The Duality Reality
Calmness and chaos. Stillness and hyperactivity. Misery and awe. Fear and gratitude. And all of the other polarities of being pregnant.
If you ask me how I’m feeling in the morning, my answer will likely change by the evening. Everything that happens in the time between is a week’s worth of changes, both emotionally and physically. I feel like a different person every hour and that’s because I think I do become a different person every hour. The truthful answer to how I’m feeling at any given time is, “everything.” I am feeling everything.
Pregnancy is an exploration of duality. It is not a paradox; nothing is contradicting itself. It is all true, all of the time. It is dual in nature, and as Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert recently coined, it is everything everywhere all at once.
I’m learning that as each week of pregnancy passes, all I want is validation, support, and comfort. There is no piece of advice that I want if I have not specifically asked for it. There is no piece of information that I want before I have had the opportunity to purge my own mind and pour a little something out so another big something can fill back in without overflowing into my eyes and my nose and my mouth.
I want to know that when you ask me how I feel, you’re ready for my real answer. I want to know that when you ask me how I feel, you’re ready to listen. We are not talking about a new book that just came out or how the weather is still so gloomy; we are talking about a personal, intimate, and radical transformation of self that is constantly reorganizing a human being. Just because pregnancy is part of the natural order does not lessen its significance. I read somewhere this week that “support without support is not supportive.” It sounds so obvious, but I couldn’t agree more.
I unfortunately don’t have a neon sign to hold above my head into perpetuity that blinks, “I am grateful!” I can assure you that I am - every waking second. The essence of gratitude is the foundation of my exploration about pregnancy duality; I feel myself needing to express with every complaint or concern that I am, indeed, grateful to be growing a baby. Like an exhausting footnote needs to be added to every conversation.
I’m feeling more and more pressure to sort out the emotions of others who ask me how I’m doing and who respond with accusatory, unsupportive, or invalidating language. I no longer have the capacity to handle these small-talk conversations about these big things with people who don’t care to know my answers. I cannot carry my child while carrying every nuance while carrying others’ expectations about what I should be carrying simply because I exist in a space where someone sees a pregnant woman and loses all semblance of social kindness or self-awareness.
I do not have the grace for the ones who tell me “Just you wait!”
I do not have the patience for fending off an onslaught of comments about my new body and the unfamiliar hands that grasp for my stomach without asking.
I do not have the energy to sort out what is well-intended and what is self-serving.
I wish I could radiate a violet forcefield that encompasses only me and my loved ones during this period of my life. I wish I could swish a magic wand and become visible only to those with a kindred spirit and nurturing heart. Alas, that is not life, and so I manage the duality of feeling overwhelmed and lost with feeling wholly embraced and found by those I love the most.
I am glowing, as I vomit my smashed banana back up from breakfast! I am radiating joy, as I bear down on my debilitating back pain in clothes three days old! I am a being made of gratitude, and yet I force myself to find space for transparency in documenting how strange this all feels so I can be a better support-system for future mothers. So I can better understand how to help and heal and hold.
Pregnancy is hard. It is not cute and aesthetically-appealing-hard like Hollywood portrays it on screen. It is wild hair and pimply skin like I’m having a ninth grade breakout. It is stretch marks on my inner thighs and misshapen hardness in my uterus and breasts. It is engorgement and breathlessness and gas and bloody noses and terrible smells. It is unkempt pajamas and grounded routines. It is a salmon bowl for lunch and five chocolate chip pancakes for dinner. It is crying over sunshine and crying over discomfort.
It is both reinvention and rediscovery. It is both laborious and invigorating. It is both untamed and innately understood. It is both preparation and winging it. It is both tension and release. Inhale. Exhale. Neither can exist without the other.
I feel humbled by pregnancy. Like when I wake up feeling like a ball of lighting just to be struck at random and forced to simmer. Or when I feel called to rest but my insomnia keeps me awake until 3 AM anyway night-dreaming about this and that.
I forget that I’m pregnant sometimes. I forget when my dog wants to race me down the stairs with a mischievous grin seeking treats and I’m lost in a moment of domestic bliss that I, in fact, cannot run because I feel like my womb is going to fall out of my butt and I instead get smacked with a Braxton-Hicks contraction because I moved too suddenly and everything seized.
I think pregnancy is beautiful, in a sense. I always dreamed of living a vibrant life but I never dreamed that my vibrant life would mean one full of children until…I just did. I didn’t seek this longing. It didn’t hit me like a sudden realization. It flowed steadily into me. It rinsed me in a lavender bath; it did not smack me like a tidal wave.
I lost a pregnancy before this one and planted a daisy garden in my soul for her and I wonder as I wander through 24 weeks now why any woman who has ever experienced childbirth or pregnancy or motherhood in any way could ever speak without thinking that maybe someone else lives, like so many others, with the fears of a child they have lost or have been unable to bear. As I carry the one I have gained, I think that maybe pregnancy is not always so cleanly beautiful because it’s so painful. Beauty is not pain. Beauty does not come from pain. Beauty comes from everything after.
We all experience this life differently, but we can also have shared experiences. We have no idea what someone else may be carrying. Shouldn’t we all just strive for love and support for each other given these obvious facts? Especially about something like pregnancy that is so fragile and fleeting?
I love being pregnant because I love my unborn child. I hate being pregnant because it has wreaked havoc on my sensitive body. I love my new shapes as they grow and construct a home for my daughter. I hate that I explode out of new clothing every six weeks. I love feeling my child kick me all morning and night; I am grateful that I have a posterior placenta so I can feel these kicks so often. I love that I’ve already had five ultrasounds. I hate that I’ve had five ultrasounds because I have a congenital heart defect and feel nothing but relief every time I hear, “Her heart looks full and normal.” I love that I cannot stop eating everything in sight. I hate that I spent my first 13 weeks eating absolutely nothing.
I love that I was able to become pregnant. I hate that my body decided it wasn’t worthy of growing the first. I love that I live in an era that gives me updates on my baby’s size in the form of Parisian treats and my expected symptoms every day. I hate that I live in an era of mass information that overloads my brain and makes me feel overstuffed. I love that I have been able to go to CrossFit during my second trimester. I hate that it’s getting harder to move. I love that it’s getting harder to move because my child is nearing her entrance into the world. I hate that the process of bringing life into this world is so violent.
Pregnancy is miraculous because every little thing had to happen just right for a person to be formed from literally nothing. Pregnancy is exhausting because it rips you apart from the inside and changes you into something new. Pregnancy is a glimpse into eternity. Pregnancy is anxiety about that future being suddenly ripped from you.
Pregnancy is wanting to give every mother who mothered before me infinite hugs and cards and gifts because I had no idea what they needed at the time. Pregnancy is wanting to put a fork in my eye each time someone I hardly know tells me how I should be feeling. Pregnancy is laying in a blank yellow room dreaming of sea salt and mushrooms and stars and dragons. Pregnancy is throwing my computer at the wall because there are 29832948 crib options and they all cost a small fortune.
Pregnancy is hardness and softness. Darkness and lightness. Embrace and retreat. Everything and anything I think it is and isn’t. Nothing I thought it would be. All of me. And everything I am carrying and have carried before.
Xo,
Violet Carol