Today is rather anti-climatic.
For the past 9 months, September 4 (or thereabouts) has been the countdown day - almost like counting down to Christmas or counting down to the day I finally turned 16. Except ... Christmas and my 16th Birthday were guarantees. The countdown ended at a specific time, with a specific result. I woke up this morning feeling a bit like I'd been taken advantage of by an oily salesman. Ta da! I have arrived - only to discover that there is no prize to be had today for patiently (and sometimes not-so-patiently) counting down the months, weeks, days.
Intellectually, I knew that a due date, is in essence, the sort-of mid-point of a 5-week window in which you are "full-term." Yet when the entire world revolves around the calendar flipping each week based on an end date, it's a little disconcerting to arrive at said date only to realize nothing is happening.
And I mean nothing.
What this morning did bring was a lot of thought about how much my life has changed in the last 40 weeks. If someone would have asked me 40 weeks ago today what I would be doing on September 4, 2007, there are several words that would not have entered my answer: Pregnant. Baby. Labor. Childcare. The Frontier. New Jobs (yes, that is plural). Moving. And so forth.
I realized in the past 40 weeks, my life has taken a drastic turn, and not just the normal "we're having a baby" drama. In the past 40 weeks:
-I have interviewed more than 40 times, all of them while pregnant
-I have had four jobs and worked for three companies
-I have been laid off twice (yikes - is there a pattern?)
-I have moved 2,300 miles
-I have gone from a brand-new apartment to the Hobbit Hole
-I have gone from the world of big-business, high-stress career to tiny, quiet agency which is helping set me on course for independent consulting
-I have gone from my isolated "friends are family" life to "family is only a few hours away" life
That is in addition to all the fundamental changes that rush through you when you're confronted with the impending title of "parent." I've begun to see Himself in the light of a father (odd, since he's been a father the entire time I've known him - though it's somehow different when he is the father of your child, not someone else's). I don't think anyone thought it was possible, but I think I've become slightly more domestic (emphasis on the "slightly" part, don't get too excited). My priorites have shifted. My perspective has shifted. I've spent the past 40 weeks sharpening my worrying skills.
And there are other, more subtle changes - Mexican doesn't hold nearly the same appeal as it once did for me (it's been gone so long, I'm not sure the appetite I had for south-of-the-border food will ever return). My body is now the full-fledged body of an adult woman, bearing the scars of childbirth before I've even birthed a child. Having a few empty days on the calendar a week feels refreshing rather than feeling like indisputable evidence of a massive failure in social achievement. I turn my head at every pregnant woman or every infant I see - wondering how I look, wondering what Baby Girl will look like. My daydreams are of the kind of personality she'll have (though I have a good idea she'll be like her father - she's already going on stubborn and late), who she'll take after, what she'll do with her life, how many tears I'll shed over her.
40 weeks ago, I was on top of the world. Now, today, September 4, I am still on top of the world - it just happens to be another planet all together.
1 comment:
Funny that this is what you are pondering today. I just told Goose about the night before the day he was born. I was hooked up to IV's in the hospital with pre-eclampsia, knowing I would give birth the next day, three weeks early.
I'm glad that you are slightly more domestic. You certainly are cleaning like it's your occupation.
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