I can't sugar-coat it all...

My heart aches for warmer days and an old house with far away neighbours.  Wide plank floors and a wooden screen door off the kitchen.  A big wrap around porch perfect for iced tea and late night chats.  Tall trees perfect for naps in hammocks and summer picnics.  A pond and an old wooden rowboat.

Pregnancy takes me to such a dark and melancholy place.  Instead of filling up with guilt and hating myself for feeling what I'm feeling, as I did in the first pregnancy, I am rolling with the punches and sinking into the warmth of it all.  Instead of wishing for this time to feel as miraculous as it actually is, I am tasting each and every aching morsel of it and just allowing everything to flow through me.  Hot tears fall while inadequacies bubble up and intermingle with belly laughs and a calm strength.

I would like to say that I have learned to love myself more since the last time, but I haven't.  My body is creating a human life complete with a spirit and all of its little teeth yet all I can do it look at how puffy my face looks and how dull my hair is.  I always manage to put myself off with the lie that I will learn to love myself later; when I am done with pregnancy; when I am thinner; when my hair grows out.  I would never lie to my husband or children the way I lie to myself nor would I deny them my love as I repeatedly do with myself.

Heather wrote about pregnancy as a long sea voyage we take to be united with the sweetest of souls and some of us just get more seasick than others and I like that way of looking at it.  It made me think of the words I wrote early in my last pregnancy: "...the juices and hormones slosh around as I lay shipwrecked on the bed the way nature intended perhaps for a woman to surrender fully to her body.  It brings her to her knees and reminds her that nature is in fact running the show..."

I am slowly realizing just how much I live and do for others while trying to fit it all into my own truth.  Perhaps it is the plague of an only child who never had a sibling's bad behaviour to distract people's attention from my own.  I began this blog to be a happy go lucky space for crafting and creating, but I can't deny the ugly stuff that still bubbles up and I can't help but put it into words.  And oddly enough, people respond just as much, if not more, to the truth and reality.  Everyday I learn how to be more real and honest despite the reactions I get and writing gives me that.  I can't write about perfect pantaloons and the gratitude without sometimes writing about the frustrations and the darkness.  I can't sugar-coat it all...it's just not who I am.

e.

P.S.  I so appreciated your encouragement with regards to the repeat c-section vs VBAC debate and would love to hear your detailed stories if you are willing and able to share.  Please email me at applesforpoppyanne@hotmail.com

Comments

[a friend]

I just stumbled on this blog today, and noticed the 1/25 note about the AW post, and had to read the comments to find out what that was about. I'm appalled that someone would have the nerve to post such a hateful thing on another person's blog. If you don't like the blog, why read it? And more importantly, why contaminate someone's day with a mean-spirited comment? That is not only hurtful to Erin, but to all the other people who obviously love the blog and are appreciative of someone "keeping it real" by documenting her own feelings. Erin - I didn't read your post as "whining" at all, just expressing feelings. Feelings are never "right" or "wrong. I hope you aren't ending the blog because of some jerk that is having a bad day, or a bad life, and wants to take it out on you. Keep your chin up, it is courageous of you to share your life and thoughts with the Universe, unfortunately there are some bad apples out there that feel the need to disparage others in order to make themselves feel superior.
{big hug}