The body’s way of focusing on becoming a mother
When I began to wonder who was in charge of my state of being, I was 7 months pregnant. I had expected to feel the presence of my baby by that point, but the eye-wandering distraction which came to envelop me, caught me off-guard. One day it was upon me and I could not get back to “myself”. My laser sharp focus, intuitive observations and crisp synthesization slipped through my grasp, seemingly gone forever.
Driving into work, I had always listened to the CBC’s news-talk show to get my fill of local politics, international happenings and local haunts for yummy disgestibles. But at this point in my pregnancy, once the radio was turned on, I found I was unable to follow the discussion. It seemed I was floating outside of my old self looking for a new place to land: a quiet one. I followed the feeling: I turned off the radio and found solace in the silence.
I was puzzled by this, if not down-right unsettled. As a newsoholic I could barely imagine anything which gave me the powerful urge to tune out the world. News helped me power-up my day. Only once, on September 11, 2001 had I felt completely unwilling to listen to another moment of the horror of that day’s events and turned everything off. But driving to work, the sensation was unmistakable, I wanted quiet. Nothing in particular struck me about the baby, it was as if I was compelled to zone out, to save my energy perhaps, for the silent internal dialogue unfolding within me.
But when I stepped out of the car into the bustle of the financial district, called to the action at work, I marshalled my resources to focus on the tasks of the day ahead. I moved through my regular routine — computer power-up, make tea, settle into mail, e-mail and prep for my first meeting. Blank mind. There was a basic inability to pull my thoughts together, to bring forward the ideas, observations and analysis my job required. My palms got sweaty. I began to dread meeting with my boss.
Over the next 2 months I was able to pull it together to get the job done, but I was unable to do my usual conjuring of information and action, the kind that really fed my soul. I lost the passion I had felt for the work. I felt sheepish about only “meeting expectations” and came to see myself as somehow cheating.
When I shared this guilt with my midwife Bridget, she smiled knowingly and said she’s come to hope for this. Now baffled, I tried hard to listen to the logic behind the benefit of feeling like an under-achiever at work. Her observations are that as a pregnancy comes nearer to term the body takes over the program and allocates resources where they are most needed. The third trimester is as much about preparing the mother for mothering, as it is about preparing the baby to be born. Following that logic, my body was telling me that I needed to lay off the high-value I put on work — the glory of recognition, the thrill of accomplishment and the attachment to my role and organization. Ouch.
I made little substantive progress in weaning myself from the “hits” I got from work, but I admit that I was very happy to have taken Bridget’s earlier advice to start my maternity leave 4 weeks before my due-date. By that point, my work brain was well and truly cooked.