I’m overdue!

Jake was “due” 3 days ago. It’s only 3 days and it feels like so much longer.

Right now – and I don’t want to admit it – I feel sadness. I feel so many other emotions – overwhelm about the unknown of have 2 kids outside the womb, anxiety about how the birth process will go, fearfulness about whether Jake is perfectly healthy and whether I’ll come out of this perfectly healthy, anxiety about my ability to deal with the uncomfortableness/pain, annoyance that I’ve got to rely on others to watch McKenzie while we go to the hospital, a sense of failure (and I get that this is not rational) that I haven’t had the baby yet, frustration that when I call people they are going to answer the phone with an anticipatory, “Yes???!” and I have to say, “Nothing, I was just calling to…,” nervousness for McKenzie – our 22 month old – about how she’ll react to her brother, frustration about not knowing how to plan my days – day-after-day (Do I make the crockpot meal today? Or will we be gone at the hospital tonight? When would be the best time to capitalize on this?), unease that I don’t know when and I don’t know how, excitement about meeting my son face-to-face and getting to know him as a separate being, anticipation about showing our friends and family our beautiful, laid-back (I feel he’s going to be SO laid back) son, pride that I’m looking and feeling great physically at over 40 weeks, self-recrimination that I haven’t processed some emotion or fear that is keeping the impending birth at bay (I must not be dealing with something, I’m doing something to stop the flow), embarrassment that I told everyone I expected this to happen over a week ago, shame that I’m feeling emotional and not totally “in the flow” – and all of this is laced with a sense of sadness.

I think that I shouldn’t be sad. I’m in the midst of something miraculous. I feel embarrassed, self-centered and greedy to want to experience and feel something different than I am right now.

I am not doing a good job of holding and being with all of the emotions. Instead of knowing that I’m an ocean that is vast enough to have and hold and be okay with all these emotions – I am the little person bobbing in the ocean who is being moved around, thrashed around and pushed along by these waves of emotion. There are many things that are unknown and outside of my control right now. This rattles me. I’m now telling myself that it’s okay to be rattled. I don’t have to pretend that I’m not – it won’t serve me to pretend that I’m not. What I resist will persist. So, I ask myself: How can I revel in the uncertainty? How can I look my anxiousness and feelings of incompetence directly in the eye and embrace them? I don’t know what I’m doing. How can I be expected to? I’ve never been here before. I want to be gentle with myself.

What I want for pregnant women – probably more than anything else – is to feel safe and strong talking about “all of it” – to not feel like things have to be either totally hunky-dorey or totally in the toilet. There’s a mix of emotions right now and one set of emotions does not negate the others.

Please join the conversation: How do you deal with the full range of emotions? How do you ensure that you’re not repressing the feelings that are most important for you to experience?