Waiting for your Arrival

I’m writing this at 41 + 3. For those who have already gone through pregnancy, you will understand. For those of you who have yet to, you will find out. You don’t only start counting in weeks, you also count in days. Every. Single. Day. That goes by, you count.

Everyone tells you that the days leading up to your due date are the worst, then they go on to tell you the days after your due date passes are like being in purgatory. The surge of emotions and feelings an expectant mother goes through during these days, weeks, and even months is something noone could have prepared me for.

I’d become quite accustomed to not making late night plans during my pregnancy, but for the last (or so I thought) two weeks of maternity leave with out a baby, I stopped making plans all together. Only to find myself frantically saying to myself, a week past mys due date, I might as well continue my life as before as the little one seems to have signed a year long lease with someone in there. That, or as my partner jokes, she’s packing up and cleaning thoroughly to make sure she gets her deposit back! By planning things I was also secretly hoping to jinx the baby out, hah, reverse psychology! If I’m out and about surely I start getting these blessed contractions every mother talks about? Surely? As everyone seems to think I’m lying when I say I haven’t had a single one, not even a practice contraction, no Braxton Hicks. Nothing. This adds on to feeling like my body has failed me. I can’t even start contracting on my own.

During your pregnancy family and friends hold a lot of excitement for you and this tiny person you’ve created, which soon will be out in the world with you. The days leading up to your due date, not to mention the days past it, this excitement seemingly bursts out of control in every aspect. Overwhelmed with phone calls, text messages and messages via social media, asking if ‘anything’ is happening, it only reminds you of the fact that nothing has or is. The excitement and interest is all well meant, and you tell yourself to appreciate it, as soon it’ll be nothing but a distant memory,

The paragraph above ends on a comma, as that’s where I stopped writing before I gave birth. Ilse Elía, my daughter, did not come willingly into this world. 5 sweeps, a pessary, manually breaking waters and a hormonal drip later, she was in my arms. Well, that plus a lot of pushing, an unwanted episiotomy and she was finally in my arms. Let’s not make this sound easy, because it was not.

I have never before wanted so much to be in pain, and now that the pain is gone I can only remember the adrenalin rush towards the end. It’s almost like nature intends it this way so women will be willing to be pregnant and give birth again, as the whole experience (as magical as it may be) was nothing short of boring to me, painful and downright annoying. When I was pregnant I felt like needed to keep up a facade of being happily pregnant, even to strangers, putting a smile on my face every time I was asked ‘so how far along are you now?’ I didn’t even have a complicated pregnancy, mine was just a run of the mill pregnancy, easy compared to others.

One thing I can tell you is that with waiting can come frustration, impatience and worry. You do everything to try and prepare, your home and yourself, your life, for everything to change (trust me, enough people will remind you of this inevitable change, especially that you should get all the sleep you can as you won’t be getting any that for several years, ‘haha’!)

But you can’t prepare, and you can’t not worry and you will be frustrated. All you can do is make sure that your baby feels loved, warm and fed after it arrives, maybe clean it every now and then too. Even if you can’t get around to that every time you think you should, don’t worry, it’s ok. I didn’t bathe Ilse Elía for 1 month after she was born, I was simply too scared too, but she’s alive and well today. Even though her neck started smelling a bit like cheese as the waterwipes couldn’t reach her neck creases well enough, another thing noone warns you about - the funky milk smell from those narrow places even a bath can’t clean well enough in the first few weeks.

But I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that that’s ok. Everything will be ok.

Words by Lilja Hrönn.
Photography by Katrín Ólafs.