Three is a Magic Number

Thursday, December 15, 2011

I greet each pregnancy announcement from friends with honest joy. These women with whom I share this unique space between and within blogs...I like them. I love them.

I would, however, be dishonest is I did not say that I also feel a wave of jealousy. Envy, deep green and salty, washes over me.

I wish it could be me. I wish it was me that had a new baby growing in my body. I wish that it was me who would be holding that newborn, inhaling that smell. That smell that is so uniquely baby - sweet, sour and powdery.  I smell it sometimes and there is an almost indiscernible lurch in my breasts. I remember the pleasure of nursing my child, and the delicious yumminess of her dimpled flesh and baby soft feet.

I can see it, you know. My invisible baby. She is a girl and she is wrapped next to my body in a sling. I would take such joy in her, this second chance at mothering.

My mind meanders in this fantasy.  It is lovely and my baby is beautiful.

It is at this juncture that Logical Dawn kicks down the door and shakes the ever loving shit out of me. There also may be some swearing and yelling, too. For Logical Dawn knows that I am not built to mother another baby. Not for a physical reason, my pregnancy was easy by all measures, and my labor was less than 3 hours long. And yes, my husband has had a vasectomy. But details, people, details.

Do I fear another post partum episode? Unequivocally.

But it is more than that.

I never expected to feel so divided about being a Mother. I never expected that this transition, the assuming of a new part of my identity, would take so very much out of me. Some may call it being selfish, and I do too, sometimes. There is a part of me, a large part of me, which needs MY attention. When I do not attend to myself, this part becomes petulant and sick. That illness spreads into other areas until I am forced to withdraw and care for this part of my being. While I am doing this, there is no room for anything or anybody else.

The idea of having another baby and dealing with another -inevitable- depression?  Frightens me beyond words. But, abandoning a dream of having another baby in the hopes that it will be easier, sunnier, More?

I sing to myself:

Three is a magic number
Yes, it is
It's a magic number...


Sept 28, 2007 Gimlet Eye

1 Baleful Regards:

Anonymous said...

I admire your honesty. Too bad more people don't know themselves as well.

 
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