Up and down

No baby this month, and so, I am a little blue.

Immediately, I go into cognitive behavioral mode to halt the dominos of negative thoughts. I guess the upside is that it makes me eager to spend that much more time with N because she is my one and only, maybe forever.

I know that if I don't have any more (and I realize this is premature because it is only month 3 of unsuccess), I will go on. I will have a good life. But there will always be a tinge of disappointment.

Like a record player, the wonderings that are generally filled with fear and not a true sense of wonder keep revolving:
"Maybe my meds are keeping me from conceiving?"
"Maybe N was truly a miracle baby because she happened so quickly when I would say I was at my mentally healthiest."
"Maybe God knows I shouldn't have more kids."
"Maybe this cyst on my ovary is keeping me from conceiving?"

In many ways I felt some of N's babyhood was stolen from me because I suffered from the anxiety/depression untreated or undertreated for so long. I see pictures of her between the ages of 8 months and 18-months, and I want to jump into the frame and relive it...well relive it without the feelings of sadness and irritability that accompanied me the first time around.

My nephew was born 3 days ago on Thanksgiving. And so I am envious as well. My experiences are never just filled with 1 emotion; they are usually burbling and gurgling, and just nearly boiling over with at least one deep-seated, better left hidden, unpleasant feeling.

When we went off birth control before N, my attitude was "If it happens, great. If it doesn't, we travel and have lots of fun." And true, I don't know how I would have felt if it had taken me awhile or a long time to conceive. Maybe that would have been the lever that hoisted me into the world of mental disorder?

But now, I understand what it is to have a wonderful child. Being a mom is hard...not physically so much as emotionally and psychologically. Worrying about her now, her future, her development, her psyche. Being vigilant that I am doing what I need to do to help her, to be a solid presence in her life.

But despite the hard, the being "on" most of the time, she is my miracle. Sometimes I still can't believe I gave birth to her because I remember it so clearly, and yet it seems like a surreal dream. Maybe it was someone else, and I was just standing in the room? She is what makes me know there is a "something" greater than myself....whatever that "something" is called makes no difference.

And once you experience a miracle, it's like a drug, and you want to do it again. Or at least I do.