Transformations

I've always been fascinated with butterflies. I'm terrified of insects, but I have no trouble letting a butterfly walk all over me. I spent a bit of time in a butterfly room at a museum with my mother-in-law once, and I absolutely loved it. Afterward, for a couple of months, I had occasional dreams that I went back there.

For someone so interested in a creature that can transform itself so radically, I certainly have spent a lot of time fighting changes. Part of me even had trouble with the transition after losing that 85 pounds a few years ago. I kept this image in my head of me at my old size and I was constantly shocked at my image in mirrors or windows as I passed by them. In a weird way, losing the weight wasn't as hard as getting used to it being gone.

I knew all along that the period of April through December this year would be an interesting, difficult time. I wasn't expecting, however, that merely being pregnant would change things so much so quickly. I honestly thought I might be a little tired and a little hormonal, but that most of the fundamental psychological changes would be reserved for after the baby is actually here.

Boy, was I a dope.

But back to the present. I spent quite some time in a car with my boss today, as we had a three hour round trip to make out of the office today. We talked about lots of things. Even though I've only known her since May, we talk very easily and on many different subjects, given the opportunity. At some point in that three hours, we talked about the different ways you can raise kids and what outcomes may and may not follow. I think we started by talking about the pros and cons of home schooling, but that led to other generic parenting principles.

The point that immediately crystallized for me was that I said something that I utterly believe (intellectually) and then realized that part of me isn't sure I will be able to follow through. I said, in a roundabout, circumloculatory (see In a Nutshell, upper right) way, something that was just stated very succinctly on Brat Camp, which I have on in the background here. (You see, when you get pregnant for the first time and a show comes on that deals with kids who aren't happy or motivated, how they got they way, and how to begin to fix it, it sounds more interesting than just a regular old crappy reality show, which is probably what it is to most people...)

On the show, one of the counselors told one set of parents that they had to let their daughter struggle. That this was the main cause of that child's issues; the parents always step in when she begins to struggle and she's never learned how to deal with problems on her own.

I said something very close to that myself, earlier today. I probably nodded my head with false sageness as I said it, and my boss agreed with me.

In practical terms, though, the idea that I will someday have to watch my own child struggle and do nothing about it is extremely difficult to wrap my mind around. I can't watch anyone struggle, really. If an actual adult around me is, say, trying to get a bag of chips open and they aren't succeeding, I usually reach to take it away from them and try to open it for them before I think about what I'm doing. I just don't know where this zen ability to do nothing, at least for a period of time, is going to come from.

For heaven's sake, I started feeling quickening ("Fetal movement felt by the mother that may resemble the feeling of gas bubbles, or feel like a light tapping or butterfly movement coming from within.") And before it turns from quickening into kicking, it's indistinguishable from the outside. I'm the only one who can feel it.

When it started, I checked my book and practically every relevant word ever written on the web about it. I knew it was normal—a relief, actually, as it really has to happen at some point if things are okay—but I had to make sure it was the "right sort" of quickening. It feels like the baby is restless, which seems for a moment like the baby is in distress somehow. However, the web has assured me isn't the case. I have this reflex response to put my hand there and reassure (hard to do this without pronouns since CK just reminded us that 'their' is incorrect) him/her, but someday, when I feel the same reflex as this poor child struggles with something alone (which will be both soon and not-so-soon) the right thing to do will be...nothing.