Confessions and excuses (or wah wah wha, woe is me)
Where to start? Confessions or excuses? Hmmm.
Excuses: None really. Just busy, Tired (with a capital T), overwhelmed with pregnancy and work, conflicted. Hmmm. Conflicted? Sort of leads in to confessions.
Confessions:
1. I’m conflicted because I don’t want to remember that I am infertile. I want to pretend that I am a ‘normal’. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to forget the people and the support they’ve given to me but I do want to forget the pain and the struggle and the uncertainty of infertility. I want to pretend my life only began after my 5-month anatomy scan. It is a horrible feeling. I have needed all of you so much over the past few years and now? Now I just want to be pregnant and pretend that there is a Santa Claus, and Easter Bunny, and a Tooth Fairy. How awful is that!! I feel awful about it. Oh and don’t think I’ve put my head completely into the sand because here comes confession number 2.
2. I have and sometimes (as sickening as it may be) allow myself to be totally sucked into tragic thoughts. Somehow, in all my craziness, I must think that if I let myself imagine the worst then worst won’t happen or at least I’ll be prepared (my god, what a freaking nutcase hoot is that?) I will let scenarios rise up in my brain about all the bad things that can happen between now and the birth of my daughter. It is awful but I think I must tell myself that I am making myself stronger in case something bad does happen. Intellectually I know that is ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE but it is some weird protective mechanism I have latched on to. Thankfully, I will tell you that recently as soon as I recognize what I’m doing I try to very quickly stuff my head back in the sand and PRETEND all is well in the world and that my pregnancy is no different than all the ‘normals’ out there. P.S. I hate using the word ‘normals’ expecially in a quotation mark but I hope you all will know what I mean. I pretend that I’m a ‘normal’ which brings me to confession number 3.
3. I’m a belly toucher. I don’t mean to be and much of the time I don’t even recognize that I’m doing it until I realize I’ve been waiting for the elevator for two minutes and the whole time I’ve been touching my belly. At that moment, I move my hand away as if my body were on fire. It is horrible. I want to touch my belly and I feel guilty about wanting to touch my belly in public. I so don’t want to inadvertantly hurt an unknown infertile but I want to touch my belly damn it. I know! It’s bad.
I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’ve turned into a spoiled child and want it all my way, wah wah wah. I am so thankful EVERY DAY to be pregnant with what so far (knock wood) has been an entirely uneventful pregnancy and yet here I am whining about being conflicted. I am one of the luckiest people I know — I’m a pregnant infertile woman. I have a healthy, growing baby inside of me who moves all the time and doesn’t let me forget for a minute she’s there. I’m not kidding myself and I won’t EVER forget the struggle (I can’t) but for a little while I want to pretend. Childish, I know.
So, what am I going to do? I will stop avoiding my blog. I will keep updating about the pregnancy. I will allow myself to pretend for a while that my being here and being pregnant is the most normal thing in the world. I will worry about the things fertile people worry about like the delivery and breastfeeding or will my friends throw me a babyshower. I will just let myself be what I’m going to be.
