The fembot short-circuits
I am well-rehearsed by now. Easily digestible, ten-second soundbites: Oh yes indeed… <chuckle> it’s more than we bargained for. But once they get here, I'm sure we won’t be able to imagine anything different. <smile>
I should have a keypad installed on my belly: PRESS ONE TO DIFFUSE SOCIAL AWKWARDNESS. PRESS TWO TO BASK IN GESTATIONAL GLOW. At which point appropriate blurbs will plop cheerfully from my mouth, satisfying one and all.
I don’t even think about what I say anymore. I just pick one at random and out it bubbles, giving young couples a chance to snap dropped jaws back into place (you don’t think she registered our vicarious terror, did she? Did I look like as much of a bullet-dodger as I felt?) and making book clubs and quilting bees swoon.
I’ve reverted to a state of second-wind denial.
But then Evan ties himself into knots over some horrific injustice (inconveniently crumbly cheese, for instance), flailing and kicking, and before I know it I’m two slammed doors away, hyperventilating. Justin comes in and it pours out: I didn’t want three kids. I don’t want three kids. I can’t do this. I can’t add two infants to THIS. This can’t be my life. I didn’t want three. I never wanted three.
To feel this way — I only wanted one, and even then, I wanted it to be a girl — while they squirm and kick under my skin… it’s traitorous. It makes me unmotherly. They pick up these currents, I have no doubt. Emotional pheromones souring the ph balance of my womb.
I’m not asking for you to prop me up, tell me how well I’m going to cope. When it comes from you, even when it’s said with love and concern, it still comes from you, you with your peanut-gallery tickets. Don’t tell me everything’s going to be fine unless you’re offering to take my place.
Why couldn’t I have just become pregnant with one baby, like everyone else? Why? It would have been so much easier. That’s the truth of how I feel. It bubbles up past my defenses, past the poker-face I’ve adopted: intense, throat-swelling panic.
sweetsalty kate
11 Comments
Reader Comments (11)
You know, most people have these feelings even with one child - you have EVERY RIGHT to feel this overwhelmed about 3 babies at once. You'd be a robot if you didn't! Unmotherly? Nobody except a mother could make herself feel this guilty about being human.
But I'm sorry, I can't help but smile when I think of the amazing things ahead of you. It will be hard, but... you'll see. It would all sound empty if I listed it here. I never wanted 3 kids either..not one little bit... but you know, the Rolling Stones totally nailed it. You get what you need.
xo
I got pregnant with my twins when my daughter was 8 months old and my oldest was 4. Hubby and I had been discussing some kind of permenent birth control but for some reason I thought I had to wait til I was done with breastfeeding before I could get my tubes tied. At 8 or 9 weeks, while I was still moaning over the fact that I got knocked up on our first post-baby date night, I had an ultrasound. I found out that not only was I having two unplanned children, but there had actually been 3 sacs and one "baby" didn't make it. Every ultrasound after that I would ask "Are there still two?", a big part of me hoping that another one would disappear.Now that the boys are 4 I can't imagine life without one of them. I feel so bad that I even thought about wishing either of them away. I still felt it though. I was so overwhelmed by the thought of having 4 children (3 of them under 18 months old). I stressed myself out the whole time I was pregnant. How in the world would I handle 3 babies and a 5 year old?!?!
My biggest regret is wasting so much time worrying about being able to handle all those little ones. Everything worked itself out. I received the extra help I needed (In laws, other family and friends) and when people weren't around I was gifted/blessed with the strength (and tools) I needed to get through the crazy moments.
The unknown is hard for most of us to handle but I promise you, everything will work out just fine. Just like I believe that I'm at the births I'm supposed to be at, I believe that the experiences we are given in life are there to teach us lessons. I used to be a huge control freak (I'm still learning to let go). My twin pregnancy and raising the boys has taught me that I control absolutely NOTHING (and that's ok!). The more I've learned to go with the flow, the easier life has been. I continue to thank my little Things for teaching me that.
I have my peanut gallery ticket - but I'm also living the life. This is not going to be the last time you have "singleton envy". But - BUT...wait until those babies are here and you can just feel yourself swelling with pride when people look at your three boys and make all the typical comments; from "what a beautiful family" to "wow, you sure have your hands full".
You'll deal...this is the hand you've been dealt and you will take it one day at a time. You may not love every minute of it, but one day you will sit back and realize you can't imagine life with just two boys - that indeed, three is the magic number.
Best wishes to you :)~Andrea
i felt a lot of that traitorousness during my pregnancy with O - we went to the IWK for u/s every four weeks just to make sure that things were going okay, given our loss of Finn at 26 weeks the year before. PEI had told us Finn was a girl. when i got airlifted to the IWK, Dr. Vandenhof had, in one fell swoop, given us a possibly life-threatening diagnosis AND said "it's a boy." i'd wanted a girl since i was four. i only wanted girls. i only knew girls. after Finn was born and died, i realized how little gender mattered in the grand scheme of things...but...when, at 16 weeks, Dr. MacLeod (whom i love) said O was a boy, i was completely unprepared for the reaction i had. i was devastated. and i felt stupid, and traitorous, and furious with myself, because he was healthy and i knew better...but for a month or two, all i could think was "i had a boy, and i lost him. and if i'm having another, why couldn't i have just kept the one i had?" i was sick with envy of people with girls. and easy pregnancies, both. and i felt terrible about all the negative feelings i had about O, while he was in there swimming away, needing my love.
i don't have a great tie-up to this novel. i love O with all my heart. he seems unharmed by our secretly tenuous beginning. i still grieve my dream of daughters, almost as i grieve my lost son. almost. and if another pregnancy brought me two more boys, i would go through months of feeling exactly as you do...not just about gender, but about their two-ness. sweet jesus. two at once. it's a lot. it's crazy.
but i think you'll do it just fine, most of the time. until you have to do it, though, give yourself time to feel your way through your sorrow and resentment at not getting the life you wanted or imagined. it doesn't mean you don't or won't appreciate what you have. and in the long run, it's healthier than the Stepford-mom response you're being socially cornered into.
i feel for ya. many hugs, across the puddle.
I hated them. I hated the people who would try and hand me their babies. I hated looking into new mom eyes. I'd stare at people with two thinking WHO WANTS THIS!
I was scared shitless, and I had no one around to make that go away. But it did, eventually.
10 mos later I was pregnant again, and wished for the embryo to expel itself. If I could have made it to frederiction, I would have aborted.
But now they're both sitting her watching big comfy couch, and the memories of the difficulties of year one with two kids have passed and they love each other and harass each other and I can't imagine, despite my longing, life with just one very much.
And rest assured, if I would have had boys, I would have felt the same way. It's not bad-it's just honesty.
Hang in there. Should I send poutine?
The only thing I can come up with is this: you are allowed to have these feelings, they are valid and in no way whatsoever make you a bad mother or a traitor. Isn't panic/fear/overwhelmedness/doubt all normal parts of pregnancy/motherhood? They were/are a normal part of mine.
Sometimes it just boils over for me. The first wave was accepting being pregnant with two - and I think I've just entered the second wave, which is coming to terms with bringing two babies home.. that this is really, seriously happening. I run to my laptop shaking and I can't stop until it's out. And to hear back from all of you, to hear that you've felt the same way.. thank you, so much.
Evan was very 'two' today, and coicidentally I am feeling VERY 'pregnant' today. Which makes a proper response virtually impossible. Frustrating, because your stories and bad-mama moments are sweet, sweet soul-balm. I could write novel-length responses back to each one of you ("..if I only had a brain.. de dah de dah dah de dah!")
Eve, doulala (wow!), andrea.. I am basking in twin-mama heaven. Bon, wow.. even traumatic life events make us think we cerebrally 'get' something (like that gender doesn't matter) but then to still feel that pang, and grief, when you've been blessed... there's so much about becoming a mother that just doesn't make any sense, isn't there? It just 'is'. But when it comes down to it, the only thing that REALLY doesn't make sense is feeling pressured into stepford-esque serenity. I wonder if/when that pressure will lift? Which leads perfectly to thordora. I know just what you mean about being handed babies. I used to really hate that. Truth: babies repulsed me when I was pregnant with Evan. I was so freaked. Anyway, your words are better than poutine. Which leads to M (the 'freaked', not the poutine) - you're right. I felt that way last time, and recovered, so am hoping that I'll also be able to look back and say, "Wow! I was so freaked, and now it's great." Question is, how long will it take before I'll be able to say that? Hmm.
Now, my heart sings to be with her, to hear her belly full of laughs. I never imagined it working out, but it did.
Sometimes the best things are the hardest things I suppose.
Anyway, I think that one of my biggest lessons is that we don't have to love it all the time - not the pregnancy, not the parenting, not the whole package. That it is totally normal (even when not pg with twins) to be bored out of your mind, to feel like running for the hills, or puking your guts up, to have feelings of resentment and bitterness and 'how the hell is this my life?'. People don't talk about it much - because we mama's are supposed to be all sweetness and light and gratitude all the time. It just does not work that way. Give yourself permission to experience all these feelings - even the ones that you don't feel all that great for having. In the end - you'll be much better off than if you stuffed them inside and lived the party line day in and day out.
Like you said in your most recent post - darkness and light - pregnancy, birth and motherhood are all about darkness and light - we need to honour the process in it's entirety.
You rock my friend, you rock as a mama of one, and you'll rock as a mama of three.
Can't wait to meet you, I'll be the one standing on the waterfront holding a Cow's Ice Cream in one hand, a Beavertail in the other and getting Bella to feed me a slice of Sicillian.:)