On keeping a blog

Whenever I talk to someone new about the pregnancy, I always slip in something about how we had a really hard time getting pregnant. I’m kind of doing it on principle — like I said in my very first post about this, I want to be the success story you have up your sleeve when your friend confesses she’s struggling with infertility. (In the wake of Octomom, I also feel a responsibility to be the person you know who did IVF and isn’t having multiples.)

For many months, the fact that we had tried to get pregnant for so long and had ended up doing this crazy medical procedure was so much more real to me than the pregnancy. My whole first trimester was colored with terror that the baby was simply a mirage, and that I’d be sent packing back to infertility treatments any day. I thought I’d never stop feeling that way.

But I did. Now, it’s starting to feel so distant, like something that happened to someone else entirely. What feels real is having to sit on the floor to put my shoes on while my baby thumps and bumps from inside. In a few months, I’ll be a completely new person again, and what will be real will be motherhood.

If you’ve read our blog for a long time, you’ll have to excuse me for recycling one of my very favorite Joan Didion quotes:

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not…We forget too soon the things we thought we could never forget.” (from On Keeping a Notebook)

A few days ago I went back and reread all the Making of This Baby blog posts and I cried a little and thanked myself for writing it all down so I can always remember what it was like to be that particular person I used to be.

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