Musical pregnancy

I don't know exactly when I got pregnant this time.  There's no pregnancy test for an album project.  It was always the same way with my children too.   Somewhere along the way you just start feeling different and trying to figure out what's going on?  With my babies, I'd usually feel tired and cold all the time, and couldn't eat certain things. 

You'd think I would have figured it out by the fourth baby, but that was the time I went to the doctor, sure I had a malfunctioning thyroid or something.  She casually mentioned that “of course, the one test was positive so that could be causing some of your symptoms” “WHAT TEST?!”  She was sure I already knew this (in this age of being able to run out and grab a test in the middle of a sleepless night, in your pj's and coat, with a male cashier checking you out of course – obviously I've had those episodes).

There are so many ways in which this process of recording a CD reminds me of pregnancy and giving birth.  I've gone through this 3 times now (recording) and each time it has been a completely different experience.  I should know better than to refer to my last experience in expectation of the next.

I think part of my problem is that I see how easy it seems to other people, how natural, and I think it should be the same for me.

Some women say that they feel their best when they are pregnant.  I've never been one of those.  Either with my babies (I've had 4) or my CD's.  It's usually a long, drawn out, difficult and painful process for both.

I remember with my first child, she was two weeks overdue, I had put on an extra 60 pounds, it was New Year's Eve and we were walking the few blocks to a neighborhood church in St. Paul, Minnesota where we lived.  A friend of my husband's was visiting and he said something about “when the baby comes”.  As I waddled along, bundled in layers that wouldn't close at the front I responded, in all seriousness, “I don't think there is a baby”.  

I had gotten to the point where I couldn't believe anything was really ever going to happen.  And I had no experience to refer to.  It felt like it was all in my head and we were just going to go on like that forever.

I have gotten to that point a number of times about this CD.  Again lately.  This morning to be exact.  Every time I think I can see the light and we're close, something blocks the way and it looks like it may never happen.

Last Thursday I was supposed to be at a studio in Nashville, recording vocals for the instrumental tracks we did on Monday.  We've had this scheduled for four months. Last week I got a cold and that seemed to be gone, except for what settled in my tonsils and glands and has stayed there.  Tom and I went and I managed to struggle through 1 song with many takes and fixes and hurting all the while.  I'm still not sure if we got a good recording or not.  I can't listen to it yet.  I'm afraid all I'll hear will be the pain I was feeling while I sang and the strain of trying to do what is normally an easy and enjoyable thing for me.

I had friends who had trouble getting pregnant.  For some of them it took years and others finally made the choice to adopt.  Either way, we were on the sidelines cheering them on through those years, and praying for them.  Tom and I almost felt guilty for how easily, (and unexpectedly) we got pregnant all four times. 

I sometimes feel bad now for the friends who are cheering me on about this CD.  I keep hoping to give some positive news and just when I think I have some, something else comes up.  I've almost wished now I hadn't told anybody that I'm even trying to do a CD.  And I wonder if some are thinking, “what's the problem here, this isn't that big of a deal to do”.  Maybe my friends who couldn't get pregnant had the same worry, that people were looking at them and wondering what was wrong with them, though I never had those thoughts about them at all.

There are other worries too.  The last two CD's I did were Christian albums and this one seems to be a mix of a lot of everything.  Songs about being a mom, about marriage, depression, how I see the world.  Will those who liked my former CD's be disappointed?

You really are baring your soul when you put your songs out there.  And if there isn't some toughness there, some willfulness to not care what anyone thinks, you can't do it at all.  Or you can't sell it once you do. 

What I can't figure out is why I am doing it anyway?!  Why put myself through this?

The only answer I come back to again is, that I'm “pregnant” in some way.  I can't seem to even write any more songs till I get these “down” and out there, sent off to wherever in the world they will end up.  And whatever life they will take on when they get there.  Like my children when they go.  I gave birth to them, I'm raising them, but at some point I will send them out to be a separate entity from me.  And they will have a life of their own.

Any writer I know feels this.  These songs, these stories, have a life of their own and you are only there to give birth to them.  They're not completely yours to just hold on to and put up on a shelf and keep there.  They struggle inside you to be free and move on.  And you don't  know where they want to get to, and you don't even know how to get them there but you have to do all you can to make it happen. 

The difference is, with my children, there is always a sadness about thinking of letting them go one day.  With these songs, there is only joy.  Hopefully, I'll feel more of that as I see my children spread their wings and discover their own purposes in the world, their own “babies” to set free.

For now, with this CD, I seem to be in a waiting period.  I know it will come sometime and I'm doing all I can to get ready.  But no one, least of all me, really knows when I'll have something I can show the world.