Calm of the cast-light cloud

At the beginning of June, I was ordered by my doctor to stop working because my baby and cervix were too low. According to her, I’d overdone the whole metro-boulot-dodo routine and would need to take it easy from now on. Prescription: bed rest.

It is now mid-August and in the past 2 1/2 months I’ve hardly ventured out of the flat except for hospital visits, visiting a friend in Courbevoie and checking out prospective flats (which I did twice).  I can’t help but gawk at the scenes of “real life” whenever I do go out.  Suddenly, people walking their dogs, or ducking into patisseries to buy their baguettes, or clustered around in groups talking look like they belong to a movie set. It seems so exotic, exciting, intoxicating to see crowds of people going about their own business.

I have cabin fever.

And because I have that kind of luck, my third trimester echography shows that I have oligoamnios – not enough amniotic fluid. My doctor at the hospital privé where I am giving birth didn’t even bother to look at my echography results; she just asked me to take another one, and that was it. I am getting the feeling that hospitals here are synonymous to factories… the assembly line efficiency, the lack of compassion, the doctor-patient detachment is sort of doing my head in. But they tell me not to worry, so I try not to.

I haven’t done the touring-the-baby-store routine. Haven’t had a baby shower. Ordered a crib and table à langer online, browsing through a catalogue of limited supply available for delivery, when the fun of furniture shopping is actually entering a store and choosing the furniture yourself. I have to rely on Julien to buy baby bottles and bibs and bathtubs for me, and I feel cheated because I would have liked to pick things out myself. I have not yet packed my baby bag for the hospital because I don’t have the energy or enthusiasm to do so. I have not attended a single birth preparation class because I cannot leave the house.

I grow bigger and rub my stomach and talk to my baby and ask her if she’s doing all right, beg her to be all right, and apologise for being so weak, for not being able to prepare more for her arrival. If I only knew how to make myself stronger, I would do everything and anything and do it. But I don’t know how.

Currently listening to:
Enablers
Tundra