The root word for inspiration (spiro) means to breathe, did you know that?
It’s very hard to be clever or thoughtful or inspirational when one literally cannot breathe. But I’m sick of writing posts about not being able to breathe. But I can’t think about anything else. This is torturous. I realize that I am deeply, deeply lucky to be able to say that May 2010 is one of the worst months of my life so far. There are way worse things that could happen to me than this. But golly, the hours this month have dragged by. I have 4.5 weeks to go until my due date, and someone at church chirpily pointed out to me “you could go over, you know! It could be 6 weeks!” I was like – lady, you have no idea how what you said haunts my every sleepless night. I prefer to think that if this kid comes around the same time as his brother, I only have 3.5 weeks to go. If he comes a bit earlier than that, it could be considerably less than a month. We need the money from my job, but my eyes are going to shrink into the back of my head from trying to stay open on a nightly 2-3 hours of sleep. This is so odd, I don’t know why my body is reacting to this pregnancy this way. I have an appointment on Tuesday morning, and I’m going to try to emphasize how deeply this is destroying my soul and see if we can, like, I don’ t know, do some kind of external manipulation or exercise or something to push him down out of my lungs?
I spend a lot of my time irrationally angry at this child. It’s an emotion that I hope immediately fades upon his arrival. I know that the not-sleeping because I’m up with him will be a different feeling – I won’t have the panicked, gasping wakeups that plague my nights these days. His baby cries will be my cue to wake up at night, not my exacerbated sleep apnea + breathing phobia. I was very tired with Jack in those first few weeks, but never angry at him. Weary, occasionally despairing, but my thoughts toward him were pretty much never FURIOUS like I am with poor Angus (not his real name), who really isn’t doing this on purpose. I’ll take it as a testament to my mother-love for Number Two that I haven’t yet seriously considered asking for an induction to have him early, crazy as he’s making me. I’m not sure how conducive the midwives would be anyway – heck, I prefer midwives because they don’t interfere in the natural birth process as much as doctors. These women are open to interventions – that’s why I selected them, because I won’t be prevented from getting an epidural if I feel I need one – but . . . I feel they would look askance at a woman who was tearfully begging them for an induction simply so she could be more comfortable. Also, I would feel ashamed of myself.
I will soldier on, but remember this as a time of great challenge, character building, and blah blah. I got a breathing treatment at urgent care a couple of weekends ago, and it was delightful, though the inhaler they gave me with the same medicine in it is not proving as helpful. Maybe I could just go hang out in urgent care every day and suck on their hookah thing til I feel better, then race home in hopes that I get to bed before it wears off. Maybe I’m just typing nonsense now so I won’t have to end this post, so I won’t feel so alone at 1am on a Sunday night when I know I have to get up soon for Monday morning at work, and the despair is too much to take, as is the thought of going back in the room and laying on the bed and closing my eyes for a few blissful moments before I leap out of bed, heart pounding, breathing hard, tearing away pillows and sheets, telling myself You’re not drowning, relax, you’re not drowning, you’re just fine, everything’s just fine.