Sick still and other motherhood musings

OK. That's it. I give up. I am just ONE of THOSE women, who get sick for their whole pregnancy. Every week I have been like, OK, next week I am sure I will feel better, Or, I read that this woman started feeling better at 22 weeks, so maybe that's when I will feel better? But the other day in the car with my boyfriend I said to him that I need to stop peaking around the corner of the next week in the hope I will feel better and just accept that maybe this is how pregnancy will be for me.

Which is not cool. I am really not into feeling this way. At all.

I have described it before as a hang over feeling with a mix of nausea. Can I elaborate? It is like there is cotton wool in my head, mixed with a slight headache, mixed with exhaustion, mixed with nausea, mixed with this sick feeling in my chest, mixed with a head that hurts and aching limbs. That's about it. Oh, and an ongoing feeling of being faint and out of breath whenever I move.

I am done.

In other news, I have been thinking a lot about motherhood the past few days. I have been thinking about my own relationships with my parents (and their relationships with theirs) and how no matter how hard we try, our child is going to have some problem with us (me). I can just imagine my kid sitting, stoned at some beach after a day of surfing and laughing with all his friends about the embarrassing thing that his mother does, "Oh yeah dude, she always used to say that to me! It was so annoying".

The thing is, we all have expectations about how our children will turn out. Even with this unborn child I have expectations. He will be kind and gentle and strong and he will do good in the world. He will be successful (at whatever he does) and insightful and have compassion. He will make some woman a wonderful partner and he will be an amazing father. He will be respectful and honest with women and have great values. You get the picture. But, what if this is not the case? What if he pops out and is grumpy and unhappy? How much is nature versus nurture? What if he wants to be a selfish and ungrateful human being?

It is these thoughts which interest me. How do I participate in helping the evolution of a wonderful human being? Generally I think that my boyfriend and I will do a good job. We will give this child a lot of love and solid boundaries and all the support he needs. We will imbue him with decent values and make sure his self esteem is healthy. However, that doesn't provide for the x factor in all this. Who he is?

It's easy to love a baby. It's harder to love a pimpled, smelly teenage boy who wants to rebel (in my case rebelling may take the form of being some socially backward child who loves nothing more than to play some violent game online 24/7). What if our boy doesn't want to surf? Or explore life? What if he is afraid?

Enough questions. I have to have faith, that with the right kind of love and support, this boy will flourish. It's why I am having a child. It is partly selfish, but it is also motivated by the enormity of the task. It is noble. I take this responsibility seriously.

For now though, I will continue to hate being pregnant and love feeling him move inside me. The dialectic continues.