no feeling is final
thirty-nine weeks! pregnant! oh my!
My midwife asks me to upload my birth preferences to the patient portal, so I dig up the document I made for my first birth two and a half years ago and make a few small changes. I can see how many of my hopes were met with reality in my first birth — it really was exactly what I wanted. And yet it was so hard, and so experientially different than any expectation I had of what giving birth would be, all the contingencies I so carefully thought through while composing my little list of preferences. Now, the second time, I don’t know how to carry anticipation. I feel much more vulnerable than I remember feeling the first time. My mind wants to linger on memories from my first birth, both positive and negative, and turn them into expectations, but I am resisting that. No, let this time be its own time. No, this is a different baby beginning a different life than my firstborn’s. No, I am different, my body is different, and this is all new, even if I have given birth before. Can I enter birth again with beginner’s mind? Can I empty my mind of all memories and just be?
Lol, probably not. But good to set that intention and move even 5% farther in that direction. I can relax the corners of my mouth. I can give myself space to feel anxious and then let the anxiety go. I can feel whatever sensation I feel in the moment that I feel it. I can be where I am right now. I'm 39 weeks pregnant, my baby is full term and ready to become a part of the world I love and of our family. Something big will happen soon either way.
I think the last weeks of pregnancy are some of the weirdest weeks of a person’s life. It’s the part of pregnancy where the woman is most likely to lose her mind and get really out of sorts. All over the due date message boards, people are making posts like “39 Weeks and not ok!!!!!!!!,” most often written and posted in the middle of the night. But, it makes sense. It’s a crazy time. I read today that full term pregnant bodies produce more estrogen in one day than a non-pregnant woman’s body makes in a full year. That’s hormonal craziness. And, hormones aside, what a strange feeling of suspension, like standing on the end of a diving board but not having the ability to choose when to jump. I feel so tangled up in the tension, so estranged from my normal life, normal self, normal feelings and thoughts and body. Many women seem to get to a point where they’re desperate to go into the labor and have the baby just to not be pregnant anymore — I don’t want to be pregnant anymore, but I also don’t want to go into labor. I want to be abducted by a UFO. Beam me up, out of this situation all together! Why has that become the desire I feel most?
I don’t think I have anything useful or profound to say in this moment. I almost feel like I’ve forgotten how to write. I’ve also forgotten patience and tolerance. I’ve forgotten excitement. I feel mainly vaguely irritated and irritable. Shouldn’t I be full of passion? Won’t I need that fiery energy to get this baby out? To endure labor, to make it happen? I don’t have that. I feel like I have very little energy or spunk to work with. I’m pretty much just super tired, super worn out, and not feeling very self-confident. I’m not sure these vibes are setting me up for success!
But I don’t want to read into any of it too much. I have ridden hormonal roller coasters enough to not necessarily trust or define myself by any particular emotion. Like Rilke wrote, “no feeling is final.” I don’t want to decide right now how I feel about this birth. It’s ok if these last weeks are marked by a general malaise. This pregnancy has been fairly peaceful. Exhausting, and dissociative (I was so right about that hunch), but peaceful. There is a strange and simple maternal satisfaction in knowing that I am meaningfully contributing to our family and to the world by just existing as a pregnant person — eating, drinking, resting, sleeping. A new person is growing in me all on their own— they don’t need to be thought, invented, or devised. They don’t need me to feel proper passion, scrape my spirit into certain shapes. They simply need me to mother them — to give them space inside of me and then help them make their way out. A mother is a landscape, a dwelling. A mother is topography. I don’t need to be literature. I don’t need to be a poem. I don’t need to be an artist or inventor or deity. I can be pure place, pure experience. I can let this moment of my life simply happen, however it does, assign it less meaning, let it just hang in the air and be.
That’s a bit of a wild conclusion to come to, for me. I feel like I’ve spent so much of my life “making meaning.” I think I come to this pregnancy very humbled by parenthood. So much of my hubris has been stripped from me. Parenting has been such a crucible for me, has taken me to all of my edges over and over again. Now I’m past the edges, outside of all of my own borders. I’m in new territory. I’ve truly never been here before, can’t remain who I was before, never will be her again. I come into this as a fresh person. So few expectations. What is coming for me? What do I want? I don’t know!
Oh, this is all probably pretty incoherent. The brain fog is thicker than ever. When will this baby come? I’m 39 weeks pregnant. Tommy was born at 40+1. If this is a typical second baby, he will be earlier than Tommy, but truly who knows. Everyone keeps saying that the labor will probably be shorter too, but will it really? I try not to get too attached to those sorts of expectations. It will happen when it happens, it will take as long as it takes, and until then this baby is very well taken care of inside my body. I’m feeling pretty good, all things considered. It’s hard to move around and I feel already exhausted when I get out of bed in the morning and every so often I get a wild twinge of sciatic nerve pain — but I know there are new pains coming for me postpartum. It’s just truly so weird and a little unnerving to know that there’s a fully grown baby inside my body right now. That he’s basically the same on the inside as he will be on the outside. He is already his full self, the self he always will be. He has a soul! A complete and vivid one! The mother/child relationship is astonishingly intimate, and I think never moreso than just before birth and just after. I don’t envy my baby for the change that’s about to happen in his little life, moving from his first world of the womb to this one, much brighter and louder and wilder. What are we given by our months inside of our mother? What foundation does that make in our nervous systems, our hearts? What do we remember of that dim, dark space? I have to think it’s something not nothing. Is that our first homesickness? I wish so much I could be encircled by warmth, right now. I wish to be inside a womb, with a beginner’s brain and music and movement and warm mother’s hands or poking brother’s fingers finding their way to me here and there. Instead, I’m the host. I’m the mom, helping other people feel held and shepherded. That’s good too.
I turned thirty on Sunday. Before I was pregnant, I imagined having a big fun party for my thirtieth birthday, or going on a sort of fancy trip. Instead, I was awakened before seven by my toddler who had four or five meltdowns before I could eat breakfast. The softest part of my day was taking a very long shower. We had some small celebrations — balloons hung around the house, a quick milkshake date with my husband, a barbecue at my parents house in the evening, other people taking care of Tommy so I could sit and rest. And it all felt nice. I felt very calm, very comfortable with the passing of time, finding myself inside my life right where I am. Birthdays usually cause a sort of existential crisis for me, but it didn’t feel that way this year. It feels right to be thirty now, close to giving birth to my second baby, in the middle of big change, a little bit no-where. I’m still finding myself as a mom and as a grown up, but I feel myself stepping closer to the person I think I hoped I’d be when I was younger. Life is never quite how you expect, and yet you can sort of tell when you’re in the right place. Typing that flashes me back to a memory from my first labor, bouncing on my purple ball in the nursery, dancing to the Talking Heads, “This Must Be the Place.” Yes, it must.
news from imaginary lake (my very small press!):
Since I last wrote, I printed and sent so many copies of my zine, I’m Learning Waiting Like It’s a Skill out into the world. Thank you so much for your support and excitement about my zine projects! I released a second zine, a tiny one, called Little Birth Book too. It’s a small collection of my own resources for birth — like affirmations, a playlist, a benediction, a finger labyrinth, etc. I already have a copy tucked into my go-bag! Such good things to make and work on in these last weeks waiting on baby. Both of those print zines will be “sold out” for the next little while as I shift into hibernation mode and birth and care for my baby, but both zines are available as digital downloads / printable pdf’s and will stay available in that format throughout my maternity leave! Here are links to each if you’re interested!
I’m Learning Waiting Like It’s a Skill / Little Birth Book
My crazy plan for my postpartum year is to produce six unique print zines over the course of the year. I know that a lot will come up for me as this second postpartum experience unfolds, and I wanted to make a soft container to harness that generative energy. So six zines! They’re available as a subscription right now if you want to sign up and help support my maternity leave! Find it right here! My plan is for the first zine to be my birth story, so you won’t want to miss that! (Or at least I wouldn’t, I am obsessed with birth stories, so juicy.) They’ll also each be available as they’re published, but you can save a little money and forethought by subscribing and I’ll just send them straight to you! Excited to see what comes of this project, excited to see how I feel myself grow and shift as I care for another newborn and allow newness in my own life too.
Thank you for this ! Mothers are a landscape! I always know your writing about motherhood will hit me deep down somewhere without fail. Thinking of you during this in between time 💫