Letting Go

I have been sort of in a blogging rut lately, thinking lots but not wanting to blog it, or having ideas for posts and then never writing them because they are too simple or self-centered or who would want to read that?

The thing is – nobody is dragging you to read this here blog 😛 So if you’re here it’s because you want to be, and I can just take a rest from all the analysis and introspection (it’s easy to get lost in there!).

One thing that kept getting me stuck was how much pregnancy to blog about – I’m going to let that one go starting now. First of all, I loooove reading pregnant people’s blogs! Obviously not everything is about pregnancy all the time, but growing a baby is a big life-changing, self-changing, relationships-changing, perspective-changing… basically it’s a nuke. So instead of denying to myself that the fallout is reaching all kinds of areas of my life and mind, I am going to stop censoring myself from posting what I’m thinking about because it’s too much about me and/or my baby. It’s my blog! Welcome to the Alyssa show. Here we think a little too much, laugh a little too hard and always include the second o in too.

So back to me and all the pregnant-lady blogs I used to read before I ever had a fetus of my own – it seems that not only was I entertained and inspired… I was also indoctrinated. And now I might be the crunchiest person in our prenatal class. Reading pregnancy blogs (meaning any blog while the author was recently/currently/trying to be pregnant) made me realize how many options there are in the world of pregnancy and birth these days, and a lot of moms get really excited about those options, so since I hoped to one day become a parent I should maybe start thinking about alllll this information. Having the baby bug back in February sure saved me a lot of time when I eventually did get pregnant because I had done so much research and thinking and knew great sources for more information if I wanted it, and it was just grrrreat!

Then Matt and I made a baby, and suddenly talking about all this stuff became important instead of annoying, and Matt’s opinion counted even more than the internet’s, and all the abstract fantasies about having a baby suddenly crystallized into the terrifying fact of becoming a parent. Permanently. Every day.

That’s what gets me every time, that all the moments I dream about (snuggling, feeding, changing, baby sounds) will be interspersed with HOURS, days, weeks, years of moments that I can’t be bothered to dream about (being tired, getting bored, missing my independence, falling behind on everything, unbrushed hair, crying, explosive poop). I forget that my days will still have 24 hours, that they won’t be condensed into a misty-focus montage of smiles and giggles and resilient parenting. Hopefully looking back from my 40s (80s?) it can be a little like that, more good than bad and no shaking or weeping at the memories. But in the meantime, there is a big, wide future that I just won’t be able to imagine until I’m in it, and I’m becoming okay with that.