Urban Drool

The Lucinator and I went and visited my mom the other day, and her neighbor/great family friend took the opportunity to give me some pictures of me that she “just had developed!”

“Ooooo!” thinks I, “maybe she’s going to give me some snaps she took the other week when the baby and I were hanging out at her pool…or maybe from when my sister was here visiting in April.”

yeah…not so much. People, they were of my baby shower. My baby shower. The shower for the baby that is now 5 months old. She just had them developed.

At first, I just glanced at them and did a “yeah, there I am…crap I got really fucking huge there towards the end didn’t I - eh” thing and just threw them in my purse.

But today at lunch I opened up my purse to grab some change and saw them again. And I stared at them for 10 full minutes. And I started to feel so…sad?

angry?
bemused?
embarrassed?

Embarrassed. That’s it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I had a nice time at my shower. Lovely ladies, lovely gifties – all in all it was a pleasant way to spend 7 hours of my life.

But the pictures reminded me of what I was like right before the baby came. What I was thinking, what I was feeling, what I was expecting to happen.

I was so sure that I knew what was going to happen – what life would be like. No matter how many times I told people that I had a birth plan but “I know that things usually don’t go as planned!” breezily assuring all that “we were totally ready to just roll with the punches” I never in my heart of hearts believed it. I never imagined that MY labor and MY birth would ever be anything but EXACTLY HOW I WANTED IT TO BE.

Because, you see, deep down, I knew. I knew it would go exactly my way. I was so confidant and assured. I was going to have a totally natural, intervention-free labor and birth and my first moments with my first baby would be the most wonderful heavenly nirvana most magical this is exactly how life is supposed to be happysqueebabyjoynothingtoworryabouthereblahblahweepycakes

So smug. So self-assured. So all knowing.

So naïve.

I am starting to see, as I try so very hard to work through this anger and depression and fear and crippling frustration, that the labor and birth that brought my Lucy to me was in fact, my first lesson in this, my new life.

You know nothing. You have control over nothing. You can be forced to go the scariest places your mind and soul have ever traveled and still remain alive and in one piece. You can, and will, sit upright and nurse your baby and care for your child and focus entirely on keeping this new being alive, even while your own body is half-paralyzed and your own life’s blood is rushing out of you. That is how important your child is, and that is how strong you are. You, and whatever you wanted, whatever you thought you were going to get, means nothing now. Fate is in total control, and you are just the hapless schmuck who is along for the ride.

You know nothing.

That girl in the pictures doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know that everything she wanted and expected about how her baby was going to enter this world would be smashed to bits. She doesn’t know that her body will be racked with nearly 3 days of pitocin and an emergency C-Section. She doesn’t know that she will nearly bleed to death, and that it would take a team of over a dozen complete strangers to make sure that she doesn’t. She doesn’t know that she will be unable to get out of bed for the first 48 hours of her first born child’s life. She doesn’t know that she will have to be back at work, 42 hours a week a mere 5 weeks later. She doesn’t know that her heart will go from breaking in pieces to swelling with a love greater then anything she’s ever felt to breaking in pieces at least 4 times every day.

And she doesn’t know that she’s going to survive it all.

If the Boy and I have another baby, I will read a lot about VBACs. I will see more than one doctor. I will be as informed as I can be. And I will try my very best to have as happy and healthy a birth (for all concerned) as can happen. And maybe it will work out for me next time – maybe I will get a birth a little closer to what I wanted. And maybe it won’t.

But I will know something then that I didn’t know before.

I will know that, even as prepared and informed and determined as I can be, the fates are still in charge.

I will finally know that I know nothing.