Every once in a while my 20 year old daughter asks a question that makes me stop and think. Who am I kidding? It is a lot more often than every once in a while; it is constant. Sometimes it spawns positive thoughts, sometimes not. But it always gets me thinking which is a good thing.
Alessandra has been working on her memoir for years and will probably get hers published before mine. God knows she has more material than I do! Every once in a while she will ask me several random, out-of-the-blue questions and I know she is about to do some writing. I can't wait yet dread the day her book gets published, all at the same time. After all there is no way to give her mom a ficticious name, right?
Today she texted me, asking questions about my second and third pregnancies: did I know I was pregnant those two times, after having been pregnant the first time? I told her that I honestly didn't remember, then was quick to ask her why she was asking. Was she pregnant? No, she said, I haven't even been pregnant a first time. A smart ass comment for sure, but I got the point.
After breathing the heaviest of all heavy sighs, I began to think back on those days. It's funny how pregnancy evokes all kinds of emotions: fear, joy, relief, disbelief, all depending on which side of the fence you sit. Sadly, I've sat on both sides.
If you're a 21 year old single college girl, like I was decades ago, finding out that you're pregnant brings disbelief, then denial. It brings panic and dread and shame. Words of your mom echo in your head, "If you ever get pregnant, it will kill me. I will never be able to look my friends in the eye again. It will ruin my reputation."
So you do all you can in that situation: you quietly and deliberately end said pregnancy as if it never, ever happened. With its termination will end the shame and life goes on. Or so you thought.
Fast-forward seven years or so. Marriage has come and, with it, expectations of bundle of joys in abundance. Shame rears its ugly head once again as you try to get pregnant, but can't. It doesn't seem fair: when you weren't trying, it happened. Now that you try, it won't happen. Was this some cruel, wicked joke?
So you come to terms with it and decide a career sounds good and babies can wait. Then it happens: you get pregnant! Acceptance and joy come and life is good. Your first baby is born, then you find out, months later, that you are pregnant again. Familiar feelings of dread and happiness co-mingle in your heart and you don't know if you are happy or sad.
When you start to bleed and go to the doctor and there's no heartbeat, you realize you would have gladly welcomed this one, even though you'd given birth only a few months earlier. You lie in bed, feeling like a baby bird that's been pushed out of the nest too early, longing for the arms of your mom to hold you. You return to that day in February, years earlier, when you'd committed a selfish act born out of desperation. You return to the feelings of condemnation so thick you feel as if you can cut them with a knife. You wonder if you will ever get over the loss; you wonder if you ever should.
Babies two and three are born and the years fly by. You raise those three, staying home to take care of them, homeschooling them, trying to cherish each moment. Those babies grow up into full-grown adults, presenting challenges you never thought possible when they were younger. You thought those were the challenging days, yet they were easy compared to this. Sometimes you want them back...
The years fly and you seldom, if ever, think about those first days of pregnancy. Until your youngest asks you a question that brings it all back. You hadn't thought about it, but perhaps it is a good thing you are contemplating it now.
Yes, pregnancy brings many different emotions, depending on which side of the fence you sit.
A Pregnant Pause
