Time Slips

One of the strange things that happen when you are pregnant is how time changes.  It sounds strange but let me explain.

Pretty much from the moment, I get the positive pregnancy test time seems to halt.  I think it’s because I get pretty bad morning sickness (though nothing like the women who need to be hospitalized for it) and so each day feels like a year of moving through mud. Especially that first trimester. Everything seems to take forever and each day lasts so long…. It’s hard.

At some point, I end up taking afternoon naps.  And often more than that 20-minute power nap, I prefer at least an hour and a half when I am pregnant.  This time around for a whole host of reasons I have not had regular naps. At first, it was because that was the only time I could connect with hubby who was in India.  Now more often than not it has to do with afternoon activities I need to get my older girls too.

But I have been getting a few more naps in. And when that happens my days also feel endless because it gets confusing where one day ends and another begins.  Especially when I often fall asleep pretty deeply in those naps and am pretty groggy when I wake up,because none of the sleep rules for naps really work when you are pregnant, and if there is any kind of alarm involved I will probably be pretty groggy on the other side when it is not just me existing in this body.

The third trimester which I cross over into at the end of this month often brings its own time slips.  Baby is super active toward the end of the second trimester but as they get bigger they have less space to squiggle in, but when they do they make my whole bump undulate.  And I already know from experience that I am pretty miserable from week 36 on, so it’s often a matter of how can I get through the day, because all I want to do at that point is eat, pee and sleep.  That is when I do a lot of marathon book reading usually. Just to pass the time, because I am pretty uncomfortable in my own skin. I often think of it like the scene in one of the Narnia books where Edmund has to shed his dragon skin and it is relieving and painful all at the same time.  That is how I feel during those last weeks.

Time also feels endless because I don’t know when the baby is going to come.  I don’t choose to have an induction date, and yes my third child came 12 days after her due date.  And she was fine. But I don’t pick my children’s birthdays, they do and while the body works with them, new evidence pretty much says that the fetus decides when organized labor begins.  3 out of 4 of my children have been born on a Friday which has been really helpful for their dad. My last one was born on the Friday night of Columbus Day weekend, so we had lots of recovery time.  (Note my Monday child came when her dad was working from home, so really she was just as convenient.)

Labor itself slows time and speeds it up and it’s kind of ceases to exist for me. I went to the birth center at night with my firstborn, and because there were not any windows where I birthed, even though she came around noon my impression and memory are she was born at night.  My fourth born came so fast that we all lost track of time and it was the midwife on the phone who had any idea what time she was born.And of course, after the baby is earthside time goes super wonky.  It becomes feeding, and wakefulness with this new soul and sleeping when you can and peeing and drinking and trying to spend time with your other children and hubby and yet also being bone tired.  Those first few weeks drag and fly all at the same time.

But in a lot of ways that is parenthood in general.  Every day has moments you just have to grit your teeth and get through.  Every day has good moments in it too, even if it’s just the five minutes you laid and bed and pretended to still be asleep.  Or celebrating with your partner that everyone is still alive at the end of the day. It is so amazingly hard and wonderful and gross and beautiful all in the same day.

Maybe time never really truly goes back to normal?  I mean the younger your child is the more they live in the now, and even as adults we don’t want to be as patient as we have to be.  Maybe this steady march of time is just for people who don’t live with children?I am really not sure. I just know that growing another being sure messes up my concept of time.  

PS. Read more parenting adventure in my Mommy Rebellion, Brutal Honesty About Motherhood and Other Sh*t We Pretend We Love Everything About.