I am not a patient person.
I flip the pancake before it is done. I stoke the fire with such endless enthusiasm that I have to be pulled away before I kill it entirely. Sometimes I skip entire pages a novel, looking for the next piece of dialogue. I have never roasted a chicken.
I am a "seize the day!" kind of person. I am a "seize the anything if it seems worth having!" kind of person. Linda and I kiss each other goodbye at the entrance to malls, agreeing to meet up a few hours later: she shops carefully, searching every store for the most perfect thing; I buy everything that looks cute until I run out of money, then sample the mall's culinary delights until she's finished.
Every minute that we don't have a baby feels like ten.
I've wanted a baby with Linda since I first laid eyes on her. I'm pretty sure I ovulated right there and then. After years of going cold on the idea, boom. I needed a baby in me, or in her, or in our arms from who-cares-where, right that minute. But we had plans, and Linda had timelines, and there were things to get done. I threw myself into them, always telling myself that each other little task, each other little milestone, brought us closer and closer to being ready to meet the rest of our family (and gradually training my cat to let me carry him around like a baby for when my patience was being tested too sorely to respond to distraction). This blog was a stopgap of sorts, a place to satisfy my baby feels in this time of endless waiting. But now the only bits I could write about are things I'm not supposed to, so my longing goes un-channelled, exploding in my chest.
I filled my timelines, my news feeds, my heart with the children of others. Whenever I see my mother I proudly sit with her and show her the photos of all of the beautiful babies that I love, and some that I've never met. I'm in a snapchat group called "baby people" where pictures of babies are shared prolifically. Where others, while waiting, turn away from all things baby, I stand at the opposite end. I fill the baby-sized gap in my arms with anything and everything I can.
Sometimes I get so impatient that I cry, especially about the fact that it isn't even my turn yet, that pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding and all of the horror and joy that come with them are so far away I can't even bring them into focus. I'll read an article that assumes all mothers have given birth, and I cry. I cry about the fact that the process of me becoming a mother is going to happen inside someone else. On some dramatic days it feels like everybody has a baby in their arms except me. But then I see a pregnant person on Twitter, and I've hit follow before I can think about it.
Linda's skin starts doing some weird thing, and she tweets about it. Apparently it's a thing that happens to some women during pregnancy, and people think she's pregnant. She isn't. The impatient monster in my chest roars. I imagine announcing the pregnancy. I imagine the blog post that's so unlike this one. I imagine how it will feel to know how many months there are left to wait. Will that make it better, or worse?
Linda's mother writes our clinic dates in her calendar and the impatience purrs, temporarily soothed. We spend a long weekend fixing up our front yard, and all I can think about is where we could hang a tyre swing, which branches will make the best forts, and it's all I can do to not snatch the next baby I see.
I follow another pregnant person on Twitter, instead. That'll have to do for now.
I flip the pancake before it is done. I stoke the fire with such endless enthusiasm that I have to be pulled away before I kill it entirely. Sometimes I skip entire pages a novel, looking for the next piece of dialogue. I have never roasted a chicken.
I am a "seize the day!" kind of person. I am a "seize the anything if it seems worth having!" kind of person. Linda and I kiss each other goodbye at the entrance to malls, agreeing to meet up a few hours later: she shops carefully, searching every store for the most perfect thing; I buy everything that looks cute until I run out of money, then sample the mall's culinary delights until she's finished.
Every minute that we don't have a baby feels like ten.
I've wanted a baby with Linda since I first laid eyes on her. I'm pretty sure I ovulated right there and then. After years of going cold on the idea, boom. I needed a baby in me, or in her, or in our arms from who-cares-where, right that minute. But we had plans, and Linda had timelines, and there were things to get done. I threw myself into them, always telling myself that each other little task, each other little milestone, brought us closer and closer to being ready to meet the rest of our family (and gradually training my cat to let me carry him around like a baby for when my patience was being tested too sorely to respond to distraction). This blog was a stopgap of sorts, a place to satisfy my baby feels in this time of endless waiting. But now the only bits I could write about are things I'm not supposed to, so my longing goes un-channelled, exploding in my chest.
I filled my timelines, my news feeds, my heart with the children of others. Whenever I see my mother I proudly sit with her and show her the photos of all of the beautiful babies that I love, and some that I've never met. I'm in a snapchat group called "baby people" where pictures of babies are shared prolifically. Where others, while waiting, turn away from all things baby, I stand at the opposite end. I fill the baby-sized gap in my arms with anything and everything I can.
Sometimes I get so impatient that I cry, especially about the fact that it isn't even my turn yet, that pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding and all of the horror and joy that come with them are so far away I can't even bring them into focus. I'll read an article that assumes all mothers have given birth, and I cry. I cry about the fact that the process of me becoming a mother is going to happen inside someone else. On some dramatic days it feels like everybody has a baby in their arms except me. But then I see a pregnant person on Twitter, and I've hit follow before I can think about it.
Linda's skin starts doing some weird thing, and she tweets about it. Apparently it's a thing that happens to some women during pregnancy, and people think she's pregnant. She isn't. The impatient monster in my chest roars. I imagine announcing the pregnancy. I imagine the blog post that's so unlike this one. I imagine how it will feel to know how many months there are left to wait. Will that make it better, or worse?
Linda's mother writes our clinic dates in her calendar and the impatience purrs, temporarily soothed. We spend a long weekend fixing up our front yard, and all I can think about is where we could hang a tyre swing, which branches will make the best forts, and it's all I can do to not snatch the next baby I see.
I follow another pregnant person on Twitter, instead. That'll have to do for now.
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