One of the presents I received when I became pregnant was a gift pack containing two books: What to Expect When You’re Expecting and What to Expect the First Year. Since I was pregnant, I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting first. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was great reading about what was happening during each month of my pregnancy.
Being an avid reader, I am notorious for reading ahead. But for this book, I stopped myself. I only read the chapter that pertained to the month I was pregnant. Each month I looked forward to reading how the baby was developing and it made me so in tune with my pregnancy.
It was such a great experience, I decided to read the second book -What to Expect the First Year– in the same way. I’d only read the chapter that correlated to the baby’s age.
The first few weeks, it was great. The baby did exactly what the book said he would be doing, which was basically sleeping a lot. This was the first and last time the baby followed the book. After that, he didn’t do anything the book said he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t seem vaguely interested in trying to reach any of his milestones, no matter how much I tried to will it upon him. I began to question the validity of the book. But my fears were elated when it was brought to my attention I hadn’t taken his prematurity into account. He was six weeks early and I needed to adjust his age accordingly. That brought temporary relief until he failed to reach his milestones even with the adjustment.
I hated the book after that. So much so, that I stopped reading it altogether. It was a painful reminder that things weren’t going as planned. And I didn’t want to think about that. I’d gone through so much drama with the pregnancy that I didn’t want any more surprises.
My pregnancy was a derailed train. It had deviated from the norm and landed in uncharted, unfamiliar territory. It was physically and emotionally trying and I was hoping once the baby was born I could get back on the track headed towards the familiar. But my baby’s first weeks of life were just as dramatic as my pregnancy. With geneticists and cardiologists hovering around in the periphery, the normal I was craving wasn’t materializing. And it kept getting farther and farther away with each delayed or missed milestone. And the book became a painful reminder the train may never get back on the track again. So I banished it to the deep dark regions of the closet where it would remain until the birth of my second child.
What I’ve learned
What I was feeling was grief. I had to say goodbye and let go of what I thought my child’s life was going to be like and embrace what his life was like. The frustration, anger and sadness I felt had nothing to do with the book, it was me grieving.