Anxiety or love?

Is there even a difference between anxiety and love? I mean, I wouldn't feel anxious about having a child if I didn't love it, right? And I wouldn't love it if I didn't worry about it, right?

But this is a different anxiety than I've ever felt, and a different love. (I know that I can't possibly feel anything even close to the love I'll feel once I have the child in my arms, so don't get me wrong.) I love Mike, but I don't have an anxious feeling about his safety or his happiness at all times. With the baby, it's not even a feeling of anxiety about safety or happiness, it's just anxiety in general. It's anxiety about feeding it and clothing it and bathing it and keeping it from crying and perhaps most importantly, making it sleep!! Perhaps I'm confusing this anxiety about its wellbeing with actual anxiety about my life sucking for the next year or so. Perhaps I love this baby despite my anxiety, not because of it. (Er, I mean, uh, my anxiety isn't proof of loving it. My anxiety is hopefully just keeping my head out of the clouds.)

I am anxious that it will cry a lot, and that it will make me cry a lot, and that I will be sitting in bed, crying and paralyzed with fatigue for days on end. I don't function well when I don't sleep, and I haven't been sleeping well for a week or two, and I know that this is nothing compared with what lies ahead. This leads to perhaps my very very very biggest worry. I'm afraid that our baby won't sleep. See, I was a good baby. I was a sleepy baby. I liked to sleep, and I wasn't a scheduled baby. I just slept when I was tired. I would sit on the living room floor, looking at books or dressing a doll, and when the mood struck, I would just grab a pillow off the couch, curl up in a ball, and close my eyes.... and sleep. And according to my mom, if it was in the evening, she could pick me up and dump me in the crib or in a bed, and I'd stay there, lost in sweet dreams, until morning. (Come to think of it, not much has changed in the last 25 years.) Mike was a devil baby. (This is what I hear at least. I need more details.) But rumor has it that as a child, he did not sleep. He would stay up all hours of the night, and when finally exhausted and miserable but still refusing to sleep, he would have to be locked in his room and he would bang on the door screaming and crying for hours, until eventually he passed out on the floor next to the door. Is this characterization possibly true?? And if so, what if my child has his genes?!?!?

And this leads us to my more abstract and irrational fear (the sleeping thing is a very real problem, and therefore a rational fear.) But I'm afraid that, well, what if this baby isn't a good one? I mean, what if this baby sucks? What if it isn't cuddly, and it doesn't sleep, and it doesn't love me, and it doesn't do cute things? What if it doesn't latch on and nurse? What if it cries when it's held? What if it does nothing but shit these monster shits and have blowouts in the crib, on our bed, on the couch, wherever I set it down??? And then, the bigger worries: what if when it turns 13 it puts on a spiked dog collar, shaves its head and puts a padlock on its bedroom door? What if she sneaks and buys slutty clothes that she hides in her backpack and changes into in the bathrooms when she gets to school? What if he gets a classmate pregnant at age 14? What if she hates me and won't speak to me? What if he does drugs and fails classes in high school? What if she goes vegan and wears nothing but hippie skirts and refuses to wash her hair for a year? Or worse, what if he votes Republican?! (Joke; sorry, I had to.)

But I suppose these fears will never go away. Perhaps you have to trust the genes we brought to the table. Perhaps you have to trust that we will provide a supportive and loving environment that won't push our kids to the edge. Perhaps it's a little bit of, or a lot of, both. But we all know families who are good, and go to church, and the mom makes chocolate chip cookies before the kids get home from school and organizes bake sales, and the dad coaches little league and organizes car washes, and they still have kids who do drugs, drop out of school, even commit suicide. How powerless all parents must feel. And how dumb the others must be to not sometimes feel powerless. Maybe it's the ones who never question these things that are most surprised when little Bobby goes off the deep end.

Anyhow, I just want our baby to be a good one. We should be finding out in less than 7 weeks!!!