The view from here

It is all coming back to me now. This pregnancy thing is really somethin'... Life changing, eh?

I have been talkin' it up quite a bit how I am not really 'into' the pregnancy this time. But this is a lie because, a.) I wasn't really into it last time and b.) I am into it.

Around 4pm daily, little Brandi Chastain sets to testing the boundaries of the current accommodations. I inhale a bit sharply then exhale with my best yogic technique and remind myself of the growing being in 'd'arre' as Miss Fancy would say. I take the moments I have, 15 minutes on my butt in the car home, to connect with my baby. (Whom I am really expecting to be another girl, because I feel like it this week.) It is not unheard of for a tear or two to trickle out and many deep thoughts tend to accompany them. Something of nervousness, of delight, of fear and of grieving for what I will let go of in the days ahead. The latter reflecting the change I understand more fully this time.

Before I became this marshmallow.. a person who weeps at the sight of an elbow through the skin, the person who says things like maybe a two year parenting leave would be good? or ... part-time is more than enough ... or, the biggie, 'it's the most fun I've ever had' .... Before then I was pretty confident about stuff all the time. And I didn't believe in synergy, just so you know.

Now? Now, I'm scared shitless of being a parent of two. I worry tons for both these kids. We're not up to it. It is 'unfair' -- as in nuthatch is not going to get anywhere near the sort of attention Miss Fancy did, and that's not fair. Or, Miss Fancy is being forced to deal with too many changes in the four months either side of her 2nd birthday and that's not fair... I am afraid, and you know it's not just the hormones. I just feel a sudden level of risk that is not usual.

I have had to date a quite sedentary life really, -- I can hear you all gasp, yes. After a very hectic teenagerage at about 21 in the year June to June 1990-91 ... I dug up the p-man in a ditch of a Roman Fort in Britain, bought my first home, got a steady job and was well... pretty much done. Nothing since then -- what's that? 5 years? (I wish) -- nothing since then has really required much planning or determination; a lot of pieces falling into a lot of places.

My apartment was great; stayed there 11 years. The p-man thing well it did take us 5 years to settle the terms of our existential pre-nup and then another 5 to write all the riders... then four years later I guess we made room for someone else besides our respective egos.. That first job became a couple degrees a good librarian gig and some professing out at the University. But, all this stuff was awfully organic.

Daily pokes from the littlest of fingers; those on again, off again, aches as a knee juts out to test a someone's new nerve endings against my old ones.. they seem, strangely, not organic. They are alarming, determinative. A wee voice calling to me, so what are you going to do? How will it be, mama? And, me lacking answers... lacking unilateral answers. Sharing, in fact, **** on a good day **** in the curiosity myself. Gawd, what am I gonna do. hmmmmmmm

I listen to these questions. Each one challenging me to consider a changed life -- to make some decisions. To take some turn, somewhere... In my addiction to a responsive way of life these moments of physical assertion from my baby prod me to find the way forward. To feel independent in some liminal moment such that I might change everything, at least a bit. To live beyond the linear and face a full, full, overfull range of choices. How lucky am I??

I was a great skeptic of the very concept of synergy prior to blogging, then I read this ying post to my yang from BMC last night. I feel the same and then again not, as her. Where she is struck at the terms of her latest pregnancy having made some decisions for her, I see this latest one of mine as a break from all ton of lifemaking by inertia. What else has up to now given my life the dynamism that my children have? Nothing, really. As I often counsel myself 'a child's life is change' after a long time of same I am glad I have this route/root of change.

Despite the dichotomy of my choices... I hope I can somehow share with her as she also embraces what sounds like challenge and risk. I must add at this juncture... I do love having an entire globe of mothers' reflections to choose from daily on the Internet, helps a lot. Thanks, Cookie.

Lifemaking by inertia might be on hold for a while for me. And, remember dear readers at this stage to contemplate inertia at all is saying a lot. -- current pregnancy weight gain nearing 40lbs, this is my final report.