When I tell people my story, or tell people who know my story about how I'm feeling, or just in general when I express myself these days, I very often get some variation of the following comment:
"Once that baby comes, everything will be okay, and you'll have some peace".
This sentiment comes at a lot of different levels- some people are wishing it for me, and praying for it. Some people just fervently believe that having the baby will make me happier. And others still believe it so much that it seems as though they can't imagine that I would have trouble believing it myself.
The truth though is that the baby, beautiful little miracle that she is, won't solve anything. I know that she'll help, but having her is not the finish line - it's not some turning point after which everything will be better. In the very best case scenario, she'll bring me a kind of happiness I never knew before. This, I think, is what most people are expecting. But what she won't do is bring back the kind of happiness I had before, or heal the wounds of losing the love of my life. Those things are permanent, and there's no changing them. I learn every day to live with the knowledge that my old life is gone and there's no getting it back. What I stand to gain when the baby comes will be a different kind of happiness - one marked by loss, but full of the hope of a new future. And just about every mother I speak to feels that this, at least, will be an instantaneous transformation in my life; the doctor will hand me the baby, and I will be aglow.
Reality has taught me though that not everything is always what we think it will be. Statistics vary depending on where you look, but somewhere in the neighborhood of one in seven new mothers experience postpartum depression. These women range from those who are susceptible to depression to perfectly normal, healthy women who simply feel no connection to their children. Or, after the baby is born, they simply don't have the euphoric feeling of the love of new motherhood that so many other women promised they would feel. I've been going through extreme emotional duress for the past seven months, brought on by the shock and trauma of not only losing my husband, but actually being in the room when it happened. As one of my doctors bluntly put it, "many women get postpartum depression for no reason. You have a reason."
Luckily, my doctors and family know my situation and are aware that they need to monitor my closely, so I know that I'll be taken care of. But it still terrifies me. What if I don't feel the euphoric new motherhood thing that everyone promises? What if I feel no connection to the baby? I doubt that either of these things will happen, but they weigh on my mind and heart as I try to prepare for every eventuality. And every time someone promises me that I'll feel a certain way once she arrives, I try to put those comments in a little file in my brain that I don't open. I can't take any more broken promises.
For nearly eight months now, I have been living for this baby, terrified of losing her, of something being wrong, and yes, I've been terrified of what happens when she comes too. I've always had a picture in my head of having a child, of how my husband and I would tell our families about the baby, how we would go through the pregnancy together, and how he'd be there during the birth and after. When Ryan died, I had to change the picture in my head- but it's hard to know what to replace it with. I don't know that what I'll feel will be unadulterated joy. More likely, it will be extreme happiness mixed with extreme emotional pain. I've gotten somewhat used to feeling opposing emotions at the same time over the past eight months, but this will be a more extreme level of it.
I'm scared about something else too, something difficult to explain. Ever since Ryan died, there have been different milestones that I've set in my head. Sometimes they're simple dates (a month after he died, our anniversary, six months after he died, his birthday), and sometimes they're difficult events that I've had to struggle through (the first time I slept at our house, the first time I took a trip without him). Often I set my sights on a milestone like this, and I think, this is going to be hard, but it will be better once I get through it. Then, I make it through, and I wake up the next morning, and nothing's better. In the most extreme circumstances, I sometimes get my brain locked on the idea that I just need to make it through this particular test, and then everything will go back to normal, and Ryan will be here again. And of course, he never is.
Having our baby all along has sort of felt like the finish line. I just need to make it through this, I need to take care of myself so that she can be born healthy. Once she's here, everything will be fine. When everything isn't really fine at the end of my labor, and I'm still living in a world without Ryan in it (still), I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to take it. Even as much as I can prepare myself for it, I just can't explain the depth of pain repeatedly waking up to this life I've been left with. I can absolutely know and accept that Ryan is gone, but sometimes this little kernel of hope starts to grow inside of me, and when reality proves it wrong, I feel like I sink back into a deeper level of hurt. The thought of going through that again when the baby comes is too often on my mind.
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