Undone
Photo by Katie Long.
I am weeks away from giving birth to our second child. I’m hopeful for a VBAC and have reason to believe it could be a success. But after a firmly breech baby the first time around, and an ever-shifting baby this second time, the potential birth paths that are illuminated for me one week seem to change the next, and again the next. It is a lot to process day to day. I have recently told those closest to me that I sense my focus narrowing tangibly. At this point it’s hard to relate to anything outside the context of my pregnancy and birth.
And yet today I was struck with the distinct sensation of underachievement. My mind wandered back through the past year and wondered what I had done to be proud of—like, in my career or art—and was hard pressed to ID much of anything. I casually lamented to a friend, peppered it with jokes, tried to keep it light. She reminded me that I’m growing an entire human right now, and that alone makes me a success. She meant it, and I felt her heart extending toward mine, and I appreciated it. But quietly, mentally, I rebuttaled that our society doesn’t recognize childbearing as a valid reason to slow down. Sometimes it pretends like it does but it just doesn’t.
Just in time, the faces of people who DO genuinely recognize childbearing as a reason to slow down appeared in my mind. They believe it not as a comfort to get us through the blues, but as a principal and a truth. They believe it as a season of slowness and of stretching, of questioning and remapping, of going gently so as to notice the grief and the growth in the everyday of childbearing. “In every pregnancy there is an undoing and a rebuilding of self,” my doula wisely offered. She suggested this back when I thought I was coming undone...and then I really came undone...but no, surely it is NOW that I’m coming undone. (et cetera)
No, our society doesn’t support a big ol’ healthy pause in the childbearing year, but there are individuals who do. Find those people and hold their faces in your mind, keep ‘em posted. Tell them you’re coming undone each time you’re coming undone. Instead of saying “no you aren’t!” they’ll say yes, my dear, you are.
