They told us that labor would be hard, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say that the _waiting_ for labor would be so hard! (Maybe you forget this part once it’s all over.) But there’s a curious phenomenon: we have to keep wrestling our own experience down to keep our eyes on something bigger that we know to be true.
What I mean is this. As far as we’re concerned, our whole experience adds up to one thing: you can wait day after day for this baby to come out, but she hasn’t yet — so each day feels _less_ likely to be her birth day. But in fact, we need to accept the wiser testimony of a broader sample: each passing day is _more_ likely to be the one. It feels like an act of imagination to make our sense of imminence ramp up instead of down. But it’s not: it’s more realistic.
I agree — I keep feeling like we are just _pretending_ to have a baby. But we aren’t pretending! Pretty soon, our belief and our experience will be in sync.
This was -exactly- my experience with my Ph.D. dissertation! But don’t worry, it won’t be as long as you think!