This last go-round

I have been pregnant now 4 times. 5 if you count one early miscarriage, which, when it happened, was unbearably devastating and now somehow feels like a depressingly common right of passage in the process of having children. I have forgotten the specifics of each pregnancy and become resigned to the discomfort my body endures at the hands of those who take over it's most basic functions for 9 months. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers comes to mind, though I couldn't begin to tell you why since I've never seen the movie or really know what it's about (cue the eye-rolling from Bryan who suffers these references as a reminder of my age and how old it in turn makes him). If there is any particular emotion I now feel, it is an amalgamation of sadness mingled with relief. This is to be my last pregnancy. A fact that reminds me not to wish for it's hasty end, but to relish the rareness of it's remarkable process. I was 25 when Noah was born and will have had 4 children by the time I turn 32 and 2 months. That's a lot of transition for someone who at 20 was sure she'd never date. When time and life events move that quickly, it's hard to process their importance and the relevance of their rewards in the bigger picture of life. Will I remember the way each of my kids felt when they kicked in utero for the first time? Will I remember how I felt when it happened? Will I remember how later in pregnancy I pushed at them in irritation when they jumped on my over-exhausted bladder for the 10th time in 2 minutes or how I could possibly move between pink, bubblegum ice cream and bacon cravings without pause or shame? Few people ever tell you what pregnancy feels like. Perhaps because most of it is ugly and unpleasant. Perhaps because your body adjusts it's heading and direction with a only a few minor course corrections as though providing for another human being is normal and needs no explanation or description. Whatever the reason, I would have benefited from a few "heads up" remarks about how my body would not be my own for the course of each pregnancy and consequent breast-feedings. Now, by the 4th child, I'm old hat at this and little surprises me or shocks my sensibilities. Things fall apart and I don't wonder "how that happened", but rather why the hell it took so long before it did. This brings me to the final ingredient of my emotional cocktail: relief. I am ready to reclaim my body. My skinny jeans have been on lay-away for just short of a decade, my turtle-neck sweaters have come in and out of bad fashion sense over the course of my pregnancy-ridden adventure and my boobs, which have suffered the greatest confidence blow of any of my body parts, have finally resigned themselves to their less than prominently perky status. Now, they just pine for the day when they might extend beyond the post-pregnancy remains of my bulbous belly.

Maybe it's fitting that the weight of my melancholy for the finality of this baby's impending birth is mitigated by the destruction I know carrying him for 9 months will inflict on my already haggard body. If I have learned anything from being a mother, it is that the rewards of parenting do not come without consequence. Now, if I could just remember to isolate the moments of joy throughout the day and throughout this final pregnancy so that the consequences of my having 4 children in 6 years doesn't further undermine my body's already low self-esteem.