32w1d: My baby shower

As mentioned, I went to my very own baby shower on Saturday. This is actually the first baby shower I have been to in over a year, as I was too raw all of last winter and especially spring, following losing Isaiah.

I was dreading it. I had some requests: please keep it small, please no games, please nothing cute or fancy.

It was both amazing and mildly terrifying at once. Mainly amazing, though.

It was a group of women (and one toddler boy who napped through almost the whole thing, which is pretty amazing), sitting around a living room, talking. But most of the talk was about parenting, motherhood, babies, twins, pregnancy (3 of us were pregnant), baby names, etc. For the most part, I can have those conversations now. But a small corner of my brain kept saying, "Yes, no wonder this was unbearable. It really is that bad. It's just all about the mommy club." Until the shower was officially over and a handful of us were still hanging around, no conversations were about work, vacations, relationships (except how they change, once you're a mommy), movies, books, seriously nothing. And yes, I get it--that's what a shower is for: celebrating a woman becoming a mom (and kinda celebrating the child/children she's going to have, though I do think it's much more about the mom-to-be). And I think that's important, and I'm glad I did it.

But no, former-me. No, people still in infertile hell. No, you're not making it up or over-reacting. Not a single word, not a single glance around the room, can fail to scream BABY BABY BABY. When that's all you want and all you can't have, crying in the bathroom for 30 minutes really isn't excessive. You deserve a medal for simply showing up at all. And if you can't, fuck it. My celebration was no less special because, say, my doctorsister wasn't there. I would have liked her to be, sure, but she wasn't. It didn't steal my happiness. So any showers I skipped along the way, for whatever reason, I release that guilt and shame.

I had a few moments, looking at tiny shoes (and holy crap, did people give me shoes and booties! my boys will be very well-shod, until they master the art of kicking off their adorable shoes and booties), thinking, "No, this can't be me." I had a few panics, looking at the pile of gifts at my feet, thinking, "How will I ever cope with giving this stuff back if something happens? Or will I just throw it away?"

But for the most part, it was very fun. The cutest little clothes! Baby bath supplies! Itsy bitsy nail clippers! Being in a room full of people who all knew about our IF (to a certain degree), all knew about my previous miscarriage, and all knew how badly I've always, always wanted to be a mother. All of them knew how hard I worked towards this goal, all of them were celebrating me very nearly being there. Every woman who goes through infertility should get a party, whether or not she gets pregnant. It was such a wonderful acknowledgment of the whole thing, even from people who really sucked at supporting me during the ugly times.

It was also enlightening. A two-time mom offered, as her advice: celebrate something every day. Celebrate that you took a shower or ate a meal at a table using silverware. But something about the way she said it made me think: I bet she had post-partum depression. She sounded like she was about to cry, recounting those early months, and not in a nostalgic way. Maybe I'm projecting, of course, but I sure heard what I heard. And I never would have guessed, I never knew, and her youngest is less than a year old.

After my great-aunt shared that the minute that changed her life the most was when she first held her first baby, another mom jumped in to share that she had an awful delivery, that her overwhelming thought when handed her child was "whatever", and that she loves that child intensely and the bonding happened, just not right away. And as I look a likely c-section in the eye (Atticus is back to transverse), that's kind of reassuring, to know that no matter what happens during my delivery, if both my babies are alive, it will all even out in a few weeks.

People shared about hating breastfeeding and loving it. (And my best friend didn't share but I know--she opted for formula well before delivery and doesn't regret it in the slightest, and hers was the adorable sleeping toddler who is doing just fine, thanks.)

The daughter of one of my god-mother types, with whom I'm not especially close, is the mom of 10-year-old twins. She shared a lot. I might be calling her in a few months. They had a great story about how her mother kept saying, during the first year, "Oh, {daughter} is doing so well! She's so calm and composed", and the daughter finally snapped, "I'm not calm, Mother! I'm exhausted."

All told, I'm glad I didn't out-right refuse a shower, and not just because of all the adorable little shoes.