I heard this phrase during a radio show yesterday and found it intriguing: "Expectations cause suffering." I thought about how this last year of trying to have a child was made exceedingly difficult because my whole life I had just expected to get pregnant, expected to have an easy pregnancy and expected to become a mother. I think many of us are taught to expect that conceiving and maintaining a pregnancy is the most natural thing a woman can do.
But now my expectations have shifted. I have learned, through a series of heartbreaking failures to expect the worst from my body. Now I expect bad news, I expect loss, I expect trauma. I don't think this set of expectations is any more reasonable than the first. Sure, I may perceive that it serves as a kind of insulation from pain, but won't I feel the pain anyhow?
I am going to attempt to ward off all expectations and live in the moment. As of now, I am pregnant. And until I am told otherwise, I am going to try to just *be* pregnant. Expecting the best and expecting the worst just leads toward unnecessary stress. I am made so fragile by the "not knowing." So I am going to try to find peace in the unknown, the unexpected.
I think a lot of this derives from my lack of understanding of faith. I am steeped in, no, sunk in reason. I look for clues, which I always assume lead to logical explanations. I am not so much talking about god or religion here, but in my inability to let the uncontrollable be out there in the world, hovering close to me, with out freaking out. I don't really believe that I was brought down this path for some special reason, or that I will ever learn a mountainous pile of life lessons from it. But I do know that the only way I am going to maintain sanity through this process, is if I learn to allow myself to let go of my own dreadful projections of the future. I am not looking for a more positive outlook, but perhaps a neutral one, where I consign to just deal with the best and the worst as I am smacked in the face with it.
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3 comments:
I think that until you can have that positive outlook- a neutral one is perfect. Good luck on Thursday- either way- the knowing will get better. (I hope a little positive outlook can start to creep in then, but this is a great start!)
by the way- I am starting a weekly acupuncture appointment tomorrow- 2nd time. Your friend is great!
I think part of why I enjoy reading your posts so much is that just as I am thinking something, you write a post about it. I have not been through the losses as you have (I am so very sorry that anyone ever would have to endure that- it seems so unfair), but I can relate to what you are saying about the experience from trying to get pregnant to being pregnant and everything in between. I am hoping that your ultrasound tomorrow goes well and brings you a little peace of mind.
By the way, have you seen the previews for a spoof on surrogacy movie Ba.by Mama? I like the scene where the doctor tells the lead actress "I just don't like your uterus." It made me think of you and myself and others with a fucked up uterus. But it did make me smile :-)
I am praying for you, today is Thursday and I know it will be good
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