"I am never doing this again." My husband made sympathetic noises over the phone as I retched into the bushes. I was supposed to be driving to work but had to pull over to throw up. Again.
I was 24 weeks pregnant with my second child and it was not going well. The pregnancy had come as a surprise and was instantly stressful. Not only was it unexpected, I discovered I was pregnant while in the middle of passing a kidney stone (0 out of 10 stars, don’t recommend).
Within a few days, the "morning sickness" kicked in and proceeded to fully kick my butt. Morning sickness, which had been unpleasant but manageable with my first pregnancy, became a menace. I was sick all the time in a way that all the Zofran in the world couldn't touch.
In addition to the daily barfing, there were other delights in store for me on my second turn on the gestational roller coaster. I also had pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel syndrome (a challenge for someone who spends most of the day writing), pregnancy-induced sciatica, a cracked rib when I got a nasty upper respiratory virus that I couldn’t shake (or take any good medicine for, because: super pregnant), and intermittent spotting that made me worry that I was going to lose the baby.
On top of all that, I had an energetic 4-year-old to keep up with, an insanely busy job, and was dealing with one of the roughest rough patches in my normally stable marriage.
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I wouldn’t say that I hated every single second of being pregnant. Just 99.9% of them.
I think there was one Tuesday in there that was kind of OK, if I'm remembering correctly. Finding out that I was having a daughter was a bright spot, especially for my husband who had four brothers and three sons and had always wanted a girl.
But most of the time, my second pregnancy really sucked. By the time I went into labor, I was exhausted, sore all over, and weighed almost 20 pounds less than I did when I got pregnant (worst diet ever).
I drove to the hospital honestly feeling more relieved that the pregnancy was going to be over soon than excited about meeting my daughter.
And, man, did I feel guilty about that.
I wanted to be someone who loved being pregnant. I wanted to be glowy and happy and in love with my bump. I mostly ended up feeling sweaty and miserable.
I wanted to feel like my relationship with my daughter, who was certain to be my last baby because I was never doing this again, started in some magical way. I was worried that the difficulty of my pregnancy was some kind of harbinger that my relationship with my daughter wouldn’t be as easy … as effortless, as it was when I fell instantly in love with my son.
My son was kind of a perfect baby, the kind that makes first-time parents dangerously smug. The odds that I’d get two babies that came out fat and jolly, ready to sleep through the night at five weeks, seemed impossible. Was part of the overwhelming love I felt for my son based on the fact that he was just so easy?
What if I couldn’t love her as easily as I loved him?
In a fitting end to my pregnancy, my delivery with my daughter was more eventful than expected. There was a tornado, and triplets being born down the hall (which meant all the nurses were even busier than usual), and a failed epidural. Hours after labor was finally over, I ended up having a significant hemorrhage, losing a lot of blood and thinking, for just a moment, "Oh, this is how women die in childbirth."
But there was also this: her little hand grabbing my finger as she laid on my chest, the soft curls on the top of her perfect head, and the way she held her own head up, hours after birth, seeming determined to check this new place out.
It turned out that I was right. She wasn't as easy of a baby as her brother was. Our first few months together sometimes made me feel like I was a first-time mom again; none of the tricks that worked on her brother seemed to work on her. Ironically, she looked almost exactly like him but seemed determined from day one to make sure we knew she was her own person.
And not a bit of that made a difference when it came to losing my heart completely to her. I was in love with this baby from the first moment I saw her.
That determined little baby just turned 12, and I am her favorite person. We sing Taylor Swift songs in the car and spend hours treading water in the deep end of the pool all summer long. She fills me in on the hot gossip from sixth grade and we listen to audiobooks of British murder mysteries while we paint together.
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She knows she has been loved every moment of her life.
What I eventually learned from surviving (and never cherishing) my pregnancy with her, was a lesson that has served me well in other hard phases of parenting: even when the journey sucks, you can still love the destination.
Although I'm not in the baby phase anymore, I find that I think about that lesson a lot these days as I'm entering another period of parenting life when the journey isn't always easy.
My son is a teenager now and there are moments when parenting a teenager is not for the faint of heart. There are times when it is stressful and complicated and my list of worries is long. The stakes feel higher than ever. But I’m also getting to see this kid become a good man who cares about the world and wants to make it better.
Even on the days when I'd rather opt out of having to give the same reminders about homework and picking up his stuff off the floor or look forward to not being an unpaid soccer chauffeur, I know that I'm going to love the man he is becoming, just like I love the baby he was, just like I love his sister.
I’m never going to #cherisheverymoment but the good news is that I also know, for certain, that I don't have to and I never did.
