Well, No baby today as Terry had predicted. I still have a few hours but I think a baby tonight is highly unlikely! Mom and Dad came by today to deliver the crib that Julie is loaning me. I scrambled to get my office/baby room picked up before they arrived. Sean also brought over my large file cabinet with Terry’s help so the office looks much better now. I don’t expect to have the baby sleep in there for some months but once I’m back at my desk it will be nice to have a place to keep the baby close by. Like Jennifer Fisher says, I will represent “true cottage industry” with the baby in a crib by my side while I work!
This morning when I woke up I felt less despairing about my changing life, less like things might never be the same between Sean and I, that our life as a couple is over. I know things will change irrevocably but I’m not going to mourn that change because I stay me, Sean stays Sean. The past few days I have felt like I was going on a long trip, far away from everything I know. In a way that is true but I remembered this morning that I am going on this trip with the person I love most in this world, my husband and together we are going to take care of, raise and enjoy a child that will be a part of both of us. I’d be thrilled if it wasn’t so scary, if I knew already the joy and contentment other parents I know seem to possess.
I keep thinking about what it is I want to accomplish before the baby arrives, this being my last chance! But then, the time to get things done is gone already. The present is a time for me to relax and rest, to eat and read. Last summer Sean and I wanted to go back down to Utah for “one last trip” before the baby. By the time summer arrived the tempature soured in the desert and I felt less and less comfortable and fit to tackle one of our usual epic vacations, especially a trip that had all the pressure of being “the last” for a good long time. Knowing my physical limits had changed with the pregnancy I knew that the “one last trip” had already happened. Just weeks before I became pregnant Sean and I were on one of our best desert trips in the Southwest and I felt strong and wonderful-that was the last trip and we didn’t know it. Same thing now, the time of productivity and accomplishment as I usually define it is over for the time being. These things will return all too soon really, I need to enjoy this change of pace and the imminence of the baby.
Actually, as I write down these thoughts I’m struck by how great this change will be: with the baby our lives will change and that’s so much better than staying the same year after year. When I think about travel I’m divided about going back to the places I’ve fallen in love with before, and experiencing something new. Newness will be a great opportunity, we’ll become explorers!
Now I’m feeling self conscious about you readers who are already parents. I’ll remind myself that you probably aren’t reading this far. One, you’re not interested in my musings because your lives are already so full with your children and two, you don’t have time, because you have children (and I won’t put an age cap on that relationship). I know if you read this far you will have a smile on your face and tell me that children are the most wonderful thing ever to happen and that you wouldn’t go back for anything and that your lives didn’t take on meaning in the same way before children. . . on and on. I hope you are right, or at least that I will feel that way too. To those puzzled by my hesitations, my slight sadness, it’s because I’ve enjoyed a long marriage, just the two of us. We’ve had wonderful experiences, great challenges, accomplishments and satisfying quiet too; I think it would be too bad if I discount those 9 years in light of the baby, so that’s where I’m coming from. I hope we will be as happy as you readers say we will be.
My greatest comfort right now: knowing that I already love this baby.