I was a proponent of the postfix macro solution. `.await!` or `.await!()`, essentially. The idea was that this could be generalized, it was closer to existing syntax, etc.
I was worried about features that I still don't love like `.match` etc (I'm more open to these now).
Post-fix macros would have been very complex. Scoping alone is complex.
`.await` kinda just works. It does everything you want and the one cost is that it looks like a property access but it isn't. A trivial cost in retrospect that I was a huge baby about, and I'll always feel bad about that.