I shouldn’t have said yesterday that I would be wearing each of these four maternity shirts 30 times before the baby was born. At the time, I was thinking about how that made the purchase a good value. This morning as I was putting on the blue one, I thought, “I will have to wear it 29 more times, and each of the other three shirts 30 times each, before this baby is born.” It sounded like forever.
I have been trying to enjoy this pregnancy and not hurry it along, but hurrying things along is in my nature. I am always impatient for the next upcoming event–and then, when the event is done, wishing I’d enjoyed the anticipation more. I’m only able to enjoy the anticipation after-the-fact: thinking later about how much fun it was to wait. I can’t enjoy the waiting itself.
I should be patting my tum and thinking about how great it is to feel like I’m always working on something important even if I’m lying on the bed reading a People magazine. I should be relishing the project of going through baby name books and choosing a name. I should be wanting this to go slowly, since after Paul’s reaction to this pregnancy, I’m lucky to have it at all. Instead I’m measuring, measuring: how many weeks are left, how many months are left, how many shirt-wearings are left.
(Warning: Another long comment.)
I totally feel you. I never get those women who talk about how much they loved being pregnant and weren’t ready for it to be over yet. I mean, there were aspects of pregnancy that I did in fact love, but the waiting part, combined with the headaches and nausea and backache and fatigue and heartburn and other even grosser issues- peeing every time you sneeze, for example, and having no room in your body for even a particle of excess gas- all of these combined to make me very anxious indeed to have the baby right this second. At least you’re to the maternity shirt wearing part. I’m still in the most people don’t even know I’m pregnant part! Some days I just can’t even think about being pregnant so I don’t go insane with impatience!