11 June 2012

Week 38

Right now, right this very minute as I write this, I'm 38 weeks and 3 days pregnant. The day additions, those fragments of time that seemed so meaningless in the calculation of pregnancy, now feel heavy and weighted. There's only 11 days left until my due date, and yet that feels so very far from now. Yet I want to make it there, I want to have this baby on my father's birthday.

I've fallen silent on this blog, which happens any time I need to turn inward and take care of myself. The shop was pretty quiet with updates as well in the last few months as I took that space to look after my students, those bravely quiet ones who are trying to sort it all out. But now I'm slowly making my way back. The store is filling up with stock, this blog post is being written, and somewhere poetry is finding its way to the page as well.

Pregnancy has not been a comfortable fit for me. I don't like being pregnant and I don't like many of the "typical" aspects of pregnancy that most people tell women they should enjoy. Unfortunately, expressing any displeasure with pregnancy as a whole reads to many as a sign of "bad mothering." You'll be a "bad mother" if you don't like feeling your baby move.  You'll be a "bad mother" if you don't gush about pregnancy.  The burden we place on women to experience pregnancy and parenting a certain way is limiting and damaging.  This, along with the physical discomforts of pregnancy, is what I've been struggling with personally in this space of silence I've created.

I'll probably write more on this, either here or elsewhere, and build tiny poems dedicated to what this feels like. But none to fear, this blog is intended to explore vintage clothing and integrating it into your life and it will continue to do so directly or tangentially.  Tomorrow, expect to see a post about our support of a local CSA or as some call it a farm share. I'll be driving out weekly to collect fresh vegetables and plan on documenting it here because I see its connection to participating in sustainability.

1 comment:

alexkeller said...

The only thing I liked about being pregnant was being able to eat whatever I wanted. I didn't like the early baby stuff that much either. I should have taken the advice of a friend:
Hire a babysitter for a few hours a week, hire a cleaning service, and get meds. I have the babysitter and cleaning service now, but never took any meds. In hindsight, I should have. I was pretty blue for a while. Loss of life as I knew it, loss of independence ... my mother still doesn't understand why I only had one child.
I wouldn't change anything about my family. And I'm happier than Ive ever been. So I can tell you that it gets better!!!!