As I find myself in the very last weeks of my third pregnancy, I am getting to this weird stage of excitement/fear/laziness/motivation. I feel tired yet I have million things on my mind. I feel full of energy to order, replace, and redecorate every single thing in our apartment, yet after an hour of restless cleaning up, I usually give up (for the day) and go back to my more comfortable position, reading a book, or just plainly binging Netflix on the sofa.
I am excited, so excited, to see our third baby – to hold him in my arms, smell his newborn skin, finally get to this new stage of our lives as a family of five. And at the same time, every day going by feels like a precious capsule of time to me, one more day resting on my own (at least until my two older kids come home from preschool), one more day in our routine, our comfort – one son and one daughter, used to each other.
My first child, my oldest son, was born a week after his due date. I was so impatient and so nervous at the same time. Two to three weeks before his arrival, I was overly aware of every possible sign, every mini contraction or pain. For some reason, I had convinced myself he would come early, and I drove myself a little crazy waiting for the end of what seemed like a never-ending pregnancy. The labor started extremly slowly (yet painfully), and it took us two days to finally get him out.
My second child, my daughter, was born three days after her due date. My son was a year and nine months old by then, and I knew just too well what it meant to be allowed to neither work nor take care of my son as long as he was in daycare, so I enjoyed every single moment of my maternal leave before her birth. I was comfortable in my pregnancy, and I knew what a change a newborn would bring to our routines and lives. I was also very anxious about what it would feel like for my son to become a big brother and to have to share me, his mom, with a baby. I was terrified of not sleeping well for the next months or years. So I was not in a hurry. Since we both live far away from our families, though, I was very worried about who would take care of our son while we went to give birth at the hospital. My parents had planned a visit for a week, right around the due date, so I knew my daughter had to come then. I gave birth on the last day of their stay, right on time.
This time around, it all seems different again. My parents have planned a visit again, the week around the due date, but it doesn’t seem as scary to let the kids be with either their babysitter or our neighbors or friends from preschool for the time we are gone, if the baby were to come before my parents get here. The kids are both older ( 5 and 3 ½) and most of all they have each other. As much as I enjoy my days alone at home right now, I also feel tired of being pregnant. Three pregnancies means I have been pregnant for 27 months in the last 6 years. It feels like a lot, and I am more eager than I was in the past to feel like myself again. I think the part about feeling “ready” feels also different this time around. I know we are ready as much as we can be, and yet there is still just so much we have absolutely no idea about and no ability to prepare for.
Photo by Judy Ann Dayot
