Limbo

                  

                                          About Time, by Kimberly Dow on Etsy

New mothers, busy people and my future self are all going to loathe me and want to throw things in my general direction for what I am about to say, but here goes: I’m bored.

Seriously, it’s too much waiting. I’ve done all of my to-do’s and must-do’s and what remains is a small list of things that I sort of have to leave until Thursday – washing our sheets, giving myself a pedicure, packing and loading our hospital bags, getting Gus set up for our lovely dog sitter etc.

In the meantime, it feels like I’m just….waiting. I’ve been asking around to other moms, google searches etc about what I should be doing with these last childless days of mine. The answers are predictable : “SLEEP!” everyone urges in unison, but really, how many hours in a day can I sleep?

“Go for coffee by yourself” another lady told me, “And just sit there and revel in the silence.”

Yet another woman said that if she could go back, she would spend the week before kids just leaving the house spontaneously – no diaper bag, children to wrangle, pee-breaks, tantrums etc.

“It used to take ten seconds” she mused wistfully.

I know that these suggestions are well-intentioned, and I really appreciate them sharing (especially since I asked), but I also find myself getting frustrated. It’s tough being here, on the other side of that dividing line.

I’ve spent 15 years being that autonomous, independent. I’ve spent decades sleeping and getting up when I wanted, leaving the house as I pleased.

Right now (and I feel like I may be kicking myself for this in a week’s time but nonetheless…) right now I just want to meet my baby. I want to see these feet and hands and that face that will seem so familiar but so new. 

I’m grateful that I have had so much time to wrap my head around this c-section, to plan and prepare and get my life in order. But it’s also a really strange experience, counting down the days to such an absolute like this.

We’re in limbo. Waiting…waiting.

Yesterday a friend of ours, Saren, generously offered to come and take some maternity pictures (NOT the cheesy kind. Swear.) and we spent a few hours traipsing through the woods with Gus.

Between the goofy antics of Gus and Adam, I’ll be surprised if we get three decent pictures from the whole thing – while we were taking one picture, Saren started laughing uncontrollably and as we turned around to see why, we saw what she did: Gus taking a massive poop center stage in the background.

I think we found this year’s Christmas card!

This morning I took the car in to be serviced, I have to drive down to the hospital for pre-surgery bloodwork tomorrow. That takes us to Wednesday at least. 

Help me out – If you were in my shoes, what would you be doing?