Vulnerable

There is only so much information you can bring into yourself during a time of vulnerability. You can plan and process and positive think you’re way through but ultimately you are going to have times where you feel like you fail.

There will always be times where you compare yourself to others and that will bring on tears, frustration, guilt and desperation. It will make you feel inadequate doubting your own ability, mindset, body and femininity.

There is no right or wrong way to give birth. But why do I feel like my body doesn’t work properly? Because I seem to carry longer than term. Because everyone is asking me is it now? Well meaning wishes and text and phone calls come through. I lurk on social media rather than join in as I feel myself closing in on myself but really I feel resentment and sadness.

It’s like I’m grieving for an experience I don’t feel I will ever get to have without a form of augmentation.

I feel like less of a woman because my body doesn’t seem to do what it is build to do on a timescale I don’t even feel is right for my body.

I tell myself this all the time. My baby is measuring big or ahead but my boyfriend shares his DNA and is tall. And I am not tall. And my last baby was at 42 weeks and induced and babies follow a pattern but my body still hasn’t started labour despite by date of conception I feel I am only 39 weeks and 1 day.

I feel crumpled and sore, swollen, shrunken and sadness. I feel let down by my own body. A soft and thin cervix that has started to change and shift and move to make way for the baby pressing down. I feel every movement from hands to legs to rolls. I feel pressure and pain of the most exquisite unable to describe kind which excites me yet fills me with dread every time I need to take a step.

I miss going outside.

I miss browsing through shops.

I miss walking and movement and swimming.

I miss life but I’m standing here with one foot heavy and swollen with pregnancy and the other a step forward waiting, needing and willing to rush on. Become a new mother. A mother of two beautiful children who I love more than anything. Already.

I am vulnerable because I am left alone in the evening whilst my partner provides for us and I miss him so much. I don’t want to show my vulnerable side, I want him to be proud and witness the birth of our child alongside the rebirth of me. I want to show him just how much I love him and what I can give to him and for him to say you did this, I’m so proud, and no matter how or where or what he will say and think and feel this anyway. But there is that part of me that thinks I do not deserve him if I can not birth properly.

I do not deserve his pride if my body fails me, to birth our son.

Relax they say. Relax and enjoy these last few days and babies come when babies are ready and I know this is fact and true and rational but I am lying here, tears falling freely already grieving a birth I haven’t had yet because of time restraints. Limits.

I feel vulnerable. I want to embrace this birth that I have dreamed of having because I felt like I failed at the last one. That detrimental shadow that has haunted my mental health for eight long years because I couldn’t birth my daughter. Those weeks I felt of failure whilst healing prevented us from thriving and I am terrified of that same process happening again.