Gilmore Girls

Last night as the evening wore on I felt myself feeling more and more unsettled. I felt a bit down. I had no idea why because all I had done was lay on the sofa watching Gilmore Girls (back to back episodes for about 4 hours!).

Then me and my husband got into a silly bicker over the difference in wages between footballers and doctors and nurses and I felt so much anger over the topic – part of it justified, part of it irrational I think.

I got into bed feeling wound up and within seconds, a few tears started to drip down my face. I tried to hurriedly wipe them away, but as quickly as I wiped them, more would appear. My husband got into bed and just feeling his presence there made me feel even worse. It is really hard to explain what I mean by that, but I wanted to curl up into him and cry it all out and at the same time, I was desperately trying not to show him I was having these feelings because I didn’t understand them AND was kinda blaming them on him and the football player wage thing…

But the tears took over and I burst into tears. My husband came over to cuddle me and was asking me what was wrong. He asked was it just the footballer thing? I said no. I said I wasn’t sure. He let me cry it out for a while and then when he thought I was better (I wasn’t inside) he kindly laughed and said “what was that about?” and I just said I didn’t know. And I didn’t really, but I knew it was quite deep pain. It was familiar pain and pain that I’ve not felt for such a long time. 

Then, for the second or third night in a row, I dreamt on and off all night and my mother was in the dreams. I woke up several times and I woke up irritable. When I finally had to get up for work this morning, I had a headache and within ten minutes of being up, was sick. Being sick during my pregnancy has stopped now but in the early days was HORRIFIC. I’m 24 weeks this Saturday so being sick now is very rare. I thought it was odd. 

But then I noticed that the bloody Gilmore Girls soundtrack was playing round and round in my head on a loop. I remembered that at one point last night as I was really listening to (and singing) the words, I felt a bit emotional. Then it started to click into place. The Gilmore Girls for anyone who doesn’t know, is an American series based on a mother and daughter who are very close and get on very well. The lyrics to the soundtrack basically say “if you need me to be with you, I will follow you anywhere”. Gulp. Also in the episodes I was watching last night there is a lot of attention on the fact that the mother does not and has never got on well with her own mother and there was a scene where the grandmother finally realises how little she knows her (now adult) daughter. She says “She is right. I don’t know her at all”. I nearly cried at that point (still didn’t entirely click though).

So now I had figured out that the sadness, the headache, the tears, the sickness even (probably) was to do with the mother/daughter thing… the feelings possibly stirred up from watching too much Gilmore Girls, the song words… and the dreams but also, probably from the fact I am a mother in the making now. I have a baby in my womb who is moving about in there and who’s arrival I am counting down on the daily. I did wonder when/if this was going to happen. 

Today I feel rubbish. I still have that headache but since I made this connection, it has eased a little. My sister was texting me earlier and I told her some of the above. I told her that these dreams about mum have made me wake up feeling crappy and she said she totally knew what I meant. She even said now that I am growing a baby it is probably hard for me to realise all the ways our mum didn’t look after us and didn’t put us first or protect us or love us properly. I told her that I felt like I could howl crying or smash up the house. She totally got it. 

I do worry though. I already love this baby so bloody much. What is going to happen when the baby is here and I feel that love that everyone talks about and then its REALLY put into perspective… that worries me.

I don’t want my mother ruining any of my experiences with this baby and in all honesty, over all the years of therapy and journaling and blogging and dreams and crying and everything else, I feel like I’ve given it (her) enough of my energy and enough of my tears. I don’t feel sadness in the way of wanting or wishing my mum was different – I haven’t felt that way for a very long time. I would say I reached acceptance over it all quite a while back now actually, so it isn’t that… its just all a bit stirred up all of a sudden.

These days I rarely speak to my mother and I very, very rarely see her. When the baby comes I highly doubt she will see it much. I feel quite protective over that. I used to worry that it would be difficult to navigate that. How do you tell your own mother she can’t see her grandchild? But now we have so little to do with one another that actually, I can’t see it being any kind of issue. She still doesn’t speak to my husband, I still don’t speak to hers, we still do not visit each other’s houses etc – so really, how would it work anyway? So I don’t worry about that. I only worry that the love for this baby is going to make me feel things at an even deeper level than I have already done and that is a bit scary.