduled for next week, and she laughs, saying we may never get that hospital tour, that she may be the one to show us around.
She asks me if i am cramping and I tell her yes,
every early morning now for over a week, I cramp. Before I am awake they start, and roll against my aching belly for a few hours, until they dissipate with the day. This morning they woke me up at five. I stayed awake and read until my eyes fell asleep against the pulpy pages of April & Oliver.
Yesterday they also took my blood. My blood pressure was high at the office, even though they upped my blood pressure medication. So they put me on another pill, to bridge the gap between when I take my OTHER three doses.
Now all day I feel like a zombie. My eyelids are so heavy, they feel like velvet. My mouth is set in a dreamy, still asleep kind of way, and whole chunks of time fly past me without my knowing. I feel so bothered. I just want to be left alone. I don't want anyone to ask me to do another thing. I want to sit and wait, by myself, until I can sleep against this maddening regimen of pills, or until this mood passes, and once again, I feel as close to normal as I'm going to get until after the baby comes.

Sweet Dreams Little One

Today I am 35 weeks along. I am not sleeping, eating too much, and feeling every pound I've packed on-every emotion which courses through me. 
Today I have learned the lesson of balance, and of the due process of things.
Today, as I wait for our little boy to come, my cousin and his wife welcome their baby boy into the world. 
She keeps me posted from Seattle, advising me on what to expect when my water finally breaks, how contractions really feel, what the dreaded Pitocin is like. I am so excited for her. Despite our 3,000 mile distance, we have gone our pregnancies together, and when I think of it like that, time has flown. We have shared everthing. Right down to brownies that turned out like cakes and gravy, gravy on everything. My heart is with them as she goes the last chapter in this particular story.

Today, as I wait for our little boy to come, my friend, who was 9 weeks, has lost her baby. She went to the Dr today to help her miscarriage along and now waits alone at home, for the bleeding to start, the changes to begin. 
My heart is with them as she goes this journey. I put myself in her shoes as a friend, being pregnant, and as a woman who thought she would lose her baby only 29 weeks ago. 
I remember laying in bed, watching tv with Amanda and feeling a gush against the sheets. I remember knowing it was blood before I even looked, and feeling the world slip out from beneath me. I recall all of the ultrasounds and bloodwork to make sure my "fetus was viable". I will never forget the feelings being faced with a miscarriage brought. 
Having such a rough start, this entire pregnancy has left Amanda and I holding our breath. With every week that passed, we celebrated privately. She bought me little gifts at our milestones. Still, we held our breath and hunkered down, expressing only to each other our fear of losing the baby. Even now, so close to having him here with us, there are nights I don't sleep, worried he is not moving enough, or I've done something wrong. That he wont make it home. I can't explain how much love you can have for someone you've never met unless you've been pregnant, or your partner has. No description would be accurate. 

This entry is not about me though, not about my friend who lost her baby, but the baby that was lost. 
That I want him or her to know we all loved you from the start, even for however briefly, you were here. I can't imagine our lives without you, but I know you stepped aside for a good reason, and coupled with all of the other babies in our lives that were lost, we will not forget the great attempt you made at life. 

One life begins, one life passes. One life waits to start. 
I am so grateful to be part of all of these things, and in each case, will still be here, loving you little one, on the other side. 
Today I take the day to think of you, little one, and hope you have sweet dreams. 

The Darkside

Agitation.

A state of being.
Being agitated.

Things that are agitated. Clothes. The pant legs of mothers. Molecules. 
Me. 

The downside of pregnancy. Maybe a lot of people don't talk about it. Maybe even some don't experience it. But I doubt that. 
Sometimes one simple word or phrase from another person can set you off, and your whacky hormones into a blind tailspin of agitation. It doesn't have to be rational even. Today I am tired, my face feels swollen- one giant wet raisin left out in a pool of milk on the countertop. I want to nap. Every fiber in my being is begging me to lie still, to shut my eyes and sleep. But I can't. I never can. And then agitation becomes homicidal rage. So I wont even try. 
The worst part is knowing you're being irrational, but not being able to control your emotions. Not being able to control anything at all. Anything. 
So go with them, I say. Be irrational, be angry, be in a rage. 
But try to do it quietly. Take some time for yourself. Do whatever it is that makes you feel better, or like a stun gun between the eyes, makes you forget, at least for a little while, what you were so upset about in the first place. Hopefully by then it will have passed, and instead you'll be crying over a Cheerios commercial about dead mothers. Or laughing hysterically at the fishy little flip flops the baby is doing inside of your gut. Make the time pass with the emotional temper tantrum you are having, but don't go around it, go through it. 
Reward yourself in the end. 
A bath. Fantasies of caramel colored whiskey in an icy tumbler. Going to bed early. Chili cheese fries. 
Oh....and....
A word to husbands/partners/lovers:

Stay away, or come close. Or do whatever it is we are asking you. Even if it's only with our crazy, glaze eyed stare. Figure it out, it's in your best interest. Keep coming up with ideas until you've hit the jackpot, or die trying. Really it's in everyone's best interest, the days pregnant women become agitated. 

A Declaration

I get it. I am the last dilapidated farmhouse in a sub of brand new homes. I am pea green ceramic cookware, and all the rest of the ladies are professional grade convection ovens with dual use stovetops.
I am a dichotomy.
I am queer and I am very old school. Traditional. So sue me.
I get that these days women are supposed to be in charge, take the upper hand, be the bread winners, and spend equal time in the office as well as in the home. I appreciate those notions very much.
And I appreciate the choice to choose.
But it seems like anymore, there is not a choice.
Everyone looks at me crazy-like when I tell them I want to stay home, and raise my son, and take care of Amanda. Make sure the house is clean, the laundry is done, the children are safe etc, etc...
Why wouldn't I want to go back to work? What kind of crazy person would choose to stay home and create a vibe there?
me.
When Amanda and I made the choice to have the baby, It was important to me to be the one to instill morals. To be the one to see his first steps, or hear his first word. Not a nanny, not a childcare provider, not a relative. But me. His mother. How could I trust that other caretakers would lend to him, my passion for reading, would give to him the freedom to choose to be, whatever is inside of his heart? I could not. Cannot.
I feel a sense of duty to take full part in what kind of man he will be, when he leaves our home and goes out into the world.
Most of the children today seem as though they lack consequence, compassion, empathy, imagination. It has turned into a "what's in it for me world". It makes me sad. I don't want to raise my child like that.

About a week ago, my oldest brother Mike asked me (after hearing a rant very similar to this) if I was going to raise my son in a 1970's world. Our telephone line got quiet for a moment. New Orleans to Detroit. Then I swelled with hysterical radiance and pregnancy hormones.
"Yes!" I thought. That is the exact idea. Minimal technology, minimal tv. Lots of walks in the woods, books, tea, gardening and corduroy....Well maybe not corduroy.

Point being, I've always had a small amount of interests, but the ones I did have, I held steadfast to. Improved upon them. Nurtured them until they blossomed and became the very veins that ran through me. The very breath I did breathe.
I want to raise a child. And I want to take care of my family. And I want to do It well. I don't want to give only 20%. I want to give it all.
And I want that to be ok with everyone else. I want my loved ones to work on their "shocked faces" when I say my new job is my family.

All of my life I wanted things I could not have. Different house, different friends. Different body, different lovers. I was never satisfied, always peering around the room, like a greedy squirrel, looking for all the nuts.
When I met Amanda I stopped looking for what else was out there. I stopped wishing for things I did not have. It wasn't intentional, it just happened. Then one day I realized I hadn't focused my energy on the things that weren't mine. I took joy in the right now. Joy in learning to cook. Joy in our 5 dogs. Joy in myself.
When I realized I was finally free, it was like the most delicious candy. The softest bed. The safest arms.

I had been looking for a career in the workforce where I could truly be happy. Apart from writing, nothing ever seemed to fit. Then I realized how much peace I found in being a home maker.
And I am so happy to be afforded that lifestyle.

So people, since a new age is upon us, make room for the women like me. The one's who are happy where they are, and unafraid to make the choice to be the worker bee. The stagehand. The housewife. The one's who are so very grateful for the awakening. And the choice. Thank you for letting me make that choice.

Pacing the Cage

Pregnancy doesn't seem to really start until the very end. I am 34 and a half weeks pregnant. It's four in the morning. I am up, not by choice, no noise but the intermittent clink of the ice machine. I'm restless. A kind of restless I've never been before. I must look like a dog during a thunderstorm. My body tells me to pace, so I do. My bare feet come down on the vinyl of the kitchen floor, I rub my hands over my taut belly, feeling small contractions like little earthquakes. The overhead light glows so differently this late at night. 
I need to find something to do. I make a whole wheat English Muffin. I fill a mason jar with ice water. 
I go back upstairs. Amanda is sleeping. She has taken Ambien, and slumbers on like she's comatose, or a mummy. I love it. I love her. I kiss her lips as hard as I want, because I know she won't stir. 
I watch infomercials as I eat my toast. 
I turn off the tv and read under the dim hue of a book light. 
Our son kicks the shit out of me from inside. He gets hiccups, and he startles me every time he jumps. I feel like he's trying to tear out of me. And I still have 5 1/2 weeks to go. I can't get comfortable, I can't sleep. I roll to my side trying to console him. He floats down to the right section of my abdomen. He pounds at the mattress like it's a bass drum. He kicks against Amanda's back. He is trying to break free. 
It's not a sensation I could get used to. I wish there was something I could do. His need for freedom is so contagious, it is the only thing I can focus on. My legs kick out involuntarily. I am sweaty. I pull the fan closer to me, and it doesn't help. Amanda is ice cold under our down comforter. I put my hands all over her, trying to leech some cold from her skin. 
Everything is about to change. Everything has changed already. I am so tired. This keeps happening night after night. The restlessness, the hunger, the pacing, the ache at my breasts. 
I am awake and alone, at an hour which has become singularly mine. No mother to call and inform me of these things.
I've read every book I can get my hands on about pregnancy. But this fire, this lost, overly-itchy-sweater-in-July feeling, seems to have been omitted by everything and everyone. 
Still, there's something so primal in finding these things out on my own.