Today is hard. I was supposed to wake up and go on a short trip, and it was so important to me. I began to panic. I woke up a couple hours later, still down on myself. By late afternoon, I was sobbing. I wondered if I was losing my bond with my baby. I wondered if I even deserved to have a baby. I wondered if I was giving my baby stress as the first sounds heard in utero may very well be my sobs.
That thought makes my heart ache. All I can do is remember that this will pass. I don’t believe it, not really. I feel as though I’m trapped in a room with no doors and now windows. I feel like the starling, the little bird, in Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey:
“I can’t get out,” said the starling.—God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turn’d about the cage to get to the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces.—I took both hands to it.
The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, press’d his breast against it, as if impatient.—I fear, poor creature! said I, I cannot set thee at liberty.—“No,” said the starling—“I can’t get out—I can’t get out,” said the starling.
But the key here is to remember that the cage, the room, they are in my head. They are not real. And I may not believe it, but it is true. My baby will hear plenty of calm, loving words in my voice before s/he is born. I will wait, as patiently as I can, for this to pass.
