The Time of Times

Now that I’m on the other side of pregnancy, I can tell you with total fearlessness that being pregnant is my least favorite state of being ever. EVER. I hated it so very much, and though there were a few bright spots like baby kicks and ultrasounds, nothing highlights that hatred like having an actual, real live baby which, sleeplessness and fussiness aside, beats the living PANTS off of gestating.

It is only now that she’s here that I feel remotely capable of becoming pregnant again. Seriously. DID NOT LIKE.

Therefore, I would like to tell any woman who hates being pregnant that she has the absolute right to punch ANYONE in the face who tells her a) to savor this “special time”; b) sleep now, for you’ll NEVER SLEEP AGAIN or b) enjoy XX, YY or ZZ before the baby comes, because it’s all downhill from here. I don’t think anyone who says those things really understands what a miserable pregnancy is like, because I will take a screaming, sleepless, fussy Samantha (and we’ve had her at her textbook worst, see: last night) over the vast majority of pregnancy. I’m absolutely serious.

I didn’t admit it much, but I spent the most of pregnancy being very, very anxious. Anxious that I would hate being a mother, anxious that I wouldn’t bond with her or even LIKE her — I felt surprisingly detached from the whole thing, and it freaked me out immensely. I was excited, sure, but it was always ALWAYS tempered with a healthy dose of terror and anxiety. I cried A LOT. One evening late in my third trimester, Adam was joking with me about something totally benign, and when he turned back to me, I was absolutely bawling and muttering incoherent things like, “YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT THIS IS LIKE. YOU AREN’T GIVING BIRTH AND CHANGING YOUR WHOLE LIFE.”

Of course, this is patently untrue, as his life is as irrevocably changed as mine, but as the primary caregiver and carrier, I felt singularly responsible for the whole thing — never mind that Adam is the best kind of partner, and I’ve never been alone in this, not for one second — and worse, I felt WOEFULLY unprepared.

I cried pretty much every day in pregnancy. Mostly from barfing, but just as often from wild hormonal swings and bald terror. Every day. I don’t even think I realized this until now — I don’t think I realized HOW BAD it was until I came out the other side.

Truthfully, I felt this way up until AND INCLUDING the moment my water broke. I kept thinking, over and over again, “I am not ready. I am not ready. I am not ready.”

I loved her — or at least, the idea of her — in the way that I thought if anything happened to her in there or during childbirth, I would pretty much want to die myself, but I promise you, I wasn’t fully ready until I saw her face. And when I did, I was instantly in love with her. Game over. Done. Sold.

I cried every single day in pregnancy. I have not cried ONCE since she’s been born out of anything but happiness and a desire to eat her like a barbecue chicken. I think we all have parts of this that are impossibly hard, and while this IS hard — in the way that a marathon or a long hike is hard, as my friend Jenny said to me not five minutes ago — I had no idea how easy it would seem compared to pregnancy, for at least I have my head about me.

Dude, you guys, I had no idea how miserable I really was. NO IDEA. And you know what else? It’s not about the baby, as pregnancy lovers like to tell you. It’s not because you’re not ready or won’t love your baby, or aren’t grateful enough. It’s because, in my case, my hormones were so completely fucking tweaked which, combined with my general fear of the unknown, created a horrid, horrid state of being.

I’m hopeful that the next time (and, God willing, there will be), I’ll be able to remember this perspective and realize that the other side is more than worth it, and this this, too, shall pass. And hopefully I’ll feel a lot less guilty about it, and will remember to tell all the people who told me to savor this magical, gooey time that no, really, pregnancy sucks, but babies are AWESOME, and to kindly shut up.

By the way? I’m sleeping better now than I did in pregnancy. Two contiguous hours of actual sleep is more than I EVER got in pregnancy. Sleep now because you’ll never sleep again, MY POSTPARTUM BEHIND, FOLKS. You heard it here first.

Totally worth every second of misery. TOTALLY.

Happy, um, day, whatever it is.

*Badly Drawn Boy

65 comments March 25th, 2009