2/15/06--a nightmare

(another post from my journal back in 2006 when I struggled through prenatal depression).

I had such an awful dream. I hate these my-dog-is-dying-and-I-can't-get-help dreams. My dog, Queen, had eaten some leaves and then started running around madly in circles. I called GentleSam (who was sleeping in some other house) and he told me to wait. I yelled at him that I needed him now. He came and I gave him the leash and told him to get Queen because I thought she had been poisoned. I grabbed a leaf to take to the vet and then asked GentleSam where his car was. It was up the hill and we started racing toward it with Queen. We found someone on the way and asked them where we could find a vet who was open at night. She gave us vague directions. We kept running and running, getting no closer to GentleSam's car. By this time Queen was seizing up and writhing, and suddenly GentleSam was on crutches, trying to run and carry her. His car was miles away, and I was furious at him for not telling me how far away it was when we started because my car was much closer. Someone was driving by and stopped. We had put Queen down, hoping she could run on her own, but she collapsed on the side of the road, and this man got out of his car and started laughing at her. We yelled at him for laughing and told him she'd been poisoned. He put his hands on her tummy, prodding and examining her, and then said she was in the final stages of the poisoining and was about to die. He kept laughing and we yelled at him to go away if he couldn't give us any good new. I kept sobbing and talking to Queen, telling her to hold on and feeling horrible because we could have put her in my car. I kept apologizing to her. And I knew she was going to die because it ha taken to long, and we still weren't at the car and didn't even know where the vet was.

I woke up at the point and reached out to put my feet on Queen, who was sleeping at the foot of the bed. I pulled her up beside me and cuddled her and cried.

Up until this pregnancy she's been, really, the only vulnerable being who depends on me to take care of her. Now there's going to be a human being who needs me. My dream was about that, I think, and about my fear of being alone and unsupported as I raise this baby.

Feb. 14, 2006

Oh, sleep--so, so good! I'm actually quite proud of myself. As much as this whole thing has been so anxiety-producing for me, I have, a few times, been able to calm myself down. I woke up at six this morning anxious about whether or not the baby's okay, but I was able to quiet myself and go back to sleep. And I'm not so anxious about moving back to Colorado now. I feel a little hopeful. It's not just a daunting task now; now it's a way to start making our lives what we want them to be. That's really beautiful. What do I want my life to be? I want to feel supported, to have a commuity. I want to have others I trust to help with the childcare. I want to be near enough to school that it's not a huge chore to get there. I want to be surrounded by natural beauty. I want places where I can go walk with my baby. I want a quiet neighborhood where I won't be kept up at night, where I can study. I would love a coffee shop in walking distance. I want somewhere where we can have our dog. I want a faith community I can relate to and worship in and meet God in regularly. I want a faith community that is a community and that cares for issues of social justice. That is the sort of world I would love to bring our baby into.

I want to be hopeful about this move, to trust God, to trust GentleSam and myself, to know that we have the resources in us to be parents and to still be lovers. I feel--I believe--that this next stage in my life is going to be one of deep healing, deep wholeness, deep empowerment, as I become more and more able to trust that God and I and my community can create a good life--not just easy, neccesarily, but that I can be a good mother, that I can pastor, that I can bring what is in me, bring my potential, to the outside world and know that it will make a beautiful mark.

Feb. 10

This morning I am anxious about how much this baby is going to change our lives. I think I'm grieving for what we'll lose--the freedom, especially mine as I'll, at first, be doing the majority of the care-taking. I'm afraid that I won't like it--being a mom. I'm afraid of these feelings of resentment and ambivalence, worried about my anxiety.

There's also some part of me that feels a deep peace about being a mother. I think about what I felt when I was a nanny, when I lived with LovingFamily, and I love the idea of creating a family, bringing life into the love between C. and I.

I dreamed last night that I began miscarrying. It was so scary. I was bleeding and was out in public and I felt both relief and great sadeness.

Feb. 9

Well, I'm less stressed. Seeing WonderWoman yesterday and not having her immediately get all excited when I told her about my pregnancy was so helpful, knowing that she sensed that this is hard and scary for me helped. It was so good to cry and admit to feeling resentment and ambivalence and to the darkness I feel, the fear that I can't possibly be healthy and good and loving enough to sustain life and be a good home for my baby.

When I told her I'd have to delay seminary I wanted to cry. I was surprised at how sad I felt. I've already waited a year and I've worked so hard to feel emotionally and psychologically ready for seminary. It just feels like too much to also have to deal with all the mom stuff too.

At first I think I partly hoped for a miscarriage and now I'm terrified it might happen. I think it really comes down to this: I struggle to believe that I can be a mom, that I can sustain life-giving intimacy with someone so vulnerable and dependent on me. I know I can do it. It's not an issue of whether or not I can do the mothering thing, realy. It's more of an issue of who I am, who and what lurks in the depths of me. And that person seems dangerous and very non-maternal sometimes. Other times she seems powerful and beautiful in a terrifying but good way. I'm just afraid...afraid of the broken, angry, abused parts of me...how can I mother when those dark, dark things lurk away inside me?

January 27

Oh, God, I'm stressed again. And I feel afraid. I feel like a failure. Stress just takes over for me so easily. I didn't finish my PhD and now I have to go seminary later. And yet I'm growing a life in me.

Last night I felt so un-mother-like. My feelings of resentment toward the baby scare me because they remind me of how my mom felt about me.

With Respect to Vaughan and Wordsworth

(I wrote an earlier draft of this poem when I was pregnant. You can also read it here, where I've included music and imagery).

Oh God of deep and dazzling
Darkness

Pregnant you glow
with dark, dark light
until exploding, earth,
engorged with divine birth,
shudders to life
then bursts

God everywhere

in blade of grass
wet breath of babes
spiderwebs and dew

God everywhere

then earth,
like glass struck
and nearly shattered,
explodes
veiny icy webs shoot
across its surface
now murky but glittering

And before it drops
into a trillion dusty pieces
you blow
with breath almost still
and the world holds,

glittering,
pulses and flutters--
gauze on wind--
aloft,
puffed with
vapors of life

dazzling murky
earth
shot through
with you

and then you,
infinity,
trickle
trickle to a whisper
and die away,
leaving earth only murky,
no more glitter

Drained of its dazzle,
earth moans,
begins to shatter
beneath the greater weight
of that deep, dark silence

Absence
becomes your name

Absence everywhere

everything, everything
pregnant
with Absence

Piece by piece
the crystalline webbed,
once-breath-of-God
dissolves to dust

flutters opaque
upon the dreary dark
of day
bright, bright
and empty
so full of empty

Absence everywhere

in blade of grass
wet breath of babes
spiderweb and dew
now murky-dull

Earth
groans and
inwardly implodes,
emaciated it
births and births
until it begins to starve

awaiting another a birth
to dazzle
the bright, bright
darkness of its day

Oh Darkness
of deep and dazzling
God,
speak
speak
again
speak

Jan. 26 cont.

I feel so much shame for not planning this out carefully, for not being as careful as I could have been. And I feel some resentment toward this baby who's taking over my body and my mind and my schedule. I want my space back. And yet I'm excited--or at least I want to make my body a beautiful home for this baby and I want to make its entrance into the world one full of love and joy and hope. And just as I feel I'm made to be a pastor, I also feel that I'm made to mother. Oh, I so need to feel God's mothering love for me and my baby.

Pregnant! Jan 26, 2006

Oh, I'm pregnant! It was such a shock to see that pink line move across the test and so quickly too. I was in shock. Then I was elated and then I was utterly petrified, afraid I'd done something before I knew I was pregnant to hurt the baby--I remembered taken a bunch of Ibuprofen after hurting my back and then learned that really hot baths or anything that raises your body temp above 102 degrees could causes severe damage to the baby. I just cried and cried and felt so terrified. My doctor made me feel better, letting me know it was highly unlikely any of tht would have damaged my baby. And I've been feeling guilty for not being more careful that one time. I so wanted to plan this and prepare and feel ready (though I know that I probably never would have felt ready. I've never felt ready fro any major life change). A little prep and warning would have helped, though.

I woke up Monday feeling afraid but so happy. I began to think of these lines from Psalm 139:

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.

17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
18 I can’t even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up,
you are still with me!

Thinking about those lovely lines made me cry. I love the idea that God already knows and loves my baby, this little creature inside me. As I was driving later that day I suddenly felt very secure that I could create a beautiful, peace, loving environment for my baby and that my womb could keep her/him safe. Feeling that was so beautiful.

Last night I had my first major bout of nasueau and threw up and threw up. Oh, it was awful. Finally my headache is fading, though. I think it's as much from being pregnant as it is from all the anxiety and terror I was feeling before the doctor's appointment that I'd done somethig to harm my little one.