I feel, these days, that life is halcyon + on + on – day after day of a sort of serenity. I was terrified that being pregnant would make me crazier, that having more hormones dumped into my already only barely stable mental system would make these nine months difficult to get through. Instead, it’s actually made me calmer. I’m a little less anxious, a little less easily upset. Which is kind of a novel sensation. And a completely unexpected one. I dreaded getting pregnany for so long because I didn’t know what it would do to my brain, and so far, thirteen weeks in, it doesn’t seem to be bad at all.
Don’t get me wrong though – I still have off days. Friday, I was extraordinarily anxious, and spent a good chunk of the afternoon unfocused. I negotiated an early departure on a promise to finish a certification test over the weekend * and then left the office. And I made it about halfway home before a random thought brought on a fit of homesickness, and I burst into tears. I think I was noticing how it was getting dark so early, and thinking how it would already be dark back up in Seattle. I was visualizing all the city, up there in the rain and dark, as if I was watching from the top of the Bank of America tower/ I was thinking of the ferries going across the Sound, the lights of the piers against Elliot Bay, the cars slowly moving through the wet downtown streets. I started thinking how I would have taken the dark and the wet and the raw cold wind off the Sound over the delicate sunshine of Los Angeles in winter**. Pregnancy may have made me more serene, but if anything, it just made me more homesick, because I wanted this child to be born in the Northwest, dammit, and that plan just didn’t happen.
In a strange way though, even though I always planned to wait until I got back up to one of the Pacific Northwest cities, it feels right to be having this child in Los Angeles. This is, after all, my family’s adopted ancestral homeland. I’m planning to give birth at Cedars-Sinai, and it was at the old Mt Sinai hospital that my aunt and uncle were born, back before the family moved out of Boyle Heights and Westchester and into the Valley. My mother asked me if I’d known that when I chose my hospital, and I said no – I chose it because, well, it’s Cedars-Sinai after all, and it has a fantastic reputation, and it is one of the closest hospitals to me. Also, they take my insurance.
But this seems to be all there is to me lately. I work, and then I come home and fall asleep an hour later. I work on wedding-y things on the weekends – finishing our DIY invitations, visiting my aunt in central California last weekend to discuss the ceremony (it’s great to have an actual Buddhist priest in the family). I don’t have the luxury of leaving work until the last minute, so I put all my energy into that – and that’s it. It doesn’t leave me with much left over to see my friends, or go out, or do anything remotely interesting that I could blog about. Especially when I’m down to a half-cup of coffee a day (which is perfectly safe, and better I function properly on a half-cup than I get even more sluggish on none.)
Still. Since I’m mostly focused on incubating & getting married right now, and both of those things make me extraordinarily happy, it’s not a bad tradeoff at all. In fact, this kind of serenity is pretty wonderful. I hope it keeps up for the next twenty-six weeks until the Critter comes out, and we finally get to meet it.
* I am now a certified Yahoo Ambassador, meaning I am qualified to use their search marketing program. Which I have been doing for the past two years without certification anyways.
** I say I’d take the Northwest winter now, but wait until we move North and listen to me whine for L.A.’s lack of seasons then
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