Neither here nor there

I meant to post something profound on Mother’s Day, something about how it’s different this year, or not, or whatever. And I just couldn’t do it. In some ways it IS different. At our family gathering, people gave me Mother’s Day cards. (J, thankfully, saved his for a more private time.) I wasn’t the one doing the setup/cleanup as I have been in years past.

Maybe this is the source of my ambivalence: one time, several years ago, after my mother and my aunt were the primary worker-bees while some new, young, non-mom extended-family-members just sat around, my mom made a request that the non-moms be responsible for Mother’s Day. Which made sense at the time, sorta, though every year that I was again a non-mom through no choice of my own it sucked more. Especially last year when we decided to just skip Mother’s Day all together. But this year I wanted to see my mom and my grandma, and so we went.

And it felt weird. Weird to be considered a mom. I mean, I feel a sense of protectiveness toward the babies, and I do think of them as my babies, but that’s an internal, private sort of motherhood - not the kind you get a Hallmark card for.

Maybe it was all too much. At Monday’s ultrasound, the radiologist who reviewed the u/s shots said my cervix was “dynamic” - which sounds so positive and energetic, but really means that the length changed during the course of my wanding, which concerned them a bit. If I weren’t already on bedrest, I think that would have put me here. (In fact, the on-call doc was concerned enough to call my peri and consult with him about what they wanted me to do, which was the scariest part of the whole thing.)

Personally, I’m blaming the u/s tech, who had a very weird insertion technique for the transvag wand. As in, she sorta aimed for the wrong spot. I never thought I’d miss the people who asked me to self-insert, but after this I’d be tempted to offer.

More updates from bedrest-land to come...