Too Many Babies in My Face
Expectation overload in the absence of "baby fever."
I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a mother. I wasn’t sure if I would ever become a mother, if I could become a mother, or if I would love anyone else enough to mother with. But I also never detested the idea of becoming a mother. It was always simply an intangible thing floating in the ether; something I was uncertain about.
I laugh now at the younger version of myself who thought becoming a mother might one day be a crux rather than an evolution of love. I also want to hug that younger version of myself who was made to believe, at one point, that wanting to have children was perhaps a life-stealer without recognizing that I was here because someone else gave life to me.
My old impressions of motherhood are erratic.
As a little girl, I wanted to nurture like my mother.
As a teenager, I wanted to be seen for my strengths and carrying a child didn’t seem like it could ever be one. It seemed like it was what would be expected of me. Like I had to prove to some invisible force that I was more than a teenager who might become a mother one day (as if becoming a mother would be a weakness rather than a strength).
As a young woman, the thought of becoming a mother has crept upon me slowly. I have met more mothers. I have become closer to my mother. My best friends have become mothers. I have observed people I love and admire talk about motherhood and I have watched as their souls have doubled. And tripled. And somehow have continued to exponentially grow as they journey through matrescence.
I have also observed people I love and admire talk about how they cannot mother. How biology has unfairly removed the choice of motherhood for them. How they have struggled to find their own meanings of motherhood in their own realities.
I have watched as motherhood has become a verb, a longing, a trigger, or a purpose.
I never felt like I was missing a part of myself until I became pregnant with Joni. But now that I am pregnant with Joni, I feel whole even though I thought I felt whole before. I am overwhelmed that I am able to be a vessel for this miracle. I am overwhelmed by how different I feel carrying her. I am in awe of everything about what is becoming of us.
What I have never felt, however, is baby fever. My desire to mother never once stemmed from this fictitious “urge” many women seem expected to feel about babies. You know, that invisible sickness that’s supposedly the cue that you’re ready for bearing children?
Everything transformative requires energy, but thermodynamics do not govern emotions. I did not wake up one morning with my heart suddenly on fire knowing what was meant for me. Nothing in my life has ever worked that way. I do not have grand revelations. Finding the desire for motherhood was instead a steady stream of revelations cooling me into a calmness that opened my heart to the possibility of expanding it.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about love and matrescence in the last year, it’s that the lasting kind doesn’t necessarily need to burn to nestle its way into your soul.
Since I’ve become pregnant with Joni, I feel like there are too many babies in my face. Your babies are gorgeous, but I feel like I am experiencing expectation overload. I’m indeed walking around with a plump bump. I cannot be too surprised, but it is nonetheless overwhelming.
Small talk of babies babies babies has become my new normal. But all I want to talk about right now is the mother. Of course, I don’t expect to have deep conversations with everyone I encounter. Still, the weight of baby-talk expectation is heavy and I too tired right now to carry it.
It feels isolating to experience the biggest transformation of my life and have to stuff the depths of my emotions away when I venture out of my nesting hole. It is almost difficult to talk about anything when I don’t even know what I am becoming. It is why I think so many of us struggle to socialize when we’re pregnant.
When I’m speaking honestly about my experiences, I often feel even more alone, like I’m being too sensitive or misunderstood or challenged and then I have to back-track and bring it all back to baby again. There is always diversion back to baby because that is what is safe for others.
Am I being too dramatic? Or does small talk really need to be so small?
This is why I write. So we can have these conversations and free these thoughts and not feel so alone.
Everything about me feels different. My mind. My eyes. I feel like the Ship of Theseus. Someone has taken every little piece of me and replaced it with something new. The essence of me is here, but I am a different than the me I was last April.
My brain is rewiring. It is feeling shocked at our reveling at the violent nature of things we call beautiful: birth and transformation. I cannot imagine tapping it further into a fever in order to validate some peculiar expectation about the exact moment I felt ready. There was no moment - it was just a whisper and I followed it home.
Xo,
Violet Carol