I Just Want You to Know...

I’ve started this post a hundred times in my head, and even a few times on the computer.

I don’t think I’m feeling “survivor’s guilt” exactly. But before Miss A was born, when others would go on to have success, it stung to read about it. While I was happy for them, at the same time it felt a little more lonely in the IF boat. I still know how that feels, and I don’t want to cause anyone any bit of that kind of pain. So I’ve been quiet.

On the flip side, though, so many of you did such an amazing job of holding my hand through the past year, and I want you to know how grateful I am, and how everything is turning out.

I realize I was high strung (to put it mildly) during the pregnancy. I’m sure many of you thought “If she’s like this now, what is she going to be like when the baby is born??” R certainly wondered about that, and so did others who know me offline.

The answer, it turns out, is “surprisingly normal”. As I mentioned in the post about Miss A’s birth, once she came out, I let out the breath I had been holding for 9 months. She is here. I am a mom to a living baby. This is what I’d hoped for, and it’s even better than I could have imagined it.

Several of my friends have commented that I’m much more laid back than they expected. Sure, I checked on her frequently when she was first born to make sure she was still breathing. I still do check on her, but now I don’t hold my breath and think “Dear God, please let her still be alive” like I did at first. I’m coming to trust more that she’s okay.

And I’m living in the moment. When I was pregnant, I kept worrying about the “what if’s” – what if I got pre-eclampsia? What if I had a placental abruption? What if the baby’s heart just stopped beating while in utero for no obvious reason? What if the lack of movement meant something bad had happened? Etc.

While there are still certainly plenty of things to worry about, for the most part, I don’t. I just want to enjoy her, and I don’t want that to be constantly clouded by worry. And somehow, I can’t explain how, I’m doing that – living in the moment, enjoying every moment with her, and not obsessing over the “what if’s”.

Reading this over, I feel like I’m still not doing a really great job of making it clear how happy I am. So here’s a scene from a morning at the end of last week that I’ll leave you with:

I had just finished feeding Miss A and getting her dressed and ready for day care. A song came on the radio that made me want to dance, so I picked her up and was dancing with her and singing to her. R came out of the bathroom and came over to join us. She was already smiling, and then he started tickling her, and she was laughing a lot, which she has just started to do this month.

So there we were, the three of us dancing around like fools before work. And I realized my cheeks were hurting, literally. It’s because I had such a big smile on my face.

That is my life now – dancing around with R and Miss A, living in the moment, smiling ridiculously large smiles and loving the sound of baby laughter. I am so happy, and so very grateful, and very thankful.