"Got go frew it!"

lessons from my three year old

Towards the end of each of my pregnancies, I’ve encountered this strange, liminal space, in which I am both miserable and completely unready for change. It’s silly if you think about it. The baby has to exit my body — there’s no way around it. But for those few brief weeks, from about 37 weeks until whenever the baby shows up, I occupy the in-between space. The baby is safe, I can feel the kicks and barrel rolls, I’m no longer worried about pre-term labor, but I’m not ready for the seismic shift of a new life yet.

You might think this sounds crazy — how could anyone not be ready to meet their baby at the end of pregnancy? But, when you’ve had difficult postpartum experiences you’re all too aware that the work of labor is just the beginning of another long stretch of difficulty. It can be hard to want it to begin. So hard in fact, that my most recent labor started and stopped no fewer than three times, with my midwife’s official birth record reading something like, “392 hours” for the f…