I’m roused by the creak of my child’s bedroom door. I sigh heavily and look at my watch. It’s before six. I watch my nearly-three-year-old stand dazed in the hallway whilst he gains his balance, clutching his cuddly toy monkey. He then shuffles towards me and, on reaching me, exclaims with wide-eyed wonder, “Mummy, you are beautiful”.
Who could fail to smile at such a greeting? It also utterly disarms me.
First, allow me to fill in the rest of the picture. I’m sprawled on top of the duvet nearly full-term pregnant. I’m at the stage where turning over in bed is no longer a roll, but a three-point manoeuvre. I’m wearing old threadbare pants because their elastic has gone and they’re the only ones which fit right now. My t-shirt has become a crop-top, revealing my bulbous belly with its red stretch marks on the underside.
I feel exhausted and anything but beautiful. Yet I can’t burden him with my insecurities. So I smile and graciously accept his compliment. “Thank you darling”. I find a peace within. Children can be our teachers.
I’ve been much more accepting of the strangeness of pregnancy this time around. Unfortunately I discovered that I was pregnant on Christmas Eve, when, after preparing some gravy for Christmas dinner, I found myself sitting on a chair nibbling a cracker trying to stave off a familiar nausea. The dread of pregnancy sickness descended (I refuse to call it ‘morning sickness’ as its symptoms are not confined to the morning). From that moment until mid-March I didn’t make another meal. These were months of misery, shuffling around the house with my sick bowl because any motion could trigger retching.
At least in my first pregnancy, I discovered that I was pregnant before the sickness arrived and so had a pleasant few weeks feeling the joy of new life percolating through my body. This time around, there was no time for celebration. Apparently there’s a phrase for pregnancy sickness in Madarin which translates as ‘sick with joy’. Whilst many choose not to disclose their pregnancy in the early stages, I never feel I have much choice. When someone would ask, ‘how are you?’ I’d feel compelled to answer truthfully, ‘absolutely dreadful, I feel sick all day and all night and can’t cook or read or write and if I focus on anything for too long I throw up - because I’m pregnant’. The answer was invariably, ‘oh, how wonderful, congratulations!’ And I’d think, didn’t you hear the first part of what I just said? Pregnancy is a strange kind of erasure. You find yourself already giving way to another story.
Once the sickness retreated in the second trimester I was flying. Wellness felt like a superpower. I stopped thinking about being pregnant and just cracked on with work and life with my beautiful toddler. Sure, I had to buy some larger bras and bits and pieces, but otherwise I was oblivious. My body expanded and stretched with minimal discomfort second time around and I just let it do its thing.
I’ve also been in a sort of denial. As readers may remember, I’m pretty scared of birth. Less scared now, having survived it once, but still ever-mindful of the many things which can go wrong for mother or baby. I had an appointment with my midwife a few weeks ago to talk through my birth plan. What’s the point of having a plan when anything could happen? She encouraged me to articulate what I’d like to happen. I said I’d like to avoid induction this time, go into labour naturally and then have my baby in the hospital with minimal intervention. Whilst few emerge from birth unscathed, I hope to emerge as little scathed as possible. My midwife then ran through a range of scenarios. ‘How would you feel about a caesarian?’ ‘Well, I don’t want one, but if something happens and you end up cutting me open, I won’t have much choice will I? Similarly, I’d rather someone didn’t slice into my vagina or that it didn’t tear, but I don’t imagine it will be in my hands’. My midwife and her trainee eyed each other with concern and asked me, again, to imagine what might go right about my birth. I shrugged. Whatever happens I will have to breathe through it and endure it until I am on the other side of it and then I’ll deal with the fallout and hopefully my baby will be born healthy and the love I’ll feel will make it all bearable once again.
I also feel a degree of ambivalence about the idea of a new baby. Friends with two children have given us many warnings that the first year is particularly hard, juggling the demands of a toddler with those of a newborn. BFG and I are bracing ourselves for a year of sleep deprivation and frayed tempers. It’s also impossible to imagine who this new person will be and how they’ll change our life.
I’m aware that we’ve had a relatively easy ride with our first child so far - a good sleeper, a good eater, healthy and happy. As one friend put it, ‘you’re due an absolute demon’. My friend went on to deliver an excellent analogy about the predicament of being an expectant new parent: ‘It’s like a meal at someone’s house. You take what you’re given and you just have to eat it and smile and nod and say “yummy”’.
And so you leave me, seated at the table, drumming my fingers, waiting to see what we’re served.