“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful."
"Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.”
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot.
Dear Son,
I will be 42 weeks pregnant in two days, and I am writing to apologise for my attitude for the last two weeks. You see, I have been impatient, I have been selfish, I have been petty, I have been plain pathetic.
The first thing you should know about the Mother you are going to get - is that she is very selfish. At least she has been for the last thirty years. Your mummy (to be) has never had a sister, she has never had a brother - she has been her mummy's one and only her whole life - and this has rendered her quite self absorbed. She is able to make any situation in the World all about her.
Your Father and I weren't planning on having a baby - you were a surprise to us. A shock. But a pleasant shock! Like the feeling you would get finding a £50 note down the bottom of an abandoned sofa. At first I was scared and worried how it would affect me - while your Father was excited, like a little child, at the prospect of you - and every day has been a massive learning experience for the two of us.
While I have been 'housing' you in my belly I have been through the mill. I have suffered. I have been sick and exhausted and depressed and been to A and E and spent nights coughing up blood. It has been harder than I could have ever imagined - and all the while, you have been Golden.
You have been in the right position for all my scans, you are in the correct position for birth, your heartbeat has been perfect, your size has been lovely, your movements have been consistent. It would seem Son, that you are much better at this 'pregnancy' lark than me!
Of course, being your Mother - I have made it all about me! I have played the victim card - I have moaned to anyone with ears, I have milked it to your Father, I have over emphasised the ailments and over exaggerated the agony. On more than one occasion, probably 75% of the time - I have taken 'you' - and your well being for granted.
The last two weeks however - have really taken the biscuit. It makes me quite ashamed to think of how I have been. I have been negative and impatient and ungrateful and dramatic. Instead of celebrating every moment that you are safe and well and, I assume, happy within my walls - I have taken it for granted, concentrated purely on my own discomfort and spent the days cursing the continuing hours that you reside in me.
I even blamed you! I moaned that you were stubborn and whimpered into the night how unreasonable you were that you wouldn't move out when your lease was up! I whined that boys were lazy! I counted down the days till your due date (convinced, for no reason in particular, that you would be early) with impatience and when the due date came and went it was as if someone had died. As though a tragedy had occurred - when all the while, a miracle was occurring.
And why should I blame you? You have no notion of deadlines or dates - suspended in nil gravity; warm, safe and protected - oblivious to this world. Why should you want to move towards the cold light? The noise? The real world. I would stay in there too.
The irony is that I don't know why your Father and I are in such a rush. Why is it of so much importance that you come to us so quickly? Why aren't we savouring and devouring our last days together, just the two of us? And why am I so impatient for you to arrive when, if I am honest, I am not ready for you.
Don't get me wrong - your room is ready! You have tangible things - clothes and toys and goodies that other babies would be jealous of! You have a family awaiting who will love you to within an inch of your life - but I am scared stiff of you arriving. I am scared that I just won't be good enough for you. Maybe that's why I have focused so much on the dates - to avoid thinking about the reality of becoming... 'a mother'.
And when I think about real tragedies in the world - or the women lining up to be in my position - devastated by not being able to have children - and here I am crying about keeping you within me for forty.... two weeks. Well, I couldn't feel sillier.
So, I sincerely apologise darling - for being so silly and angry and frustrated - these last two weeks in particular.
On Tuesday - they tell me - they will try to urge you out into reality. By Mother's day on the 10th of March, providing everything goes well and you are meant for the world, I will be a Mother - good or bad. And you will no longer be a bump. You will no longer be anonymous. You will be a little person. You will be a Son. And you will be my Son, my baby - forever.
And these last two weeks will be a distant memory; replaced with thousands of weeks of fresh worries ... and joys.
My mistake has been that I have focused too much on the 'waiting' ... Like the characters in that depressing Samuel Beckett play - waiting for Godot.
Or like someone at the airport, on their way to Paradise - whose plane is 2 hours late. They forget - they are still going to paradise - they just have to be a little patient! They are just a little delayed.
So, you stay in there, you relax - and your excited Father and I will see you soon Son x
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