Early in this pregnancy, I was very sick. Not nearly as sick as I was last time around, but very sick. And tired. Sick and tired. And unable to indulge in those first-pregnancy kinds of indulgences, like going to bed at 5 p.m. or watching favorite bad movies all day, because I had a toddler to care for. And David wasn't able to be as nurturing as he was the first time around, because when I was pregnant with Eric, he was conveniently unemployed until the end of the first trimester, and we had a beloved friend living with us, so the extra burden of taking care of me, and all the things I usually take care of and couldn't, was spread over two other grownups, one of whom did not even have a job to waste energy on. But this time, our beloved friend was living in Boston with his new extra-beloved person, David was working full-time and coming home to an exhausted lover and a toddler who needed care, and we both spent the whole fall at the ends of our ropes.
When I was pregnant with Eric, David would tell me, "you go off to bed. I'll take care of everything," and I would go lie down. A few minutes later, Scott would pop his head in the door: "Do you need anything? Juice? Popsicle? Saltine? By the way, we did the dishes and fed the dogs and cleaned up the living room, so you don't need to worry about any of that."
This time around, I would say, "David, I need to eat something right now or I'm going to throw up," and David would heave a big sigh, hoist Eric off his lap, and grudgingly bring me a bowl of applesauce.
Can't blame him. All available resources were already allocated. But I spent the autumn wondering whether a second baby was a big mistake. "Is it worth it if it wrecks our relationship?" I would lie sickly in bed nurturing morbid fantasies of living in impoverished single motherhood, my kids in substandard daycare while I did word-processing for $7 an hour and David, Mr. Post-Divorce, partied on in his new swingin' bachelor pad and cheated me out of child support.
And then, at about week 20 (only 8 weeks later than the perky nurses at the o.b.'s office told me it would happen), the nausea improved. It's not gone, mind you. My stomach hurts almost all the time, and sometimes I still might throw up (just this morning, I had to pull to the side of the road just in case). But mostly I feel pretty good. And my belly is swelling, and the baby is in there kicking and wiggling and generally making his presence known. And everything--from days with the toddler to keeping groceries in the house to teaching freshman composition at the community college--is going smoothly. David and I have stopped being cranky with each other and have started to remember why we like each other and have pledged to live the rest of our lives together.
And I want another baby. I mean, in addition to the 'nother baby I'm already having.
OK, this time around, it's clear to everyone that there will not be another baby. David and I agree that two is enough for us, that three would probably tax our middle-aged resources to the point that we could not be the kind of parents we want to be. And I'm old: 38 and getting older all the time. I'm one of those mothers for whom having babies and the beginning of noticeable gray hairs and forehead creases have coincided exactly. And I am not going to forget that all fall I kept thinking, every day, "At least I'll never have to be in the first trimester of a pregnancy again," and that, when the trimester ended, and I started having some energy again and then, later, when the nausea abated, I thought, "Thank God, that's over for good." And the third trimester looks to be rougher than my first third trimester was. I'm waking up every morning with a backache; it goes away once I'm up and moving, but I didn't have backache with Eric. And my stomach feels much more obtrusive and heavy this time. At 27 weeks, I'm already having trouble getting my left sock on by myself, and I sometimes, late in the day, find myself trapped on the couch by my own intractable center of gravity. This time around, I suspect, I'll be moaning for the pregnancy to be over long before little Secundus makes his appearance.
But in another life--in another life, one where I found the right person a bit earlier, and had less f*cked-up sh*t from my childhood to overcome before I was fit to be a partner or a mother, and managed to get over that pesky mental illness thing a bit sooner, so I could have started having babies when I was young and energetic--in another life, I just want you to know, there would have been more. In another life, here I'd be sitting at the age of 38, my back aching, my distended uterus lying on my thighs like a sleeping cat, thinking, "I'm glad this is the last one." And down the hall, sleeping contentedly, would be not just two dogs, and three cats, and my beloved partner David, and Eric, our two-year old. But all of his big brothers, too.
Posted by Su Penn at January 17, 2004 07:52 AM | TrackBack