the second time
on dissociation, smallness, pregnancy, newness
I’m 13 weeks pregnant with our second baby, and this is the first time I’m sitting down to write about it. We told all our friends and family that we see often the news very early on, but waited until now to announce it more widely. Such a strangely huge secret to keep. Oh, just imminent gigantic life change, again! A whole new person joining the world! The obliteration of everything I’ve already figured out! As soon as I found out I was pregnant again, I could feel myself simultaneously wanting to shout the news from the rooftops and keep it very very secret for a very long time — both at once. The first trimester has been a blur of exhaustion, nausea, mom-guilt for being too tired to parent my toddler the way I want to, and fear/excitement. Near daily worry about miscarriage was much worse this time than in my first pregnancy. But now, the baby is the size of a lemon, and one season of pregnancy is already closing. So quickly, so slowly, such big and small things. New paradox all the time. I feel so happy, I feel so scared.
(my husband took this photo of me clearly enjoying playing with Tommy’s train set)
Shortly before I found out I was pregnant (but I already was, I already was!), I was at a retreat for mother-artists in Philadelphia. I was chatting with another participant who had a few kids about how I felt like I was finally open to doing it all over again. It took me an entire two years to get there, and I could have happily waited longer if not for the notion that a small-ish age gap between children would ultimately be nice in the long run. I forget exactly what we were talking about, but I remember saying something about how I could sense that my pregnancy strategy the second time around would be dissociation. The other woman’s eyes lit up. “Yes!” she said. “That’s such a good word for it. Running around, chasing my other kids, I experienced a lot of my last pregnancy as dissociation.” I was pleased to have my hunch confirmed so quickly and confidently by someone else. But also a little disappointed — like maybe I was hoping she’d say, “No, it was still really special, still really slow and I was able to feel and consider every little change, completely.” Which may still be true, but it seemed like the dissociation idea really did connect right away. Not just a hunch, I guess.
My first pregnancy was nestled completely within the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. I’m pretty sure I took the pregnancy test either just before lock-downs began or just after. Either way, there was no separating the two realities, the two complete changes of my world. The pandemic was so novel, so strange, so scary — it really put me in my feelings. Being pregnant for the first time in that pandemic… in my feelings times a million! I was so tired, I couldn’t leave my house, I couldn’t focus well enough to work, all I could do was think and feel and think and feel and think and feel. I wrote an entire poetry manuscript about my pregnancy while pregnant! (Book coming out next summer, conveniently!) I read huge stacks of books! I wrote many essays! I was all alone in my quiet house with the dog all day, leaving only to walk him around the neighborhood at lunch time. I was quietly working, quietly writing, quietly reading, quietly thinking. I was a ball of anxiety, sure, but I had space to process everything going on inside me. I can confidently call my first pregnancy contemplative.
Already this pregnancy is so different than that. There is little quiet in my life. Even the quiet hours I am able to find are loud with the static of brain fog, of prolonged sleep deprivation, of trying to regroup after caring for my toddler the previous hours. I feel mind-numb almost all the time. My pregnancy-appropriate exhaustion feels like failure. My nausea is mild but nearly constant, and unsettling; it adds to the exhaustion. I have tried a few times to sit down and write about what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. I manage little bits, but it all feels so unformed. I’m feeling… tired. I’m thinking… tired.
Maybe that’s good, though. Maybe that’s self-protective. My mind is enrobing itself in ease. Don’t think. Don’t worry. Don’t fret, don’t synthesize, don’t you DARE write a poem! The first trimester has gone by in a blink, slowed only by the nausea making each hour feel ponderous. I spend a lot of time gazing at Tommy, watching him be so beautiful and himself, thinking about how our time just-us is dwindling every day. There’s grief there, of course, but also excitement. I think about how I can’t remember my life before my sister was born, how her presence was always near-essential in my sense of my family. Having always known we wanted more than just one child, there’s something wonderful about knowing that soon he will meet someone new who will be cosmically important to him for the rest of his life.
Me too. Soon I will meet someone new who will be cosmically important to me for the rest of my life. In my first pregnancy, I remember having a really hard time conceptualizing the baby — really feeling unsure of how I would feel about them, what our life together would be like, what would be good, what would be hard. I had no way to imagine any of that, even though I had plenty of experience with other babies or children. I knew having my own child would be really different, but that was where the knowledge ended. I stayed in a firm posture of curiosity and wonder all the way through my pregnancy and labor, until Tommy was placed on my chest and our relationship began.
This time, I have a frame of reference. Immediately, that has made this pregnancy feel so very different. Even taking the pregnancy test this time felt so different. Wanting this baby felt different. I know what to expect now! I know what it means to carry a child to term, give birth to them, meet them, love them with a fierce every-day-ness. I could never have imagined Tommy, and now he’s here singing along to his favorite songs about trucks and eating grapes and blueberries and he’s so vivid and real. To be able to imagine this new baby as equally vivid and real before I’ve ever held them is a completely new path through pregnancy for me. I feel like I am able to love my gestating baby more this time around. That’s a good feeling.
But, also, I know what to expect. It’s a double-edged sword. I feel far more afraid of labor this time, having experienced it before. I feel afraid of the way our life will change again. Afraid of the hormone surges. Afraid of the breast engorgement. Afraid of all the painful, difficult, scary things I know are coming.
That’s where that intuitive dissociation comes in. It sounds like a bad thing, but I don’t think it is. I think pregnancy is maybe inherently a dissociative state. Your body snaps into a process that your mind has no control over or awareness of. Any attempt at contemplation is ultimately the mind trying to circle around the body’s mystery — there is a black box at the center that can’t be entered. This is especially true early in pregnancy, before quickening, or the baby’s movements in the womb, can be felt. You have every reason to believe there’s a baby in there, that they’re growing, that they’re okay, but you do not know. You can’t know. You are dissociated from the reality of your own body’s deep work, your own life changing from the inside out. There is no choice in the matter, no matter how nauseous or fixated on the baby you are, no matter how many pregnancy tests you take.
This pregnancy, I had an ultrasound at 12 weeks (last time I didn’t have one until the anatomy scan at 20 weeks). I was half convinced they would touch the wand to my belly and find an empty uterus — that somehow I had imagined the whole thing. Even though I had already heard the heartbeat! Even though I knew I was really pregnant — seeing my baby’s body was a practice in surreal holy doubt. I couldn’t believe my eyes, the truth of the image, the finger in the wound in christ’s side. This was true. That was my baby, a real baby. As pregnancy slowly progresses, I carry that doubtful belief with me every day — like a small beating heart in my hand. As much as I dissociate to get through the day, any time my mind lands back on the truth of what is growing inside me I feel my sense of what is real exploding all over again. There is a new person inside my body, a person who will very truly change my life forever.
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I took a long break between writing the first part of this essay and picking it up here. Because of the state of my brain, I’m not going to try to pick up where I left off, I’m just going to allow myself to begin with a new thought. I’m now 14 and a half weeks pregnant.
Without meaning to, just by nature of when I’m writing it, I feel compelled to think about the new year in this essay. I can’t not. All day on Instagram, I’ve been seeing people sharing in/out lists — like what’s “in” and what’s “out” for the new year. I don’t have in’s and out’s except for what’s inside and outside of me, my mind, my body. I’ve been saying over and over for months now that I feel like an exposed nerve, and that feeling keeps getting more and more intense. I think I am entering this new year in a profound state of vulnerability — maybe the most vulnerable I have ever been in my life. I can sense many changes both inside and outside of me. Some changes that are desired and needed, some changes that are coming as a surprise and that feel really and deeply scary. I feel confronted by my (in my own eyes) failures, and confronted maybe moreso by the ways in which many of those felt failures are outside of my control, and maybe aren’t really failures at all. That feels confusing, and adds to my feeling of vulnerability, of nerve-i-ness. I am pregnant! I am weepy! I have a toddler! I am self-employed! My work is supposed to be creative and self-directed! My brain doesn’t work! (It really doesn’t. It hasn’t for two years. I have had pervasive brain fog since Tommy was born and I stopped sleeping, and pregnancy has made the fog much thicker. I also might be nutritionally depleted from being pregnant and breastfeeding so long and not being good at eating a varied diet. There’s a lot there!) I suddenly feel very stressed about money! I feel like I can’t produce anything of value! I feel so tired, so confused, so small. So many things are depending on me and I feel like all my wheels are falling off one by one.
So I think, in an effort to associate rather than dissociate, even just for a moment, I will just own that vulnerability for this new year. This is the year that I will give birth to my second baby. This is the year that I will fail even more. This is the year that I will continue to be both myself and a mother. This is the year where I will make things, but maybe not very many or very impressive. This is the year where I will be so tired. This is the year where I will also be delighted, astonished. I will cook meals. I will pick up plastic dinosaurs. I will attempt to find two matching socks and not be able to find them, no matter how many times I buy new socks. I will weep, I will laugh, I will carry little bodies around, hold little hands, wipe little bums, I will sleep, I will be awake. I will write and read. I will talk to my friends on the phone, but not enough. I will often feel overwhelmed or overstimulated. I will hold my husband’s hand, liferaft that he is. I will try to be honest. I will allow myself to freefall sometimes. I will be often unproductive, unimpressive. I will fail, I will fail, I will fail, and then I will invent new ways to not fail. I will try to be gentle, I will love my babies, I will love my husband, I will love my self. All of that is “in.” All of that is “out.”
In the past, I have desired very truly to be prolific, and I have been. I have made so many things I’m really proud of — books, quilts, sewing patterns, poems, drawings, spreadsheets, websites, essays, letters, zines, etc. A big part of me still deeply wants to make and make and make. I want to be prolific! I want to be impressive! I want to have endless ideas, do things that will change my life and other people’s lives too! But I think the honest part of me, my small true self, is, in some ways, satisfied. Maybe, for a season, all the making I need to do is the making of new baby cells inside my body, the making of breastmilk from my own blood, the making of a home and soft days for my kids, the making of simple meals to eat at the end of the day. My hands peeling oranges, my hands pumping milk. Maybe that’s my most intuitive desire for this little pocket of time, when I have kids so small who need me so much — just make our life. Just make this room. Just make this day. Just allow my body to be tired, allow my mind to rest. That’s hard for me to swallow, and I can’t tell if I mean it, but it might be all that my vulnerable self can handle this year. Scale it all back. Tear it all down. Huddle together and stay warm. I can’t tell what will happen this year, but I can feel myself starting so small, the smallest ever. If I’m going to survive this a second time, allow my life to change so completely, I will shelter in the small sweetness of my life, allow myself to become unimpressive to everyone but my children. Maybe that’s enough.
I am so grateful for your writing, particularly on motherhood (and art-making/creativity). I am not a writer but always feel so seen in your essays, the words exactly how I am feeling but unable to articulate. So, thank you <3
Hi Amy, just wanted to send a gentle “I see you” note. Your thoughts and reflections remind me so much of my own grappling with the shifts in life and in myself as a new mother. I had my first son at 27, and what an incredibly hard and wonderfully sweet time it was. I am 40 now and have four sons. My youngest is 4. It all stays hard and wonderful. Best to you!