Countdown

Reading the mommy blogs and the Facebook posts from pregnant women, you can get the impression that there’s a certain universality of experience for all mothers. Sure, there are often-bitter differences: medicated or unmedicated childbirth, vaginal or cesarean, breastfeeding or formula feeding, cloth diapers or disposable, cosleeping or cry-it-out. The list goes on and on. But all mothers can agree: the time will come when you feel SO PREGNANT you just CAN’T WAIT for this baby to be BORN ALREADY!

And surely this is a common experience for many mothers. Pregnancy can be uncomfortable, as can other people’s comments on your pregnancy. The restrictions (warranted or unwarranted) on pregnant women can feel stifling. Many women are eager to sleep on their stomachs, to reach their toes, to eat yummy soft cheeses, and to experience relief from the ubiquitous lower-back-ache.

But some of us, we mothers of preemies who persist in getting pregnant, have a different experience.

I think I can understand how normal women feel, how impatient they become with the waiting, the comments, the ungainliness of a heavily pregnant frame. But I can’t imagine ever feeling so pregnant, so eager for my pregnancy to end.

Instead, I tease about inducing at 44 weeks, about making up for lost womb-time.

I have two countdowns on my telephone: the one, a preset in the “pregnancy mode” for my period tracker, tells me how many days there are until my EDD (expected due date); the other, of my own creation, tells me how many days I have until I’m more pregnant than I’ve ever been before.

34 weeks and 3 days.

That’s the most of pregnancy I’ve experienced. And I’ve always spent the last few weeks of pregnancy in bed or severely limited, willing just one more week, one more day, sometimes even one more hour before the doctor comes in to tell me that it’s time.

It’s not time, my heart screams, even as my head nods and my voice tells him I’m ready to start the induction (or, in Louis’s case, to try to turn him so we can start an induction instead of another section).

As my due date tells me I’m nearing the last third of my pregnancy, my personal countdown reminds me that any day now my blood pressure could start rising, I could start putting on water weight in earnest, I could start spilling protein in my urine. Any day now, I could go on bed rest.

The road map is impressed on my mind: If things progressed like they did with Tirzah Mae… If things progressed like they did with Louis… But the differences between my pregnancies with Tirzah Mae and Louis also remind me that progressing differently doesn’t mean IT isn’t going to happen. I still could be preeclamptic.

Now, as the numbers on my countdowns slip lower and lower, I whisper my wishes to the Father who knows all things and who ordains all things for his glory: Lord, if it’s your will… let this pregnancy go to term.

-7 days

-14 days

-21 days

-28 days

-35 days

-40 days

I don’t want this pregnancy to end.