Last?

Last night, I indulged in something that I often can't resist. It's reading birth stories. If I happen across some online, I read too long. But this time it was in a book called Hard Labor. It's written by a labor and delivery nurse about her life in the medical world of birth. I didn't expect this, but she started the book with her own two stories--the births of her two children.

Both were difficult for her, of course. She chose to give birth without medication for pain, but she had very limited choices about much else that happened to her. Many many women have given birth in this way.

Anyway, there were parts of each experience that were beautiful for her, overwhelming and full of joy. Other parts had her cursing and miserable, filling up with hatred and anger.

I've been thinking about all that. I've been thinking about the unknowns of my next giving birth experience. But the part that I want to write about today is something she said about walking from her home to the car where her husband would drive her to the hospital to delivery her second (and last) baby. She writes, "I walked down those stairs more slowly than I ever had before, wearing my favorite blue maternity dress, stroking my abdomen, staring at the bannister, trailing my hand along the wall, feeling a great sadness sweep over me. Go slow. This is the last night you'll ever be pregnant."

This kinda struck me. As I read it I thought, gosh, I won't feel that way when this pregnancy ends. I will feel that anxious feeling that I've felt with the onset of labor. The can I really do this (again)? feeling mixed with a vague notion that I'll have a new child at the end of it. (Honestly, once labor starts, I usually can't think much past my own sensations. Baby? Oh yeah. Right. That will come.) So, anxious, unsettled, inward focused. I can predict feeling those things. But sadness for the end of pregnancy? I didn't think so.

But today I've been thinking more about it. I have been asked many times in this pregnancy if this will be my last. A yes to that question has been assumed of me more times than it's been asked. And frankly, I've thought "I am never doing this again!" more times than I can count. Or I've thought, "Could I ever do this again?" or "What if I have to do this again?" or "Will I want to do this again?" or, well, you get the point. I've thought about it a lot.

And I've thought a lot about how difficult and long this pregnancy has been. I'm not even close to the end yet. I LOOK like I'm close to the end, but I'm really not. And some days, some moments, I just don't want to face all that the rest of a pregnancy entails.

But so far I've been content to leave it unknown. If this is my last is still up in the air. For me. But what IF it's the last? What if these weeks I'm praying pass so quickly (more quickly than January and February ever do) are my last pregnant weeks ever? What if these strong and sometimes almost violent kicks in my insides (read: bladder) are the last I ever feel there?

If I'm honest, I know that I will miss this. I won't miss the pain of my round ligament straining to support a much-stretched-and-shrunk uterus. I won't miss peeing more times in a day (and night!) than I have fingers and toes. I won't miss heartburn and uncomfortable propped up on pillows sleep. No, I won't even miss the swelling and the losing sensation in my fingers. But if I were to surrender all this forever in a few weeks, I will at some point grieve for it all.

I'm grateful for the pregnancies I've had that were easier on me than this one. I'm so glad for giving birth three times with my husband right by me. So shouldn't I be glad for these last few weeks of socially acceptable largeness, of gentle reminders in my guts "mom, I'm in here!", of knowing deeply that I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing, however difficult. Shouldn't I rejoice in having a part in the unutterable mystery of biologically bringing newness, joy, potential, hope, and innocence into this world?

Like I said, I'm not certain. I can't make you any promises either way. But I'd better not mess around. I'd better try to remember every (limping aching frustrating) day that in this I am somehow the most myself I've ever been. May it last.

But only as long as it absolutely has to.