Sometimes I wonder if I am going to need to continue seeing my therapist twice a month until she dies. Or I die. She isn't too much older than me so who knows which one of us will go first. If I have learned anything this last year it is that you can't bet on the natural order of things to keep any order at all. It is all just random chaos. So like I said, until one of us dies.
Each day that moves me farther from George and closer to this baby's arrival -and let's be completely honest I still have my doubts about the "arrival" actually happening- seals my lips more securely. I recoil from questions, other than the most superficial, regarding this pregnancy with an almost allergic response. So my therapist has become one of the very few people who I feel comfortable enough with to share what has really been going on inside. Let me just say that what has been going on inside has been confusing and not all that pretty.
I feel sad. I feel happy. I feel overwhelmingly lucky and at the same time overwhelmingly unlucky. I feel grateful and ungrateful. I feel envious. I feel loved and I feel love.
I feel lonely, definitely lonely.
I feel like I don't want to write any of this because I feel like I can't write what I want to anymore.
It is probably a self imposed restriction that is only real in my own head. But it doesn't feel that way. It feels like I have to be one of two people. The person who misses my son and writes about that here. Or the person who is happily pregnant with this baby and who doesn't acknowledge the more complicated aspects of what being pregnant again means. Either or but it feels like there is no room to combine the two.
I can't write about how impossible it is to feel like a normal pregnant person when sometimes I so desperately want to feel like one that I pretend I am. I can't write about how I feel undeniably separate from the rest of the pregnant, baby-having world and how sometimes I actually prefer it that way. It gets so damn confusing at times to remember at any given moment which person I am. Am I the person who wants to be like every other pregnant mother or the person who finds the idea of pretending that I am stomach-turning?
I can't write about how being pregnant again has fixed nothing (not that I thought it would). It has only made things more muddled and difficult to dissect. It has made me more intensely protective of his memory and of myself.
I can't write any of that because I should be nothing but excitement and love and nursery decor and birth planning. I can't write any of that because it makes me feel terribly guilty that by not being those things I am not loving this baby the way I should be. Honestly, it makes me feel ashamed and like I've already failed.
I've never been good with failure or with people seeing me fail, which is why for twenty-six weeks I have remained so silent here (and why I have been so neglectful about commenting on others blogs).
I am just so grateful my therapist is willing to see me on Saturdays.
I wish that the guilt would slide away.. and leave behind acceptance of everything you are feeling here. There is no right or wrong to walk this path.. no simple way to merge two completely different worlds of emotions. I can only imagine the internal struggle that you deal with on a daily basis.. and yet the best I can do here is to say 'go with it'.
ReplyDeleteDo not be hard on yourself for not feeling the way 'other' pregnant women feel.. those who have no concept of what that path can lead to. Do not be angry with yourself for the difficulty of understanding and accepting your conflicted emotions- no matter what they are.Try to accept that you are doing the best you can with the cards you have been dealt, and know that there are many of us here who truly do understand how easily guilt and joy can be intermixed in one shining moment.
ReplyDeleteI know it is all much easier said than done, but still it is my wish for you my friend. Sending you love...
Oh Brianna, I so completely understand that feeling of needing to keep things compartmentalized. I am glad that you've found a place to tease it out though - with your therapist. Try to let go of the guilt, that won't be helpful in the long run - and know that you are doing the best you can in a situation that is exciting and difficult, happy and sad all at the same time! This pregnancy will do nothing to diminish the loss of George; yet it may be able to bring some joy that has been missing from you for awhile.
ReplyDeleteWe recently adopted a 10 month old baby girl, and in my heart of hearts, I think Trace and Quinn are probably looking out for her and happyp to see me experiencing soem of the joy of motherhood. But it is not all easy and certainly not all sunshine and roses. I have moments of utter joy, and yet I still stand in the shower bawling my eyes out some days - and that is just how it is - and probably will be for many years to come.
I am wishing you a completely uneventful, boring rest of your pregnancy. Take care!
Leslie- Thank you so much for the encouragement. I need to be reassured sometimes that what I am feeling (or not feeling) does not define who I am as a mother to George or to this baby.
ReplyDeleteSue- Blogger ate your comment but I wanted to say thank you for your response as well. I am so thrilled for you and your husband on the addition to your family. She seems like such a joy and you are, I'm positive, a wonderful mother to a wonderful little girl:)
Oh Brianna. This expectation, "I should be nothing but excitement and love and nursery decor and birth planning" - frustrates me so much.
ReplyDeleteMy theory is that our culture(s) have played upon the miraculous happy-happy joy joy aspects of pregnancy and birth so much for advertising purposes and for reminding women what a privilege it is to be a mother (so why would we quibble about paid maternity leave etc?). There's not much room in breakfast cereal / nappy commercials for the whole blood and guts reality of motherhood. They leave that to the war movies, when motherhood is equally tough and bloody. But thankfully you don't have to resolve all of society's stereotypes, you just need to forge your own little path around them - and I think you're more than up to that task.
There will be room for these two Briannas - for the one mourning George and the one loving this new bump, and for all the Briannas in between.
Sorry my response to your post is so late, just catching up.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had a solution for you but please know that I felt very much the same way during my subsequent pregnancy, that I had already failed because I simply couldn't do ONLY excitement and love. I never did write a birth plan and even though he's now arrived, he doesn't have a nursery. Let alone decor.
I don't like people seeing me fail and, having already 'failed' in a very public fashion, I didn't want to do so again. I also felt ashamed that I wasn't grateful or happy enough and that others might label me such.
I am in complete agreement with Hanen, pregnancy and motherhood isn't solely about the happy happy joy joy aspects of the process. Even under the best of circumstances. Sometimes I look at all the pretty little pastel vests and so on and can't believe that this how babies are 'sold' to us when the processes of pregnancy, birth and raising small children are often far from pretty and neat. Amazing, yes but made of far tougher stuff than you'd guess.
As you've written in this post, being lucky and unlucky, happy and sad are not mutually exclusive. We can be both these things and all the shades of grey in between. But it isn't easy, I know. xo
This is my first time on your blog. I followed a link from a comment you left on my husband's blog, www.jackatrandom.com
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to thank you for sharing. We lost Margot only two months ago, but we are about to try again and I don't know how I'll feel about this new journey. I expect that I'll feel like you said - "undeniably separate from the rest of the pregnant, baby-having world." It's just comforting to know that there may be other mom's with growing bellies out there who understand.
- Kari