Jumble of things today… the holiday season is bearing down on us (pun intended) and two friends just had babies at home. Oh, I am happy for them but it is so bittersweet. I am so, so done. Having surgery in a month so that can never happen ever again done. It could be worse, I could be pregnant. (well, not really, my fertility not having yet returned and me yet being too paranoid to risk anything that could possibly cause pregnancy). But I have several friends due in December and oh, I do not envy them. I’m remembering suddenly how sick I was a year ago. That was bad. I mean, it was SO bad. For those not on LJ, I came down with a lower respiratory nasty at, oh, 32? 34? weeks… and at 36-ish weeks a rib dislocated while I was coughing. During my pregnancy with Shiny I’d had whooping cough from 22 weeks to 36 weeks and cracked a rib at 28 weeks and THAT was bad enough without a baby landing on the broken rib every time I moved. I joked in early pregnancy that “At least I can’t get whooping cough this time”. No, I got pneumonia instead. It’s very possible that if I had not, Miles would have been born at home.
I do mourn that lost homebirth, for all his birth at the hospital went as well as one could possibly expect under the circumstances. I take that back. It was absolutely unreasonable how badly the epidural went and how much relief it did not give me, but given that I was able to push him out without help and was able to stand minutes after the birth to deliver the placenta, it could have been worse. I’ve hidden many of the midwives on my friend list on Facebook, mostly because it hurts to see radiant, happy mamas glowing over their homeborn babies because I want to be happy for them but just feel this niggling regret that I didn’t, and won’t, and never will again, and don’t even want to at this point. And because there were so many, many lies I was told, that keep getting told, that I just can’t listen to anymore because I’ll say something I’ll regret that won’t make a thing easier for anyone.
It bubbles up because I know the lights are coming. I dreamed of pushing my son out into the world by the light of a Christmas Tree… we brought a tiny little USB tree to the hospital and I could not even see it… I birthed him in the middle of the afternoon and it was behind me and oh well. My Christmas baby turned into a New Year’s Baby and then not even that, he has his own day and it’s probably better but having a due date of December 25 is something I’ll probably never quite let go. I love Christmas lights, and wonder if I will love them so much now…
He took his first stumbling step two days ago. It has gone so fast and I feel like I should be mourning his lost infancy, but I’m not. It has all been harder than I thought it should be, but unlike his sisters, he has not kept me waiting, not since he was born. I have not had to wonder, “When will he….” because he does things so much earlier than I expected. The other two fit the personalities of their births so exactly… Miles makes me wonder if I’d not gotten sick, if he might have come flying into the world at 38 weeks, catching me completely off guard. It would suit him better.
Anyway, I started this a couple days ago, thinking on the way home from the bus, “This walk could be worse. I could be trying to do this without an ample selection of the most comfortable baby carriers known to Mom.”
