Good enough

After several fitful hours of sleep riddled with dreams of UFOs and vampires, I was startled awake at 3 am by the feeling that I had a sore throat, which must mean I had swine flu. Yes, this was my first waking thought at 3 in the morning. I got up to pee and by the time I made it to the bathroom my throat felt fine, so I must have just been sleeping with my mouth open or something.

But when I got back in bed I had trouble falling asleep, because I couldn't stop thinking with dread about the idea of having gestational diabetes.

Here's my problem (well, one of the many): I'm a perfectionist. What people who aren't perfectionists might not know about people who are is that it's not that we actually do things perfectly. It's that we are so hung up on the idea that anything but perfection is failure that we spend a lot of time worrying, self-flagellating, and wallowing in anxiety, because of course we know that we can't achieve perfection, and therefore we are sure we are going to fail.

So far I've been really lucky and my only complication with this pregnancy has been my anxiety, which is so easy to hide. When people ask how I'm feeling, I say "great!" - I don't say "hobbled with fear about the remote possibility of birth defects!"

With the exception of one trusted friend, I haven't told anyone I know in real life about my trip to the emergency room. While it's true that I don't want to worry the grandparents, another big reason I'm not talking about it is that I am ashamed. I feel foolish and I feel like I did something wrong. While on some level I know this is irrational, it sticks with me on a visceral level.

In a similar vein, even though I can see how ridiculous this is, my chief worry about gestational diabetes is not that my baby's health will be affected, because in fact I know it's something that's pretty easily controlled, it's that I will be horribly embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I'll feel like I did something wrong, that I messed up my pregnancy. I'll be branded with the scarlet letters of High Risk Pregnancy. I'll have to be induced or have a C-section because I didn't "do" pregnancy well enough. I didn't exercise enough, I didn't control my cravings enough, and now look at me.

I'm trying to let go of this notion, however. As I near the end of the journey, I'm trying to refocus my view to acknowledge that pregnancy is just a vehicle for bringing a person into the world. It's not a destination in itself. As long as that person arrives here pretty healthy and ready for life outside my body, I've done my job. And really it's not that hard to do. It's hard to do perfectly, but it's not hard to do well enough. And I know that being content with good enough is going to be the central lesson of parenting, so I might as well start get acquainted with it now.