This blog has become an enormous, immovable, hulk of a metaphor for second pregnancies. Perhaps, if we were wild and rich and crazy enough to have a third, I’d look back at my handful of badly captured bump shots and meagre little blog post and scoff in a twisty, pregnant parody of those Four Yorkshiremen – “Ha! You thought you were too busy/unengaged/oddly disinterested then. I barely noticed the third one clambering out of my vagina!” But here we are. My second and for all intents and purposes last one. Six months in (or forty-two in pregnant months) and this post, that I’d planned to coincide with the societally acceptable point where you can stop whispering about your pregnancy and start celebrating it (and there’s a whole other blog on untangling how repressed and Victorian that rule is), collided instead with a truckload of work, a first trimester that refused to fucking end and guilt-inducing, borderline apathy that hung over me like fog. After a midwife appointment, where she’d asked if I’d been chatting lots to the baby and I blushed and mumbled something about bits here and there (lies; you’ve been sleepwalking through this pregnancy, only really remembering when someone produces a wedge of gooey Brie or suggests a boozy date) I dug out my old diary I’d kept first time around in a pang of self-consciousness. Aside from the fact that I actually had/made time to write the bloody thing (the bright buttercup yellow one I got after this positive pregnancy test is basically just empty pages, which shout at me as noisily as this neglected blog does) what struck me most was how much time I had. Time to ditch the bus and walk lazily to work instead, chattering nonsense to the baby about what I was doing and seeing; time to go for solitary walks in parks, blasting Kate Bush in our ears and howling along loudly; time to take long, soapy baths where I cradled the bump and chuckled at the little ripples she’d send skidding across the water, delighting in telling her how excited we were to meet her. Oodles upon oodles of second and minutes and hours to plan and dream and wile away, documenting the entire journey with thoughtful and loving consideration. Now it would be churlish of me to condemn the sheer lack of time I have these days, since one of my main time suckers – said bump from before – brings me joy and fulfilment on a level that not much else comes close to; but the ugly reality, second time around, is that I often genuinely feel like I just don’t have time to be pregnant. I was torn between feeling that my life seemed achingly bland compared to colourful, child-free colleagues and friends yet also, illogically, so full and busy.
I should rewind a little here and state that this baby is very much wanted and was very much planned. In fact, I wrote a whole blog post (many, many months ago) about how badly we wanted to add another little person to our family and how mentally taxing the entire ‘trying’ period can be. So I was staggered, when the initial whollop of joy at seeing those two lines had subsided, at being left with an overwhelming sense of weariness. My first pregnancy was, in many respects, a breeze. Loads of people told me how much it suited me and I’d brush their compliments off politely while trying not to burst with smugness. I had pretty chronic acid reflux, but once I was prescribed medicine it completely vanished. Otherwise – the usual fare. I wasn’t struck with crippling health issues that so many women, women I know who are friends, are subjected to. So this pregnancy has been a humble awakening. Like last time, my first trimester wasn’t punctuated with physical illness. I know how lucky that makes me, but it also makes me feel unable to own my experience of how hard I still found it. “Have you been sick?” people asked. And every time I said no, it was like I was accepting I’d skipped all the shitty bits and had an easy ride. But the thing is, it didn’t feel easy at all. I was wracked with anxiety, irritability and surging mood swings that left me feeling fragile and shaky; unable to put my finger on why days would feel long and difficult or why I was so irrationally convinced that something was wrong with the baby. I walked into every scan and doppler ultrasound with the underlying assumption that there wouldn’t be a heartbeat; that we couldn’t possibly be as lucky as we had been and would no doubt become another miscarried statistic. The first 18 weeks of my pregnancy were exhausting, not helped spectacularly by a miserably slow crawl towards the end of a long, hard year. I couldn’t seem to muster any of the chirpiness that peppered the pages of my first diary and though I’m a hearty advocate of honesty in parenting, warts and all, I began to rattle off the expected responses to people’s questions about the baby, as I couldn’t bear how fucking miserable and ungrateful I sounded. People would always ask if I was excited and I’d hear myself replying positively and not feel a single thing. I’d just assumed, second time round, I’d be bursting with confidence and gleaned knowledge – bold and self assured and fearless. Instead, I felt wildly disconnected from it all.
But then, like something out of a lazily scripted movie, the Christmas holidays slowly unfurled towards me and pulled me out of my self-pitying slump. Three whole weeks of being away from the office; away from answering emails or finishing off the tail end of a meeting on my phone as I stood outside nursery, pretending to put the pushchair up; away from thinking the campaigns, and the various nonsense that came with them that filled my days, were more important than life or death. And with that distance came a shuddering shift in perspective. I escaped to Norfolk for a week with Edie, and the time I never seemed to have yawned widely ahead of me. Mornings and afternoons lingered deliciously over cradled cups of hot chocolate, dawdles through market towns and licked baking bowls. Entire days revolved around a bracing dog walk or catching up on the papers. I read books. (Plural!) I played Lego for hours with my daughter. I loafed and mooched. Meandered and dilly dallied. And I didn’t think about work at all – not once. I felt myself uncoiling and my mind quieten with every gulp of mossy, piggy, country air.
And it was like a light had been switched on.
My bump went from had-one-too-many-roast-potatoes to properly pregnant and the kicks became fierce and distinctive; almost chatty. Like hearing a song you’ve not heard in years but realising you still know all the words, I remembered all the searingly beautiful and poignant bits of pregnancy. I tuned into my body and listened; really listened. I slowed down. I felt grateful and was kinder to myself. I’d forgotten that pregnancy is one of the rare times we’re really patient and gentle with ourselves, and it was such a welcome, needed change to how I’d been speaking to myself that I could have wept. Time, and the distance and perspective it gives you, is a powerful old thing. I barely recognise the me of last year, limping towards the end of the year and willing the days to hurry up. And now when I reply that yes, I am really excited for the new baby, I feel it with every fibre of my body. And for that, I’m truly grateful.