34 weeks
(God, I suck at titles. That was my feeble attempt to indicate a connection between this post and the last one.)
Do you think that anticipating (a.k.a. obsessing about) all of the possible bad things about pregnancy and parenthood might actually lead to an easier overall experience when it actually happens? Kind of like expecting the worst and being pleasantly surprised, I guess. Leave it to me to be an optimism about my own pessimism, but yesterday I was thinking about Ms. 33 Weeks' very likely total absence of panic and despair, and I wondered if perhaps she's in for a very rude awakening. I have a feeling that giving birth and having a newborn isn't much fun even in the best of circumstances, but if you're expecting it to be such a positive experience and then you have a 48-hour labor or the kid screams for a week straight, it seems like it'd almost be worse than if you were expecting things to suck. At least then you could say I told you so.
This is probably a really awful comparison, but I'm thinking of my wedding. I was not at all interested in the planning process, and I was completely convinced that I was not going to enjoy a bit of it. I don't dance, I hate having my picture taken, I prefer not to be the center of attention. And yet when it came right down to it, I had a pretty good time. But I have a feeling that if I was an eager bride, the litany of things that went wrong--from 9/11 to lighting the unity candle from the wrong taper to M. Defarge's friends vomiting off the terrace onto the golf course--would have undone me entirely.
So maybe my Bad Attitude will be my salvation rather than my downfall. If I expect hyperemesis gravidarum (damn medical textbook editing job and its accompanying useless knowledge!) maybe I won't even be nauseated. If I expect antenatal AND post-partum depression (and honestly, I don't think that's a completely unreasonable expectation), maybe I'll love being pregnant, the way my (albeit non-chemically imbalanced) mom professes to have. If I expect to not sleep, maybe I'll get one of those model children who pass out for several hours at a time. If I expect M. Defarge to abdicate all responsibility and play video games, maybe he'll turn into some sort of superspouse and wear the kid on his back while he cooks a three-course meal.
Or at least maybe thinking that will be enough to get me over this latest bout of crazy.
The funny thing is that for awhile I thought I'd made great strides in this area. I always said that I'd wait until my panic mellowed into a "oh, what the hell" attitude, and I had started to think I was there. M. Defarge and I agreed on a timeline of sorts and I felt relatively fine with it. Now I'd go so far as to say I've pretty much come to terms with the pregnancy part of the equation. It's everything after that that I'm still working on. (I have a huge mental block about breastfeeding. The whole idea completely repulses me.)
If nothing else, I guess I'll wait and see what happens with Baby X. (Not that his mom will probably send me updates.) Ah, schadenfreude.
Do you think that anticipating (a.k.a. obsessing about) all of the possible bad things about pregnancy and parenthood might actually lead to an easier overall experience when it actually happens? Kind of like expecting the worst and being pleasantly surprised, I guess. Leave it to me to be an optimism about my own pessimism, but yesterday I was thinking about Ms. 33 Weeks' very likely total absence of panic and despair, and I wondered if perhaps she's in for a very rude awakening. I have a feeling that giving birth and having a newborn isn't much fun even in the best of circumstances, but if you're expecting it to be such a positive experience and then you have a 48-hour labor or the kid screams for a week straight, it seems like it'd almost be worse than if you were expecting things to suck. At least then you could say I told you so.
This is probably a really awful comparison, but I'm thinking of my wedding. I was not at all interested in the planning process, and I was completely convinced that I was not going to enjoy a bit of it. I don't dance, I hate having my picture taken, I prefer not to be the center of attention. And yet when it came right down to it, I had a pretty good time. But I have a feeling that if I was an eager bride, the litany of things that went wrong--from 9/11 to lighting the unity candle from the wrong taper to M. Defarge's friends vomiting off the terrace onto the golf course--would have undone me entirely.
So maybe my Bad Attitude will be my salvation rather than my downfall. If I expect hyperemesis gravidarum (damn medical textbook editing job and its accompanying useless knowledge!) maybe I won't even be nauseated. If I expect antenatal AND post-partum depression (and honestly, I don't think that's a completely unreasonable expectation), maybe I'll love being pregnant, the way my (albeit non-chemically imbalanced) mom professes to have. If I expect to not sleep, maybe I'll get one of those model children who pass out for several hours at a time. If I expect M. Defarge to abdicate all responsibility and play video games, maybe he'll turn into some sort of superspouse and wear the kid on his back while he cooks a three-course meal.
Or at least maybe thinking that will be enough to get me over this latest bout of crazy.
The funny thing is that for awhile I thought I'd made great strides in this area. I always said that I'd wait until my panic mellowed into a "oh, what the hell" attitude, and I had started to think I was there. M. Defarge and I agreed on a timeline of sorts and I felt relatively fine with it. Now I'd go so far as to say I've pretty much come to terms with the pregnancy part of the equation. It's everything after that that I'm still working on. (I have a huge mental block about breastfeeding. The whole idea completely repulses me.)
If nothing else, I guess I'll wait and see what happens with Baby X. (Not that his mom will probably send me updates.) Ah, schadenfreude.
posted by Madame Defarge at 4:19 PM
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