Pregnant Writing

Pregnancy has done strange things to my creative life. Despite my writing days still sitting all in a row, it’s a herculean effort to sit down and actually write things. There are the typical creative excuses, that I’m still half-editing my last project (due to come out soon on the ebook market!), that I’m working on a first draft which is always difficult. Then there is the obvious, my shiny new novel is about achieving a harmonious relationship between consciousness and physical self, and throwing a second physical self into the mix is a major wrench to the project. I can blame pregnancy hormones for destroying my ability to focus, or bemoan my new need for an afternoon nap.

All that is true. It is also true that when I find myself with usable work time, I spend it on mommy-like things. Some mommy-like activities can’t be avoided; I see the doctor quite a bit more than I used to, and clothes shopping is now an ongoing activity. But then I can spend hours updating my baby registry on amazon.com, and even more time culling the articles and replies to articles on The Mommy Playbook, a forum for moms-to-be. I make coffee appointments with friends who are moms just to grill them about their birth experiences and advice for those frightening first few months of parenthood. I go to the mommy group at my church, I research schools in my neighborhood, I read endless reviews and consumer reports on various baby products. I obsess, you might say. I swim in the pool of ideas for the upcoming change in my life.

Being a writer is such a core part of my identity, more than a lot of things you might think. A few years ago when I was battling (and sometimes losing to) depression, it was when I found I couldn’t write anymore than I knew I absolutely had to do something about it, even if it felt drastic. The poor cute husband just shook his head and said, “Not because of me, or God, but because of your writing.” Although it sounds a little sad, I was a writer for over a decade when I met my husband. While I have doubted or turned away from God at several points, the pen and paper have always come with me. Certainly if it came to some weird cosmic twist and I had to pick between my husband and writing or God and writing, the writing would go away. Only the person left over for my husband or God would be an essentially different person than me.

Is it possible that motherhood could change me at such a fundamental level that I could somehow cease to be a writer? Who would that person be? And honestly, is it happening already? Early in my pregnancy, I noticed that Google Chrome guessed that I wanted to visit The Mommy Playbook before it guessed that I wanted a thesaurus. That was such a strange event, because of course, the thesaurus is where I spend such a great amount of my time. The endless search for the perfect word is my private safari, my personal collection of hunted treasures.

While I fear that the writing part of my being will disappear, in a back corner of my soul, I know better. I know I will find a way, even if I can’t fit it onto a physical calendar. It may look different, and it may be short and choppy for a period when there aren’t several hours tacked together for concentrated composition. Yet, I will find a way to scribble down some phrases that capture pieces of my life, of my spirit, of the world as I observe it. I will find a way, if not because I hold a gritty commitment to my vocation, then only because I simply can’t help myself.