Fear of the Unknown vs Fear of the Known

I’m having trouble.

I’m currently in the blissful weeks of pregnancy. The afternoon nausea has gone, and I’m mostly even keeled (with the exception of dealing with a very trying almost 4 year old. WHEW I WILL BE GLAD WHEN THIS STAGE IS OVER. THERE I SAID IT.) I mostly am symptom free, and not yet in the showing + feeling kicks stage.

And yet, I am petrified.

Last pregnancy I was nervous, in the “can I do this? Can I really be a parent?” naivete way. But this time around? Petrified. I see pictures online of my friends’ brand new baby and I’m propelled backward in time with all of this new knowledge and I’m like “no no no no no this can’t be happening to me.” Like, wake me up from the nightmare.

Rationally I know I’ll survive, as we do. But thrive? Boy am I concerned about that. I sit in stillness for a minute and try to imagine a tiny wriggling 8lb baby on my chest while my son yells “mommy more orange juice” from the living room and think, “what the fuck have I gotten myself into?”

The fear of the known has always been hard for me. During sports seasons I would DREAD the daily conditioning, even to the point of making myself occasionally vomit to avoid practice. Knowing what was to come was terrible. The anxiety buildup was beyond what I could control. Something sprung on me in the moment isn’t fun, but I suck it up and deal much better. So having 10 months to think about this impending doom (as I can’t help but conceptualize it) is crazy scary.

And then I get the mommy guilt trip that I’ve thus avoided with my son so far. But this worry that somehow my antepartum anxiety is going to effect this little one. That I’ll give birth to a neurotic daughter* and thus feel terrible for creating a child just like myself.

I spin and spin and annoy myself to no end. Despite the fact that I know I will be okay. I’ve been okay this whole time, and I will be okay again, but I’m petrified of the hard parts. With my son I didn’t know what to expect. And so once he was born I rushed headlong into parenting with a naivete that I’m afraid will be tampered down by my obsessional desire to conserve energy at all costs.

Can anyone at all relate? Am I completely a nutcase?

Lego Ninjago does nothing for my liberal “it’s a culture, not a costume,” leanings. At what age will I have to enforce that?

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About a week ago I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. The stress at work had come to a head, the fears and worry about Boof starting classes in a week, the fact that Potamus has consistently REFUSED a bottle for the past 6 weeks (leaving me running all over the county on outreaches and then running back home again within 3-4 hours to nurse him…or having Boof drive around the county following me so that little mister can eat), the fact that I am maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding and am throwing her a bridal shower and bachelorette party…200 miles away, the fact that both of my sisters-in-law are getting married 2 months apart and we are in FULL wedding planning mode around here, the fact that laundry/dishes/yardwork/searching-for-new-job-work has all been pilingpilingpiling up in stacks on the table and in corners and my mind is crammedfullofsomuchstuffthaticanbarelybreathe.

Whew.

 

Who wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown with that kind of stress, really? So I started in on self-care, big time…writing group, sleeping as much as possible, eating healthy, trying to walk…crying. It’s amazing how freeing crying can be, and how I realize that I hold so much stuff in, trying to be the strong mama raising a strong child and bearing the brunt of the bread-winning at the same time.

But then there are these sweet break-in-the-clouds moments, where the sun pokes through and I react, once again, to my kiddos in crisis with the mantra “they are in crisis, i am not in crisis.” For a minute that statement wasn’t true, but for right now it is. I have driven almost 1,000 miles in my new little car and life is feeling back to a somewhat okay balance. Sure that could change tomorrow, but for right now I am learning that a little wobbly balance is okay. And that’s a lesson I’m learning from Potamus.

Today is day 2 of him sitting un-assisted. It’s amazing to think…he will never NOT know how to sit again (barring any major head trauma or amnesia). And today he grew in leaps and bounds, as I got to see him sit, and swivel, and reach forward, and catch his balance with wide-eyed-stare, and look so proud when he didn’t topple over. He’s learning. I’m learning. And it feels so sweet.