I feel like a little girl that woke up Christmas morning to a bare tree. No presents. No ornaments. Just a tree. Taunting me.
Intellectually I understand that a “due date” is an estimate, a guess. But I was not prepared to see this day arrive without a baby in my arms. Em was three days early. “Get ready! Second babies come early,” said so many well meaning people. And here I am. Without my baby.
Intellectually I know that “Babies come when they are ready” and yet there is a little girl inside me that feels like maybe I missed my window. Maybe s/he isn’t coming. And here come the tears that I have held inside for the most part all day.
This whole pregnancy has been different. Not finding out the gender of the baby has meant that I have lived in this moment, in this pregnancy, instead of wishing it away for the baby girl that would be in my arms, as I did with Emily. It hasn’t been until the last few days that I have even really imagined it…. The baby. Our baby. And as the days passed I felt more and more ready.
And then ready turned in to an almost feverish desire.
Last night I dreamt that the doorbell rang and I opened the door and there s/he was. In a little outfit. With a little hat and a little suit case and a little smile. And I opened the door and Baby D walked in on tiny bowed newborn legs. And they were home.
And then I woke the rest of the way up and my baby was gone. Our baby was gone.
In the last few years things have changed for me. I have remarked more than a few times that it feels like someone else’s life or that my luck has turned around. I found the boy that became the man that gave me a fairy tale wedding and a home… And a baby. And that baby was going to come on time. Because that is just how this new life works. I act stunned and revel in my good fortune… But somehow in the last few years it has happened.
I guess I expect things to go my way.
But what if this is the end of that road? I have said to every midwife, every practitioner I have seen this pregnancy that this is my Labor & Delivery Do-Over. It is supposed to be my all empowering natural birth, the one that heals me. And now I have this ridiculous seed of doubt. Because of the date. January 15th. Every time it pops up on another device, my phone, my iPad, my computer “Due Date” I think … Right. Sure. If this baby even wants me anymore.
And I go back in my room and I bounce on my birth ball and I watch more Sex and the City reruns and I cry like a teenage girl. And I look at my swollen feet and my hand without an engagement ring because just this week it has gotten too small. And I whisper between the sobs “Come out, baby… C’mon out baby, please…”
And I pull it back together. And tomorrow I suspect I will go to work and make jokes about how I might be pregnant forever. But today…. Today I am not weepy because I fear I will be pregnant forever. But because I am afraid that Baby D will never come back. I saw him/her this morning. I saw my baby and I didn’t put my arms around them fast enough, or smell his/her head. Or let their fingers curl around mine….
And as absurd as it is… Now it feels like I will never get the chance. Because today is January 15th.
Excitement on the side 
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Ah man! So that’s what happened. Someone got us mixed up. I’m not yet 28 weeks and my water broke yesterday. So it’s hospital bed rest for me, and hopefully for a long time so baby can keep growing.
Baby D is coming very, very soon. Maybe tomorrow will be “Christmas morning.”
Toulouse
http://www.toulouseandtonic.com
Damn the Universe!! I’ll be thinking about you, bed rest sounds rough!! :(
Baby D isn’t “late.” S/he is just playing hide and seek with you. Can’t you hear that giggling? :)
It’s not the end, Kelly. It’s just a blip. After Baby D is here, things can back to a new normal, and the perfect life you have now will still be perfect, even if it’s a brand new perfect. (I’m counting on that for you, because my new perfect will change too….but can’t it still be perfect?) Your run of perfect is not yet over!!! lol Love and kisses and hang in there.
at least when you hallucinate with most drugs, you get to decide beforehand that hallucinate/go crazy is what you have decided to do. with estrogen overdose, you don’t get to pick. when you are holding that baby in your arms, kelly, you’ll laugh at this. maybe. okay, i’ll laugh at this. while i’m there taking care of you while you take care of him/her. i love you.
Don’t worry I won’t say don’t cry because letting out what ever you feel is always a good thing. It’s never good to hold in what you feel inside.
But I will say this- years from now you will look back on this and smile; because you will be telling this same story to your baby now grown.
Your baby will more than likely come to you within a day or the course of this week.
So don’t worry.
Blessings to you and yours and take care.
As someone who carried two babies forty-two weeks let me just tell you how much fun you’re going to have imagining all manner of cruel and unusual ways to kill the people who think that just because you’re past your due date they can start saying things like “aren’t you ready to have that baby?” and “are you really still pregnant?” and “haven’t you evicted the little bugger, yet?”
Kelly I totally understand expectations of delivery. My first was a week late, the next two were 6 weeks early so I was positive my fourth would be early. We waited and waited I was on bed rest we did what we needed to get her to that mark and it came and went. She came on her due date when my c-section was scheduled. Babies are funny that way just like when they are here they do what they want to do when they want to do it no matter what we want lol Cry all you want I’m sure MQD will gladly buy all the tissues you need :)
Awwww, Sweets. Don’t cry. You forgot part of the “Ideal Delivery”. The part where you wake up in the middle of the night from a dream where you were swimming to find that your water broke & is EVERYWHERE. Baby D will come when s/he is ready. Being the perfect baby takes alot of prep work, y’know.