As much as I try to monitor the amount of time I spend with babies (newborns are pretty much out of the question, toddlers I can just about handle), it doesn't take away from the little pang of pain I feel every time I see a pram being pushed on the pavement.
Now that the weather is getting milder, they are everywhere. Seriously, between 9am and 5pm, you can't move for Bugaboos, I-Candy's, those double clumsy looking things that say, 'I've got two you know, t-w-o'.
In a weird way, strangers' children are actually more difficult than the ones I know. At least with them, the majority were around before Bear was born, and I can feel some kind of love for their little cherub faces, as they are the offspring of adults I like too.
But unknown babies, and their unknown Mummies, are painful. When I went and did some errands just now, as the sun was setting, it was utter bliss. I could actually walk around like a relatively normal person, as all the little people were at home having pureed carrot willed into their mouths.
For the first time, in a long time, the office seems rather appealing.
I so understand what you mean. When you are out in the "world" you see everybody with everything you've imagined your life to be. It is hard to cope with sometimes. I encountered a pregnant woman today and it was just so hard to see somebody else in that state. I didn't know this woman but I so longed to be pregnant and in that state again.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has to find their own way through this part. Mine was rather masochistic, but it seemed to make sense at the time.
ReplyDeleteI felt that every place I'd been whilst pregnant, every place I'd expected to go with the new baby, mixing with other mothers and babies etc - they all held ghosts of an imagined future that wasn't happening any more, and I had to find a way to overlay the 'should have been' with the new reality.
So I made myself go to the places and do the things that would hurt, and after a few times, it didn't (so much). Sounds a bit barmy, admittedly, but I was desperate NOT to be the lady who couldn't be near a baby - especially when so many of my friends and family have them.
I didn't want to feel bitter at their happiness, just as I didn't want them to feel embarrassed about my sadness. I didn't want to be cut off from everything good in the world. It's lonely enough, this journey.
ReplyDeleteAfter a while, you discover that, contradictory to how you feel, you DON'T actually have a sign over your head that says 'woman without her baby', and it is simultaneously terrible and liberating.