I felt strangely calm and non-anxious for the last two or three months of this pregnancy. Yet January 1st arrived and with it came an onslaught of emotions and fears that must have been bottled up somewhere in me. Out of the nine days so far in January, I must have cried on seven of them. The timing surprises me, the reasons surprise me. The impending arrival of this new baby girl has suddenly become scary.
I have felt very strongly all along that I want my birthing experience this time to be different than it was with Tessa. I don't want to be induced, I want her to come on her own. I want to hold her longer right after the birth before giving her away to the nurses to be weighed and bathed. I want to feed my baby, which I got to try once (maybe twice?) before. Now I'm beginning to realize that with wanting a different experience comes a lot of fear. I don't know what it's like to go into labor on my own. I don't know when to go to the hospital. I don't know how to nurse a baby. I'm afraid of all of these things, yet I so want everything to be different, especially the ending.
I'm really not afraid of Tessa's unique situation happening again . . . but there are so many other things that could happen. I try my best to push these thoughts as far away as I can, but they definitely creep their way in at times. I'm sure all moms about to give birth have some of these same fears. It's just so scary and unknown. And I am so not in control of any of it.
Another thought that always gets my tears going is wondering whether or not the new baby will look like Tessa. Half of me wants her to look just like her big sister so I can stop wondering what Tessa would look like at every milestone. The other half of me, as I said before, wants everything to be different. New baby, new look. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
