Living (and working) in a body

My pregnancy is 13 weeks and 1 day along. I started off the week crying with gratitude--I heard the heartbeat at the midwife's office and then got genetic testing results that my baby has the lowest risk possible of any chromosomal problem, including the type of congenital heart defect that has appeared in my family of origin. I can't believe I could be so lucky to have a baby that is as healthy as any test can possibly test for, and therefore as likely to make it to term as any other baby. We told a wider circle of friends and made an appointment to tell work. I was just overcome with gratitude--and then utterly exhausted from all the emotion. 

Then the next day I got to work, feeling rested and well (which is happening a few days a week these days, which is a new thing) and realized I'd forgotten about yet another meeting; and I'd failed to respond to a colleague in a timely way about something; and I'm really behind on projects due imminently. This has been the story of the past new years (not the entire story, there have been some really good work highlights too), but I feel like I'm always apologizing: "sorry I missed that meeting," "sorry I was off email," "sorry I had to cancel," after I went through the nausea and fatigue of a first trimester of pregnancy, then a miscarriage, then complications from a miscarriage, then depression, not to mention my ongoing PTSD; then another pregnancy and miscarriage; then more complications and a D&C; then utter emotional disaster. And now, I'm healthy! Nothing is wrong! but it still affects my work, because I have to sleep for 12 hours a night in a profession where burning the midnight oil is the norm; and I have to stop and rest and eat repeatedly when others are moving straight from project to project. I'm not complaining, I am incredibly grateful, and happy with my decisions. I'm just noticing that having a child takes an enormous amount of work, of real work; far more than I ever knew, because I thought it all happened after the child was born. But what about the miscarriages, the fatigue of the pregnancy, and then god forbid, the survival of a late-term loss of a child? How do we account for that? How do we make room for that? Make time for that, value that? In work worlds that are designed with the assumption of male bodies? I mean, the answer is, we don't; women get pushed out; we get paid less; we don't even have paid maternity leave in this country (egregious!). And in a less abstract way: How do I explain why I've been a little flaky lately, when I haven't been sick? Pregnancy is healthy, and yet it mimics illness. It's certainly a health condition. Especially when I've been having to use that excuse for now, three pregnancies in a row? In the past, I've never heard of women needing to make accommodations while they were pregnant; all the examples I've seen seem to just press on, these women have seems so hardy. But my guess is it was hard, too. We just don't talk about it. 

And maybe a part of me misses work being my major focus. I've made a conscious decision to make time for other parts of my life--my treatment for PTSD, my journey of trying to have a child--which I don't regret, but there was a reason it had to be a conscious decision. I like doing what I do, and I like to be as good as I can at what I do. Deliberately not trying to be perfect is hard. Harder still is allowing that of myself. 

Weirdly, I've had some moments this week where I realize--fear--that now I am *that* woman. After miscarriages and struggles with trying to get pregnant again, I know what it feels like to be irrationally resentful of other people having children. And I worry that I've brought those feelings up for other people now, despite my best efforts not to. Especially now that I "announced" my pregnancy over email to more friends & family (we referred to the miscarriages). It's hard, but I remind myself that I can't take away the pain of loss and infertility, and it's stupid to try. That's where people go wrong, and I've borne the brunt of this too: trying to make others feel better, rather than allowing them their pain and bearing witness in a compassionate way. It's okay if, as I start to show, other women need to run away from the sight of me, as I once felt the need to do. I can respect the need to do that. Basically, what I'm trying to tell myself, is that I'm going to step in shit, because the world is still full of it--unfair suffering. And that's okay. I might even say or do something accidentally hurtful. I hope when I do I have the humility to respond well, and not get all defensive, and instead to see that someone is hurting. I suppose that's good preparation for parenthood too. I will screw up. That's a guarantee. But the question is whether I will be too afraid of admitting that I screwed up to bother to reflect and try something new.