Restlessness and Pregnancy

'Cause I'm a ramblin' man

I ain't ever gonna change

I gotta gypsy soul

And I was born for leavin' 

-"Colder Weather" Zac Brown Band

So now I am older

Than my mother and father

When they had their daughter

Now what does that say about me?

Oh, how could I dream of

Such a selfless and true love

Could I wash my hands of

Just looking out for me? 

-"Montezuma" Fleet Foxes

We got engaged on a Friday night

I swore on the head of our unborn child

That I could take care of the three of us

But I've got a tendency to slip when the nights get wild

It's in my blood....

At night I come home after they go to sleep

Like a stumbling ghost I haunt these halls

There's a picture of us on our wedding day

I recognize the girl but I can't settle in these walls

-"Runaways" The Killers

Maybe I just don't watch enough female-, mother-, and/or parent-centric movies or watch that kind of tv show or listen to that kind of music but I rarely see / hear things in popular culture about ambivalence from mothers about having children and/or being settled down. At least not after they're already pregnant. Sure there might be the comedy aspects of a movie like Knocked Up, about not being prepared for what pregnancy is, especially when it is an unplanned pregnancy, but I can't think of anything like the songs above, only for or about a woman. 

I don't mean to sound like I'm ambivalent about my pregnancy, because, at least at this stage, I'm really not. I know this is what I want, what I have wanted. I know I'll keep working hard to keep it. I know that we're all going to try to make this work as a family and I really do believe that we can. 

But there is a certain unease with all of this. The restless in my soul didn't just go away when I found out I was pregnant. Of course, it should surprise absolutely no one that I'm restless. The defining characteristic of my biological father for much of my life has been the simple fact that he wasn't there. While my mom was more settled, her answer main method of clearing her head was going for long drives or trips out of town. And we moved more than most people I've known when I was a child.

I remember playing this song for my husband, to help him understand that restlessness:

Leaving - Indigo Girls

Jet fuel and traffic lines

Pulling up to the delta signs

Distant shape of my hometown

Black stain where the wheels touch down

I pick up the morning news

I pass the man who's never shined my shoes

Through security and to the train

That will take me to the aeroplane

Count the miles on the highway

The sum of all my days

There's a postcard, there's a call

And there's a picture for your bedroom wall

But do you ever wonder through and through?

Who's that person standing next to you?

And after all the nights apart

Is there a home for a traveling heart

But if I weren't leaving you

I don't know what I would do

But the more I go, the less I know

Will the fire still burn on my return?

Keep the path lit on the only road I know

Honey, all I know to do is go

A cup of coffee and my bags are packed

The same vow not to look back

Familiar emptiness inside

As the distances grow wide

And though I vow to memorize

The last look in your loving eyes

It's here dusk and there dawn

Oh it's like a curtain getting slowly drawn

But if I weren't leaving you

I don't know what I would do

But the more I go, the less I know

Will the fire still burn on my return?

Keep the path lit on the only road I know

Honey, all I know to do is go

But if I weren't leaving you

I don't know what I would do

But the more I go it seems the less I know

Will the fire still burn on my return

Keep the path lit on the only road I know

Honey, all I know to do is go

Early on in the dating the Professor, after a trip to St Louis was leaving me feeling particularly restless, I remember sitting outside on the bed of my step-dad's truck, smoking, texting with him about what he calls my "itchy feet," which he has too and understands but also knows never really leads you anywhere new, since you're still there no matter where you go, and that is what you are really looking for. 

I think one of the issues when we all lived together was a sort of trapped feeling that I couldn't shake. No matter how much I did want to create a family and didn't mind what I took on by being with them, there was still that restlessness. 

But nobody writes songs about pregnant but restless women, about the dialectic between wanting to settle down/raise a kid/have a family and that restlessness.