What Now is Like

May has whizzed past in a blur; leaving me breathless and astonished at the same time. I can't say with certainty what caused it to fuzz so indiscriminately into grey matter in my mind. This stands in such stark contrast with usual Mays, in which I spend long hours listening to intentionally depressing music, hoping for rain, and generally grumble around for two to four weeks feeling hideously sorry for myself.
This May there was much to distract me from the usual babylost self pity, which I usually savour as my only tonic in the month of May. Mostly it was this pregnancy, which I have not discussed on this blog in any such detail, but not in the way you might think: it has left me devoid of much for the last two and a half months. I have been unbearably nauseous, nauseous where I feel almost that in-labor point of total overstimulation: too bright, too loud, don't touch me kind of feelings. Everything smells heinous to me, every touch makes my skin crawl and my stomach lurch, I can hardly make eye contact or speak to people at times because I don't have energy for anything but breathing and not throwing up.
But, of course, I am taking care of two, or three, or four children every day, so in many ways despite this I just carried on this May, eating like a desperate scavenger, hunting greedily for the one thing that might ease the nastiness brewing within. I have been beyond exhausted, lethargic, wanting nothing but to lie still because if I am very, very still and close my eyes, the nausea passes for a time. Blissfully, when I am asleep, I do not feel sick.
So while I would not say that the "joy and hope" of a new pregnancy has dulled the grief of May, I will say that the pregnancy itself has for certain rendered me unable to consider much besides what might stay down, and when I might get myself a nap. I suppose this helped, in a way, to avoid some of the usual wallowing (although I must say I like the wallowing... and feel almost a little sad to have missed out)
And on the note of "joy and hope"-- one of the reasons why I have not spoken of this pregnancy to any degree on this blog is due to the precarious feeling of terror that I succumb to nearly any time I dare to consider myself actually "pregnant" or refer to the "baby" within. Could there really be a baby in there? Clearly, I must be kidding myself. Is is possible that for the last appointment I was so nervous that it was just my hundred-and-something beats per minute heartrate they picked up? That I have actually just missed the miscarriage, that I am not really 15 weeks, that I have obviously eaten way too many awful things in the past few months and now merely look like I am 5 months pregnant (courtesy of this being the 4th go-round)... in any case, I am still in a moderate state of denial, despite my sweet living children's hugs, kisses, and daily presents made and wrapped for "Peanut" (their name for the newbie). Often, with friends, in discussing the fall, what the children will be doing, the topic of "the new baby" arises, and I feel myself as if in a glass box, my voice echoing around me in a terrifying way as I non-chalantly act as if I expect there will, indeed, be a baby in the fall and that I am planning what my life will be like at that point. But the truth is, I imagine in many ways it might be September before I allow myself that luxury. I can't go there yet, I can't think of the baby as a baby when I have nothing on a daily basis to convince me that there is actually a baby to think of. I can't wait until I can feel it move. (and as I write that, I think, move? but what if it's not in there? what if it died? then it won't move.)
The good thing is that the nausea is starting to waver and taper, I am having days where I feel better (although hardly energetic) and it seems like some of the life is coming back to me. Hopefully I am only a few weeks away from movement, and hence my abilty to self-regulate whether or not the child lives. And in the meantime, May has passed me by, and so I've missed a year, in essence, and I don't know how to feel about that. I was too sick to put on my black cloak and veil, but if I was thinking of my girl the whole time, is that okay? I suppose it is.
The clock ticks. I have to pee, again. The Red Sox are ahead. My bed calls. If you come across any names that mean, "He/she who is born healthy and alive and lives to a ripe old age without illness or strife" pass them along to me....