Celebrating Henry’s Due Date

Today we celebrate Henry’s due date! Of course, he arrived two weeks early.

I know I said that he might come early, but honestly, I was not mentally prepared for his early arrival. When my water broke, I was aware that the doctor would want to have the baby delivered within about 12 hours. So as soon as we’d figured out that my water broke, I knew that we would be having the baby by Sunday. It was disturbing to me to know that there was a definite end time to the pregnancy, it was rapidly approaching, and I had no control over any of it.

Ele talks about wishing she had savored the experience of the delivery more. I really felt like I understood what she meant, and had every intention of making a conscious effort to inventory, document and appreciate the birth experience. However, the whole experience went so quickly! I dilated so much quicker than any of us anticipated. It was also much more painful than I’d anticipated, even though I had an epidural. To add to that, the strain of physically pushing the baby out combined with the loathsome pain of reflux that occurred every minute I was pushing nearly put me out of my mind. In the middle of the height of pushing, my only thought was “get this baby out of me NOW and I don’t care what it takes.” So much for savoring the experience.

I went into labor on Saturday, and on Sunday Cristin and I had scheduled a photo shoot to do belly pictures. Once labor started, I was so disappointed when I realized we weren’t going to get to do the photo shoot. On Sunday, I still had a pretty big belly and for a moment, I considered whether we could fake it. I realized that anything else I wanted to do while pregnant was no longer an option. The last pictures we took of me pregnant are just that, the last pictures we took when I was pregnant. I am kind of reeling from the whole loss of pregnancy.

Now that Henry is two weeks old (golly!!), I am still trying to adjust to the fact that I’m not pregnant any more. It took a lot of time to get adjusted to the idea of being pregnant, and it turns out that it’s really nice to be pregnant (assuming you’re not having a difficult pregnancy). Being pregnant is like carrying around a secret. A little secret you share with this unborn person. A little secret that only you and the little person know about. You talk to the little person pretty constantly. He’s is your constant companion. He might annoy you occasionally but won’t wake you in the middle of the night. Once he’s born, your secret is out and he is suddenly so much less manageable.

There is a tangible loss with even the happiest of births.

As a side note, I’m going to take down my Pregnancy page, but you can still get to it from here.