I know it's a natural question to ask at this time of year, but seriously, this has been getting on my nerves since November, because I have been saying for months that unless my son has decided to arrive early, but not too early that he's having to spend a long period in the NICU, I'm not doing anything.
I've bounced between being a lover of Christmas and a total Scrooge for years now, so maybe it's not surprising to some people that I am really not up for doing anything, but there are reasons and it's pretty much because the baby is due so close to Christmas that I don't want to plan anything because I can't commit to those plans and I don't want to make plans that I'm pretty certain I will have to break at some point. The simple fact is that if we have the baby a few days or even a week before Christmas then we'll be very much in the newborn trenches which won't be ideal for either having guests or being guests, and if he has not arrived then I don't want to be sat around all day feeling like everyone has me on bump watch to see if I'm going to have contractions and the baby might be arriving on Christmas day or at least starting to make his way out on Christmas day. Even if he didn't then decide to arrive on Christmas day, I know how I feel right now - like an overinflated balloon or a planet with my own gravity, and also very unstable so I keep walking into things and sometimes that is bump first, which really hurts - and the addition of more weeks and a heavier baby will only make that worse. All of the symptoms I am having, the exhaustion, the nausea and the mood swings don't really lend themselves to a Christmas celebration that it feels like everyone is expecting. Even before our scan where we had the updated due date, we were due right around Christmas so I've been saying since spring this year that I wasn't doing anything for Christmas and I meant it.
Christmas just doesn't feel the same to me this year anyway, because I've not really been able to go out to go shopping and find presents for family and friends, partly because of feeling sick all of the time but also because the amount I can walk is limited by the level of pain that I am in. When people have asked me what I want for Christmas, I haven't had a clue, because it's not something I'm thinking about at the moment. The only thing I have been thinking about is what we need for the baby, because so many people have been asking us what we want or what we need.
The biggest problem with not being able to make plans for ourselves is because our parents have then been reluctant to make plans, particularly my mum who we are planning on taking the dog when we go into hospital, but she also knows she's on call in case I need her for moral support or in case my partner isn't at home when I need driving to the hospital. Granted, on Christmas day or particularly closer to Christmas he'll be off on leave anyway, so that is a bit less of an issue. I think she just doesn't want to plan anything and then have to say she can't help with little man if I need anything and we are in those early newborn days, and I completely get that. She knows I'm going to need some support and he's her first grandbaby so I know she is going to want to be able to spend time with him as well.
In some ways, I feel kind of bad, because us having a baby seems to be throwing off a lot of the family's Christmas plans, but at the same time, we didn't plan for a Christmas baby and it wasn't something we were particularly aiming at (granted if the choice had been Christmas baby or no baby then it would have been a no brainer and we would have chosen to have a Christmas baby, but it's not like that was what we were trying to achieve from the start) but it's not something we've hidden from everyone or not been completely open about. I can be relatively tactless and blunt when I want or need to be, so I have said it loudly for months that I'm not committing to anything until I know what the baby is doing and as I'm sat here writing this (which is about ten or so actually it's more like fourteen... days ahead of when it will be scheduled to be posted) he doesn't seem to be in a rush to join us in the world outside, so we'll probably just be sat at home waiting for something to happen. Maybe when we get to that stage I will regret having been so against making plans, but it's something we'll only know when we know, and it's not like we can't put something together quickly when it comes to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment