Moment of Clarity Brought on by Pregnancy Insomnia (Or, perhaps more accurately, the disorganized ramblings of a sleep-deprived mind)

This past week, sleep has become elusive, mostly because pregnancy has finally caught up with me and I can no longer find a sleeping position that is comfortable for more than an hour at a time.  If I am initially exhausted enough, I may sleep for 2 or three hours, interrupted only once by having to get up to pee, if I'm lucky.  But by 4 hours into the night, I find that my hips ache and any attempts to re-position myself elicit an alarming sensation that my pubic symphysis is about to separate completely, cause my uterus to rest more fully on my bladder, and wake whichever baby suddenly finds him/herself suddenly sandwiched between the mattress and their sibling after having enjoyed being on "top" before.  So, tonight, I gave up on sleep and decided to just be awake for awhile.  I put on my robe, visited the restroom to empty my flattened bladder, and waddled to the office.  

On my favorite internet forum for pregnant ladies, and women trying to get pregnant, I read a post from a girl who is very newly pregnant, having just gotten her first ever-so-faint positive home urine pregnancy test a day or two ago.  She commented on how surreal it was to say out loud that she was pregnant when she had absolutely no symptoms of pregnancy, that she felt like a liar with nothing to confirm it but a faint line on a pee stick.  She compared it to suddenly waking up and declaring yourself to have a different race or different name or something similarly significant.  I felt I knew exactly what she meant, and I replied:

"That sensation of ”feeling like a liar” doesn't necessarily go away just because you start having symptoms. Even as absurdly, obviously pregnant as I am now, even being able to feel my twins thumping me in the ribs and having people eye me suspiciously as if they’re afraid my water will break at any moment, even having a nursery more or less prepared, somehow the whole idea that Lee and I are on the verge of having two little people that belong to us is very surreal.

You’re exactly right in saying it feels like suddenly declaring you have a different race or something. The whole idea that I’m about to be a parent still feels like something I dreamed up. Come to think of it, it’s kind of how I feel about the idea that I’m going to be a doctor, even though I’m in my 3rd year of medical school… When I say, ”I am going to be a doctor and mother to twins,” part of me is thinking, ”Pfft, yeah right.” I think it takes a lot longer for our perception of ourselves to catch up with the reality of who we’ve become, sometimes. After all, I’m still the same old me. It’s just that ”me” is suddenly becoming ”wife, mother, doctor”… Crazy."

It occurs to me now that I can trace this sensation of feeling like an impostor back even further, at least ten years.  I recall having a conversation with my father when I was in my early twenties in which I asked him when it was I would actually start feeling like an adult.  At the time, having a job and an apartment and paying my own bills somehow felt like "playing house" to me.  Owning my own kitchen appliances seemed like posturing, as if it were just some grander version of the toy kitchens I'd played with as a child.  And what was my father's reply when I asked him when one finally starts to feel like a grownup?  Never.  I wish I could remember his exact words, but I know he specifically mentioned that even getting married and having kids was insufficient to make you wholly internalize the sensation of "adulthood".  

So, here I am, married, quite pregnant, and well on my way to being a doctor.  And yet, on some level, I continue to feel as if this is just a more elaborate form of "playing house", that my round belly is just a more advanced form of a pillow stuffed under my t-shirt, that my stethoscope is just a very expensive toy, and my husband is just...  Well, my husband isn't "just" anything.  He's incredible.  He's my forever friend, who has agreed to "play house" with the me for the rest of our lives.  

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