Friday, September 10, 2010

on gratitude

It occurs to me, after re-reading a few of my latest blog posts, that I sound rather cranky lately.

To some extent, I am. I don't think there's much you can do about the fact that the last weeks of pregnancy are, unavoidably, uncomfortable. I don't sleep much, between the getting-up-to-pee and the hips-aching-from-side-sleeping phenomenon. (In general, I eagerly look forward to the day when I don't have the urge to pee all the time.) I feel short of breath pretty often. The BH contractions are more frequent - not enough to worry about, but they worry me anyway. The morning vomiting is not my favorite thing.

But there is something much deeper than all the temporary discomfort, and I doubt I've made that clear enough lately, both here and within myself: that I am grateful. My eagerness to finish this pregnancy is motivated somewhat by the discomfort, but much, much more by hardly being able to wait to meet this baby. And there are a million times during the day when I have to pinch myself (metaphorically) to believe that such a thing is actually happening to me, to us.

Six weeks, six days until the due date. Maybe we'll meet you earlier, maybe later. But after all these months - which seem both like the longest and the quickest months of my life - you are still real. You are still kicking and hiccuping, in spite of all my anxiety and doomsday fears. Sometimes I can hardly think about the day you will arrive, not because I'm afraid of it (well, I am, a little bit) but because the whole idea of that day fills me with such joy that I think I might burst into a million pieces just imagining it.

You know how, when you try to imagine that the universe goes on and on forever and ever, how your brain just stops at a certain point because you can't envision something so expansive? I wonder if that's why I focus so much on the discomfort of right now: because that's manageable, most of the time, and small enough to be real. Whereas this child is such a big dream, has been so unattainable for so long, that my brain just shuts off when I try to think about really being a parent.

There's fear there, for sure. I still imagine things that can go wrong, that do go wrong. And fear can make you cranky. But, bit by bit, it's being swallowed by something else. I think it's joy. And gratitude.

That's all. I just wanted to make sure you know that. And remind myself, while I'm at it.

5 comments:

  1. I'm very excited for you and your pregnancy has given me a lot of hope for my own personal situation. Wow, only 6-7 more weeks until you meet your beautiful baby! Very exciting. Hope the last part of your pregnancy brings a little less nausea.

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  2. SO happy for you! Nausea and achiness is perfectly crank-worthy; none of us would see that as a lack of gratitude, but it's nice to read your happy thoughts too.

    And your post on advice was brilliant!

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  3. What a sweet and incredibly true post. You really put into words what so many of us IF girls feel during pregnancy. I often said that I complained about things just to remind myself that I was actually pregnant. :)

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  4. I struggle with this a lot -- I am incredibly grateful, but also incredibly cranky a good deal of the time. Pregnancy and parenthood are physically and emotionally challenging things. I don't think that struggling to get there makes that any less true.

    So excited for you that you've only got 6 weeks to go!!

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  5. Argh, I'm so sorry your nausea came back. I'm still waiting for mine to go. Pleeeaaaaase don't let me get it back....
    You said just what I'm thinking. All I do is write about how awful the symptoms are, but of course I wouldn't give it up for anything. I know it's naive, but it's also funny, getting pregnant took so long and seemed so hopeless, I thought for sure it was the hard part and once I was finally pregnant it would be all rainbows, glitter and unicorn farts. I think it just shocked me that pregnancy is actually really hard! Worth it, but hard!

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