Wednesday, January 09, 2013
pregnancy vitamins? check.
booked ob/gyn and scans? check.
arguments with husband about him not taking seriously my need to eat constantly? check.
filled out waitlist form for childcare for a child not even born yet? check.
(srsly, there are so many babies around here that I know I need to apply now. the fantastic childcare centre A went to is one of my great hopes for sanity and continuing my writing/study career. MUST get in there in late 2014...)
Monday, January 07, 2013
ps...the scan last week was perfectly normal. one embryo, heartbeat 140bps. a little winking light on the screen. a signal to me? but it's just a few cells still.
actually went to buy maternity bathers...too early but with my special needs in the bathers dept I thought I'd get onto it.
when I got to the change rooms it went like this:
girl: "you know these are maternity bathers."
me: "yes I know that"
girl (patronisingly, touching my arm): "that's OK, you can wear them anyway".
me: (almost sotto voce) "well I'll need them".
with the general implication I think that I am way too old to be pregnant, that it is unthinkable. wtf? I am 46, it's true. I'm not particularly old or young looking but I don't look completely past it. Or I don't think so. I guess she was in her 20s so anyone over 40 is ancient. still...
anyway, some notes I wrote out. not positive, and knowing people are actually reading makes me hesitate, but this blog is for me really...
Ambivalence. Dilemma. all those words that fail to express just how insoluble my position is. I can't have freedom and a baby. And I've only just realised how close freedome was. A is 9 and is nearly ready to do adult-type things with us. This baby will be far too young to entertain him/play with him. and it will be ten clear years - I'll be 56 - before we are even at this stage again. A will be 19. and I don't want him to stick around with his Mum and Dad and even little sibling. I want him to go out in the world: travel, work, live in student houses. I'm noticing how irritated I am lately by his little foibles and constant talking, as I never was before, and I know it's because there is now no prospect of it - child disturbance of my thoughts - ending.
No matter what DH says, the burden will fall on me. five years before we even get to the stage of school I'll be 68 when it turns 21. Things I wanted to do with A - say visiting those caves in South America - now will not happen. DH will get a job and travel with a baby will become impossible in the meantime. Sleep, energy - I'm so afraid of the loss. I'm not good at loss.
I can see no way of seeing this through without fucking up what was a perfectly good life. Why didn't I see that before? did I think I needed an excuse not to get a job? was I just trying to restore what I've lost, which is so long ago now, and so unrestorable? why couldn't I just mourn it, bear it? I am afraid to bear loss, to suffer. Am I weak, or have I had enough, too much already?
I have been so lucky - a house, a child, food to eat, travel, leisure to write. Why did I need more? now it turns out it might not be more at all.
---------
2021. I'm 55. A is in the final year of school. #2 is in Grade 2. 10 years of school to go.
+
it's A's sibling, my second cousin, so partly genetically mine.
Love - which will come
can travel with it.
can get nannies, help.
I've come this far and can't reverse it if it's lost.
A wants a sibling.
-
it's not fully mine.
I'm old and it will be harder, and will be an active parent for pretty much the rest of my life now.
loss of work time
just feeling it's wrong; that suddenly I don't want to be pregnant
lost concentration, thinking/writing tie.
fears of the cancer recurring.
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