27 weeks. I’m in the third trimester. The home stretch. I’m still puking and dealing with awful sour stomach. Yesterday the kids talked me into going out to lunch. On the way home I had to pull the car over so I could vomit all over the road and in my neighbors yard. That shit is so embarrassing. It was one of those prolific pukes where you feel like you are throwing up everything you have ever eaten. Ugh.

Sciatica is kicking my ass. I’m stretching all the time, including the specific exercises recommended by my chiropractor and it still hurts like a motherfucker.

I’m back to the point where no food sounds ok. Everything sounds pukey and nasty and I just don’t want to eat. I’m still bouncing up and down in the 5-7 lbs gained range. I’m glad I’m not still in deficit.

I’ve been sleeping ok. 7-10 hours a night for the past few nights. Sleeping with the kids is a bit of a pain because they take up so much room in a queen sized bed these days. Something like the road trip would be so much harder now that they are bigger. But neither of them have any interest in passing up the golden opportunity of Noah being gone.

It’s always interesting to me that despite being fairly clingy most of the time… when we travel whoever is out of the house is off-leash. We barely talk. I know some people who have firm rules about calling every day and we just… don’t. Noah’s playing and having fun and that’s good and he should focus on that, not on how we are doing. We are fine.

I mean, I’m a mopey bitch… but that is just a baseline and doesn’t need extra consideration.

I hate how much comfort I take from the fact that my kids see shrinks and the shrinks tell me I’m doing well. The shrinks tell me that my kids are very responsible but not parentified and it doesn’t slow down the creeping horror in my heart that I am going to inappropriately lean on them.

It’s kind of funny. When my kids slack off on responsibility and *don’t* behave as if they owe me anything…. I praise them. “Oh good! You are thinking about yourself first! That’s important. You are a kid. You need to be thinking about kid things not adult responsibility. Well done. I’ll pressure you about adult responsibility in a few more years. Ride that gravy train as long as possible.”

I’m trying to teach them how to be responsible for themselves… not how to assume responsibility for everyone around them and it is such a tricky line.

I invited my cousin to spend a few days around Christmas with us. She’s lonely and would otherwise spend Christmas alone in her room. I haven’t seen her since before FMC was born. DAYS, not weeks. I tend to want long visits with people and then they don’t go that well after a while and I’m trying to learn.

I’m trying to wear the belly band because it helps with the stabbing crotch pain. But it makes my acid reflux worse. I ripped that motherfucker off yesterday when I was trying not to puke in the car and it was too little too late in terms of pressure. Oh god. At least I managed to wait till I was out of the car… I puked all over my hair. That I had washed two hours before. Life isn’t fair.

The longer I feel like a festering pile of shit the more I think “Can’t have a fourth kid. Can’t. This isn’t ok.”

Yeah yeah I’m supposed to care about carbon footprint and be evaluating my reproductive choices based on not using resources. Whatever. I’m deciding based on my ability to withstand suffering.

No one can make me feel good about myself. But I read all the time that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself and that’s a lie. I love my kids. I love Noah. I love my Jenny and my Pam and my Sarah. I love alllllll the rest of my friends who get a more hand wavey recognition of allllll the people because once I start listing too many names I forget someone and that feels mean.

I love a lot of people. I let the love they feel for me carry me through life because I don’t know that I am physically capable of loving myself. I don’t believe that I have to love myself before anyone else can love me because it is demonstrably not true.

I’m really excited about meeting this child. I can’t wait to find out how different they will be than the children I already have. What new mix of my personality and Noah’s will emerge? It’s a wonderful adventure. Will they look more like EC or more like FMC or will they look barely related? Who knows! It’s an adventure!

The baby is over 2 lbs already as per the ultrasound last week. This kid is incredibly viable already and that makes my jaded little heart sing. Every day of continued baking is a bonus. I am torn between hoping the baby will come on Valentine’s Day because that would be lovely and thinking it sucks to have birthdays on major holidays so early would be kinder for the rest of the kid’s life.

I will take what I get and be ok with it.

I just want to meet the baby who will become a kid who will become a grown up.

Yesterday FMC said something that struck me. I wish I had registered the context more but I didn’t. I was kind of spacing out and FMC announced, “Yeah, I work on (mumble mumble) because I really want to have a good relationship with you when I’m a grown up.” It’s amazing to me the degree to which we all feel like we are trying to earn the right to stay together. People don’t stay in relationships if you treat them badly and my kids understand that. We all know we have to get our shit together.

But I laugh when I tell the kids that the worst, most offensive things they do are still small potatoes compared to the shit I did as a kid.

I don’t wonder how I have driven off so many people. I know that my behavior and my attitude aren’t so awesome. And that’s after years of improvement. I don’t feel like I am victimized by people rejecting me. I feel I deserve it. I am not good enough at making people feel comfortable. I make people feel uncomfortable. And I get why shunning is an appropriate reaction.

I just have to pray my kids don’t grow up and do it too. But if they do… I will know I deserve it.

And this guy who was one of my first consistent play partners in the community died. He OD’ed. My personal list of folks I am connected to who have OD’ed is really kind of frighteningly long. I know a lot of people who are in a lot of pain.