Writing about it

Well. If 26th of May was my last post, I must have a lot to say. I do have a lot to say. And its been muttering below the surface for months. Like a running commentary on what I could be saying if I had time to blog. A blubbering brook. No, that's not the right terminology. Although if you had an ear to my bedroom door some nights...

Its funny though. Its a harder subject than I thought it would be. Being pregnant. Universal, ineffable, particular. Lots of people get pregnant. Not lots of people write about it, certainly not well. Its such a strange, interior space. And so changeable. And so all consuming. Hard to find reality checks - is this interesting? Is this just pure complaining now? Who am I writing this for? Its like describing a fast moving river that you watch every day, and some days you are in it and some days it is in you, and somedays its just a boring mass of water moving along doing its thing.

I tried keeping a diary - a "one day I'll give this to you to read, my child" sort of diary. That was cute, for about a day.

But its weird writing for an imaginary reader who is so close and yet so unimaginable. I'd like to keep an honest document about what its like to be pregnant but I'm sure you don't want to read about your parents' sex life under the influence of hormones and whether or not your dad helped with perineal massage.

I couldn't get this image out of my head of my future child turning the pages of this notebook (and how long it took me to even select the right notebook to write in) and rolling his or her teenage eyeballs at every paragraph.

If a girl, well, how lovely, maybe she'll be pregnant one day and can have a document of all her mother's aches and rashes and cravings and insecurities and... and fights with her father, and yeast infections... er, no. Besides, I'm having a boy.

So, the diary is now a blurt place for all my angst, not fit for any sharing.

I didn't want this to be a blurt place though. Daily complaints of nausea and pants that don't fit and stresses about forgetting to do pelvic floor exercises. I wanted it to be like Anne Enright's hilarious book, Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood. Witty and tongue in cheek and full of solid, really useful advice (Her best chapter is called "How to Get Trolleyed While Breastfeeding")

But I'm not her. Sigh. So in the next few days before this wriggly little guy burrows his way out of here, I will do my best to piece together a few thoughts to answer the question an old friend asked the other day: "So what's it like being pregnant?" And for the rest, I will just see what comes up.

Disclaimer: that's not a promise. I am 38 weeks. He could come any day now. I've had a busy, active pregnancy thus far. But since I stopped working I have been mute and bovine. Oh who am I kidding. I have been that way for most of the past 8 months. Words skim past like agile fish and I swipe at them with clumsy paws, grasping at approximations. Oh, who needs precision anyway? Why search for "purple" when "blue", or even "green" will do? Oh, I've called you by your real name all your life, why do you mind if I suddenly call you Susan for no apparent reason?