Do you know what I’m ridiculously excited about today? Noah is making me chicken and dumplings for dinner.
That’s true love.
It’s the little things
Leave a reply
Monthly Archives: January 2018
38 weeks
I’m up to 20 lbs gained! Huzzah!
Overall I don’t get to bitch about how my body is feeling right now. I have some heart burn. I am achey. I’m exhausted. I can point at spots of pain. But it’s really not bad. I’m uncomfortable but this isn’t a nightmare.
Sit ups are finally getting hard. I can still get myself up pretty easily, I’m not a turtle stuck on my back. But it’s getting harder.
I feel like if I were getting massage 3 days a week I would be feeling no pain…. ha.
I’m not doing a great job on lowering my dosage of marijuana. I’m not increasing at all… but coming down is hard.
Baby looks great. Measuring at least a week ahead soon. This might be my only chance at having a baby come before 40 weeks.
I did something nutty. I asked for feedback on the forums about labor support and what it has meant to them. I was shocked that people weren’t assholes. Everyone was really nice. I got some concrete suggestions of things to say to Noah. We are going to go talk to my friend’s mom about labor support this week.
I’m trying to change how this time goes compared to the past.
To do list (for self guilting purposes)
Calls:
- car seat installation appointment (this brand sucks ass. I will never take it out until it is forward facing.)
Other tasks:
- anything else I should write for scripts & routines? Check in with care provider
I feel like I owe a lot of human beings contact of some sort. I should SMS people. I should call. I should write thank you notes and letters. I literally, completely can’t. It isn’t that I don’t care. I feel guilty as shit. But I have nothing to give. I feel so empty and tired and worn to a nub. I feel like if I tried I would end up needing to hurt myself in order to be more present with the reality that this contact hurting me doesn’t matter because I don’t matter. So I continue to be shitty about responding to everyone. It’s not you, it’s me.
My bucket is empty and I remain entirely unsure of what to do with that. I don’t know how to fill it. I don’t know how to feel better right now. I don’t know how to ache less. My body and my mind and my soul all hurt. I keep waking up to these brutal dreams where I mutilate the shit out of myself.
I am so terrified of labor that I am unable to put it into useful words. What in the motherfuck was I god damn thinking.
I want to meet this child so badly. I love how active she is. She’s rarely still and never for a full hour at a time. She wakes me up from a dead sleep kicking the shit out of me. She’s here motherfucker.
I love her completely already. Even though I am scared I don’t have enough to give her. Somehow I am going to have to dig a new well in order to fill her up the way I have my other kids.
I read a neat article about adulting and queer identity. It made me wonder how much of my entire concept of “adulting” is centered around ideas I got from Marion Zimmer Bradley around Maiden/Mother/Crone. I was absolutely devastated recently when Jenny told me that Bradley was actually a sick motherfucker who helped abuse children. I feel like a piece of my childhood is shattered.
If you can’t find a way you make a way. That’s been a lot of my approach to parenting. “I’m not strong enough to do this.” Well then motherfucker get your sorry ass to the gym and fucking work out until you are god damn strong enough. Don’t be a fucking wimp. Just do it. I wasn’t strong enough to chase my kids. So I trained for a god damn marathon so I knew I could have the stamina to keep up with their little asses.
I didn’t have the patience for this shit. So I learned.
This next stage of motherhood is going to be brutal. I know it. And I know that step one is finding a place to dig a new fucking well and I don’t know how yet.
Yet. That word is so important. I tack it on to every complaint my children have about their own incompetency at something. “I can’t do ____” “Yet.”
I am terrified of labor. And I’m also really chill about it in a weird way? I want to labor without medication until I decide I’m ready for medication then I want it freely fucking offered. I want to see if I can medicate myself to sanity/calm/relaxation and have another vaginal birth if I can do so in a reasonable length of time. If I can’t–cut me the fuck open and get this shit over with.
I am not going to die over this god damn birth. But I’m scared.
What am I scared of?
I wish I fucking understood. It’s not really the pain. The first 2 days of labor really isn’t that painful. And that’s contracting every 6 minutes for days without break. Pushing a baby out… well it’s uncomfortable but I’ve done it medication free and I still say I’ve had more painful things happen to me.
The pain isn’t the scary part. It is being trapped for days in my own inability to help myself. It is feeling inadequate and like a failure because it is so fucking hard for me and it isn’t for other people. I feel stupidly bad about the fact that labor is harder for me than it is for most people. I need so much god damn support and I feel ashamed of that.
I’m not a 6 hour, show up, bam here’s the baby, go home kind of case. And I feel embarrassed for existing. I don’t deserve the help I need. I’m too much fucking trouble.
I’ve been trying in the last few days to be more… assertive about asking Noah to do things for me. It’s really hard and sometimes I feel like I’m going to choke on my tongue as I say the words. But I’m two god damn weeks away from my due date. I’m getting to the point in pain cycles where… I need to ask for more touch. I need him to clean up the ant infestation because I have gotten over my phobia of ants but leaning down is painful and hard and I just don’t want to crawl through bugs at this stage of my god damn pregnancy.
But I feel really bad for every single thing I ask for. Because I am such a burden. And I don’t deserve any of what I get. Noah gets such bad trade for his effort.
Why am I so completely obsessed with starting sentences with prepositions? It bugs me about myself. And the word “really”. I use it way the fuck more than anyone needs to.
In some way I suspect it is because I dislike how self absorbed I tend towards being and I don’t want every god damn sentence starting with “I”.
Self.Absorbed.
Notes from today’s visit
I am on day 4 of a nasty headache. I am not overall prone to headaches so this is concerning in my 37th week of pregnancy. We used Noah’s blood pressure cuff and got a reading of 134/77. That is not generally speaking high but I am usually between 105 and 120. I called the OBs office and they asked me to come in for testing. Sure, fine.
First question: “Have you taken Tylenol?” First answer: “So I have fibromyalgia and over the counter medications ceased being effective years ago.”
That was received with full respect.
I got hooked up to monitors so they could check on the baby and on my blood pressure. I spent 3 hours just hanging out so they could see how it’s going. They took blood and urine samples.
I’m fine.
When I was leaving I had a great chat with the nurse. She was a really nice lady. She asked me if the blood pressure cuff at home s electric and I said it was. She asked if it has been calibrated lately and I said definitely not. She told me not to use it again because these devices are famous for getting out of whack and once the medical team have a number they have to show concern.
Totes legit.
The nurse and I had a long chat about my labor plans. She was super nice and gave good advice. She was frank about the fact that some of the nurses on staff are going to push me in directions that make their job easier not my labor easier. She told me that it would probably be wise to have my husband prepared to advocate for me. I shared with her that I spent some time articulately screaming at my nurse during my first labor when I got bad advice about pushing and she grinned. She said I’ll do fine. She said she was really happy to hear that my birth plan is, “Let’s see what happens and consult with professionals in the moment because who the fuck knows what the right plan is.” She said with that attitude (and an open mind towards medication) I am very likely to leave feeling satisfied with my experience.
I need to go find my advance health care directive and bring it to my appointment with my OB tomorrow so it can be scanned and added to my permanent medical record. Sounds great. I paid for one. Might as well use the fucker.
I notified our labor support people that I was doing this testing but it probably would go nowhere and then I checked in when I left the hospital saying I was right, no one’s day will be interrupted.
The nurse and I chatted a lot about having kids with ADHD and dyslexia. That was fun. Her kid is in college now so it’s a whole new ball game.
She was super cool about my marijuana usage. She noted that it was on my chart and totally fine. She kind of hinted around asking if I was using extra to deal with the headache and I said, “I am trying to reduce my usage, which is causing my general pain levels to go up, because once the baby comes I have to be on a lower dosage for a while to increase my alertness. It’s a rough balancing act.” She nodded and said that sounds great.
All in all, an uneventful peaceful trip to the hospital for some necessary checks. Everything is fine. I’m very likely to wait another two weeks.
Now if only I could get rid of this god damn headache.
There is the hole you filled
It was always deeply comforting that when I was up in the middle of the night I could talk to Michael for a harsh dose of logic.
I miss you Michael. I didn’t know how much I would.
Emotions and manipulation and control.
I’m in a weird spot. There’s a lot in my head. Talking about it seems like I will only create more problems. If I talk about how I am feeling I will cry. I spend too much time reading how people believe that folks only cry to be manipulative bastards. People only express emotions because they are controlling, manipulative bastards.
But why don’t you negotiate more to get your needs met? But do it without emotion. Without any way of indicating how you feel because otherwise you are bad.
I can’t talk about my needs without talking about my feelings and my feelings make me bad. Which feels an awful lot in my head like me having needs is bad.
And so it goes.
Chores and screen time (scripts & routines)
Brushing hair and teeth are mandatory. The kids have to check off on their chore chart that they are doing these activities because if we don’t have them check off that they are doing these things… they don’t. These are the first chores of the morning. I also tell the kids to get dressed. This is mostly successful.
EC is supposed to sweep under the kitchen table basically daily. In practice it happens a few times a week when it is gross and I remind her. MC is supposed to mop once a week on Thursdays.
Academics are a mandatory part of Mon-Fri. EC has a literal physical day planner with her schooling activities mapped out. She knows what she is supposed to do on any given day. She does need assistance with some of her tasks but given that you went to graduate school and she’s in 4th grade… I’m completely confident that you could help her with anything that comes up. Sometimes she doesn’t understand the framing of a math problem. Sometimes they both need a little help gathering up supplies for a science experiment. Sometimes there is a question about history or writing. None of these questions are complicated. MC has to spend 15 minutes a day on a computer reading program and otherwise I spend a lot of time saying, “So do you have everything you need for your ES? Should you produce something today?”
Once a month the kids have to turn in 2 assignments each for language arts, history, math, and science. EC knows how she is doing this and everything is set up for her. MC has a variety of fairly simple books they can work through to produce for most of these subjects. MC still needs a lot more reading support but they can be independent on a lot of the work. (But the reading is coming along!)
Kids cannot use the screen until ALL academics and chores are done. They should not start computer academics until after other chores are done.
We (the grown ups) try to load the dishwasher and turn it on in the evening. The kids have to empty it first thing in the morning. If it isn’t clean/ready to be emptied I don’t make the kids wait on screen time until it is.
The kids should be setting the table for meals. Gentle reminders are usually plenty. “Hey it’s time to eat! We need plates!” They are fairly cooperative because they like to eat.
The kids have to clean up their stuff from the living room and they have to tidy their stuff from the bedroom and play room.
Making a meal is an optional chore for the kids. It’s on the chore list, but if the kids do it they get massive bonus points because it is not a kid responsibility in my mind. It’s a kindness they do to help out.
Don’t worry about chore points at all while you are here. I will catch up when I tabulate the sheets. Totes not your job. Just remind the kids to update the chart. They know how that works.
Screen time is paid for in 1 hour blocks. The kids know how to write down that they are using the screen but they sometimes need some reminders to keep up with it because they get a bit lazy. The kids know how to set their own timers so that they are tracking their behavior.
I usually limit the kids to about 3 hours of screen time in a day. Rarely they get more than that. In practice if you are feeling overwhelmed as the caregiver during a short crunch-period like me being in labor…
Dude. Do whatever the fuck you want with screen time. It’s not going to long-term harm them and all you need to do is get through the time in one piece. It will all be fine. You don’t have to micromanage or worry about all the habits the way I do. 🙂 If you feel like giving them a bonus 6 hours and you don’t think they should have to be charged chore points for it because it is a decision you are making as the Adult In Charge… go for it. I won’t complain in any way. It will all be fiiiiiiine.
Everything else on their chore list is something you don’t need to worry about. Laundry is “as needed”. Gardening is rarely assigned and is more often opt-in because they want to earn bonus points. They can get points for exercising but in practice… that basically never happens.
I think it’ll be ok.
Bedtime routine (scripts & routines)
Apparently hitting my “I’m full term” week means that I’m taking this preparation more seriously. Ha. Feel free to read these posts slowly or just read them while you are here and actively needing this information. Anyone who is not going to be babysitting can obviously skip this information… unless it’s interesting. Then you do you.
Bedtime in our house is pretty relaxed. We have interruptions because of events or dinner guests or stuff like that and that makes our routine fall pretty flat. The only thing that is mandatory is that the kids brush their teeth before bed. MC’s bedtime is 8pm (or they are a grumpy bear) and EC must be in bed by 9:30 but in practice she often goes to bed much earlier.
When we are just hanging out at home by ourselves we tend to finish up dinner/house chores/other stuff by 6 or 6:30. When we finish I encourage them to go brush their teeth pretty much right away because the earlier in the evening they do it the less they whine at me about doing it. If you wait until 7:45 it goes quite poorly.
After brushing teeth we tend to settle in for reading/snuggling. At this point both kids are enjoying taking turns reading out loud even though Noah does most of our bed time reading. MC put me to sleep the other night reading a book to just me when Noah and EC weren’t ready for bed at 7:30. That was so sweet my heart melted. (Yes I do read to my children too…. but reading to one another is a huge bonding task in our house. Everyone is proud to participate.)
I don’t mandate jammies but I do suggest them in the winter because otherwise the kids wake up freezing and feel yucky.
Ah, I make them shut the screen off no later than 7pm so that it doesn’t interfere with their sleep pattern too much.
Classes (scripts & routines)
At this point we have a fairly full class schedule for the kids. Some of the information for this post will be in a hard copy in the house and I will not be sharing that data with the internet. (Like the addresses of where we go for classes and such.)
All of the classes that the kids are currently in are within 4 miles of our house and you can drive there on city streets. No freeway driving is required.
Mondays both children have Tae Kwon Do at 3:45. It’s a 45 minute class. I often drop the kids off and go home for half an hour of quiet but it will probably be easier for you to just hang out in the van with B while the kids are doing their thing.
Tuesdays both children have Tae Kwon Do at 5:15. It’s another 45 minute class. Same location as Mondays.
Wednesdays both children have a swimming class at 1pm. It’s only a 30 minute class so I usually hang out in the van or in the waiting room watching the class. EC has been getting herself out of the pool and coming out to greet parents for a while. MC is just restarting swimming so they have less of a routine but we will talk about this over the next few weeks and EC is there to help. Right now the kids might have a cooking class at a separate location at 4:30 but as of last week there was no one but my kids signed up for the class and it is probably going to be cancelled. Bummer.
Thursdays only MC has a gymnastics class at 4pm. It’s an hour long class. I drop them off and go home because I don’t like waiting there. But you are free to do whatever works for you.
Fridays the kids have chess club! It’s at 4:30 and it runs for an hour. This one is right next to a nice park and B might enjoy hanging out for the time. This might be the class that is physically furthest from the house but still not so far it is a big deal in my mind.
Saturdays there is another Tae Kwon Do class at 11:15. This one is an hour long instead of 45 minutes.
The kids have other appointments but they are medical/therapy and all of their service providers are well prepped on the pregnancy situation and they understand that the kids will be missing appointments. So I don’t think any of those will be dropped in your lap.
I think this is all the driving that might be asked of you. We fully understand that if you don’t feel good or if you are dizzy or if you just don’t feel like it… the kids can go ahead and miss any of these classes and there isn’t really a penalty. I’m just letting you know what the kids are used to doing so that if you are feeling up for it, this is their routine. Do your best and it will all be fine. If the kids are still alive and well at the end of my labor we’ll figure everything else out.
Realistically if the kids did no school work and ditched all of their classes for a week… it wouldn’t matter in the long run. Make ups are easy to do. I fucking love home schooling.
Foooooood (scripts and routines)
Breakfast:
- eggs (we usually scramble–EC is definitely competent to cook these)
- yogurt/granola/fruit
- oatmeal (usually with frozen fruit from the freezer, the kids don’t really cook this because it takes sustained attention to stir it and that part gets hard. It’s 1/4 of oats to 1 cup of water and we add in the frozen fruit when the water is nearly all absorbed)
- pancakes (EC can fully prepare these)
- dry cereal and milk
Lunch:
- cut up raw veg with lunch meat and cheese
- cold sandwiches (both children are fully capable of making a wide variety of kinds)
- leftovers from the fridge
- grilled cheese sandwich with red pepper/tomato soup (have tetrapacks in the house)
Dinner:
- If you feel like cooking ethnic foods my kids will eat just about anything. They don’t prefer onions or mushrooms and they are a little picky about greens but the variety they eat blows my mind.
- pasta and sauce
- leftovers (of course, because Noah always cooks LOTS)
- various freezer meals like pot pies or frozen dinners (I don’t have EC run the oven… Still a wee bit high and hot for her to reach in)
- caesar salad (for MC, EC will bitch about this up one side and down the other)
EC says that is what she can come up with off the top of her head. All of these food options are things that we keep around as staples. We will have these foods on hand. The kids are physically capable of doing almost all of this alone but usually we make stuff together for the social/interaction part of the experience. If you aren’t feeling like you can stand… the kids would be cheerful and lovely about bringing you food.
Drinks: we will probably have juice in the house. I don’t encourage the kids to drink it. I drink it because I’m struggling to gain calories. Milk and water are totally unregulated. Whatever they want is fine.
Dessert: our family typically has dessert Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday and we have a sweet breakfast on Tuesdays and Sundays.
The kids are allowed to get a candy item out of the stash spot on Sundays. They know where this is and how to help themselves. We do not otherwise regulate when/how during the week they eat this candy item.
Fruit/nuts/some jerky are on the snack cart and the kids are free to eat as much of this as they want without checking in at all.
If the kids are on the screen a lot you have to interrupt them to force/encourage meals. This is not my favorite dynamic. I tend to just limit screen time around meals because otherwise the kids would far prefer to not eat and get a 10 minute bonus of youtube time. Sigh. Then their behavior goes to shit because they are hungry and cranky. Very predictable.
Our meal times: these are flexible and variable. We have patterns but we don’t stick to them religiously. We usually eat breakfast between 6 & 8 depending on how hungry we are and when we wake up. Mostly we eat within 30-60 minutes of waking up and our wake up time varies.
Sometimes we do two lunches, one at 11 and one at 2. Otherwise if we aren’t that hungry we just wait and eat somewhere 12 & 1 and call one lunch good enough.
Dinner varies anywhere from 5-7. It depends on what we are doing in terms of classes and house guests. Dessert waits until everyone is done eating and then it is help yourself. I tend to remind my children what a serving size of ice cream looks like (the small metal bowls!!! NOT the giant bowls that can hold 1/2 a gallon of ice cream in one go!) but I don’t actually argue with them over this. So it’s a situation where they know I don’t like it and that I have medical/biological reasons for bitching… but I try so hard not to micromanage every part of their lives. I have way too much control over them in general. Most of the time they select a reasonable amount of ice cream. Sometimes they go nuts. I try to see this as a normal variation in terms of people just varying. But it’s hard to not carp at them.
I’ll be honest with you and say there are days when I’m not the best at offering food because I feel like crap. But my kids are freakin good at saying, “Hey! It’s time to eat! So, let’s go see what’s around…” They have not absorbed much weirdness about food from me. (Thank goodness.) They both like to eat.
Be aware that EC will eat a lot more vegetables and fruit than MC. (I’m dropping the future part. I’m a day away from full term. The kid is now my middle child and I need to just go with that.) I encourage/pressure gently MC to eat more fruit and vegetables but I don’t sit on them and force it. If MC is really turning their nose up at what I have cooked, they are allowed to go eat raw veg from the fridge. They are completely competent at making their own salads.
I… think that’s food stuff? If you have any other questions I will cheerfully answer them.
Noah cooks fairly differently from this list but I thought it would be wise to just make this post about stuff that is easy/low effort/the kids can do it for themselves.
37 weeks (almost)
1cm still. No real movement on effacement. Everything is looking normal and good. I’m likely to go 40 weeks.
A happy family
Oh hey. Today is my shitty sister’s birthday. Happy birthday psycho-Sissy. May your 49th birthday be nicer than your disgusting self actually deserves.
Sigh.
I told Noah recently that part of my problem is that I can list off all the ways I am a failure as a wife and mother with great fluency but I really don’t understand what ways in which I am successful. I don’t feel like I’m doing much of anything right.
He told me a few things he appreciated and of course my brain abruptly dropped those words out of my memory banks because nice things are so easy to forget. But I did latch on to one thing: a happy family.
Noah pointed out that this is his first chance getting to be part of a happy family too. It’s not that we get along 100% of the time or that everything is sunshine and roses every day. But taken as a whole… we are a very happy family. We wake up to snuggles every day. We say with great sincerity every morning, “I am so happy I get to see you again.” We give hugs and kisses whenever anyone leaves the house because you never know what could happen and we want to make sure that no matter what we will have no regrets about how we left one another behind.
We encourage one another. We are supportive of everyone getting to have whatever big feelings the person needs to have. (With strong guidelines about Outside Voices Belong Outside.) Having the feeling is always ok. Let’s talk about ok and not ok ways of dealing with our feelings.
It’s ok to be angry. It’s ok to be so angry you feel like you are going to explode. Ok. Now how do we handle these big feelings in a healthy way?
It’s funny to notice that part of my problem at this point is how much guilt and shame I feel for my moodiness while pregnant. PMDD means I have shitty moods every month. I have suicidal periods just about like clockwork. But I can check my phone and look at the Clue application and see that my mood is about my hormonal cycle and not just because I’m a horrible person. When I’m pregnant… it just drags on and on and it isn’t about this day in the month and it feels like these feelings will never end. It feels like I feel like this because I am just a shitty ungrateful person.
I spent six fucking years crying for this baby. How dare I spend the pregnancy depressed and feeling like I should die.
I feel really ashamed of myself. I should be ecstatic. I should embrace the discomforts and inconveniences of pregnancy with relative good cheer. I owe that to Noah and the kids because they all agreed to having this baby.
But I can’t. I’m a petty small pathetic asshole and I feel like fucking shit and I’m so sad and I feel like I don’t deserve anything good in this world.
My friend’s mom offered to be a labor support person. She has helped her daughters and her nieces. It’s such a sweet offer. And every time I consider it I want to burst into tears because I’ve spent my whole life getting by on the dregs of parenting that other people have left over from the people who actually matter to them–their kids. I know that is appropriate and fair and how it should be. But I am so sad my mama has never been able/wanted to be there for me like that.
I’m so terrified of labor again. I had a conversation with Noah about it. I don’t think we are very clear about what I want from a labor support person. He thinks that what I want/need is someone to be between me and the doctors/nurses advocating for me. Given that I am fully able to scream coherent directions in the middle of pushing… That’s not the part I worry about. I can yell at people for myself. I’m really good at that. And when midwives/OBs say that you know you are in “real labor” when you can’t talk anymore… I laugh at them. I have done a lot of training myself for a lot of years to be able to process and communicate no matter how much pain I’m in. A number of bdsm presenters have told me I’m their favorite demo model because I am always able to be articulate about what I am experiencing no matter how overwhelming it is.
I’m afraid of the fact that I don’t believe in me much. I want to be a quitter. I believe I am going to fail. Again. As usual.
Despite lots of evidence that I don’t fail at everything and I have in fact gone through this process twice before.
I want something a lot closer to blacksheep doing the marathon with me and coaxing me through and believing in me when I can’t believe in myself. She was so breathtakingly wonderful during the race. “You can run for a minute. I know you can. I’ll set my timer. You don’t have to run longer than that. You can do it.” She got me through. I’m pretty sure I would have failed at the marathon if she hadn’t been beside me telling me I could do it.
And I don’t actually trust my friend’s mom like that. If she tells me that I can do it I will get angry and scream at her that she doesn’t even really know me so how the fuck does she know what I’m capable of. It worked with blacksheep in large part because she has known me for a long time and she can cite chapter on verse on things where I didn’t fail. It’s not like she’s a sycophantic constant part of my life… I only see her intermittently every few years. But she knows me. She can remind me of things I forget about myself. She had full standing to say, “You trained for this and your body can do this.”
I feel so stupidly grateful for how my chiropractor is jazzing me up at every appointment. He lists off all the ways in which my body is doing very well all things considering. Yes, pregnancy is hard… but I’m really strong this time. He keeps stressing that he has never seen a pregnant person sit up casually on their own from laying down in their ninth month before. This bodes well for me. My hips are still adjusting super easily. Really, all of me is adjusting super well and if I would fucking type less (I’m escaping from my depression on forums… that’s a lot of why I’m not recording more of it here…) I would be in extraordinary shape.
I am thinking about asking Noah to hide my computer and phone most of the time for a while. I have no self control and I am seriously hurting myself. I will keep a note pad out to write down the things I actually need to do on a computer and I could probably get it all done in an hour or two a day.
I installed one carseat yesterday. The second one is being a pain in the ass and putting it together before installation is… more complicated than I anticipated. I now understand the incredible luxury of buying Britax and having that shit arrive in one piece. But I needed something more narrow for the Prius because I’m going to need to get a carseat and a low back booster in the back seat with room for another butt.
Looking back in the van and seeing just a low back booster… I AM SO FUCKING CRAZY. I WAS INCHES AWAY FROM BEING OUT OF CAR SEATS ENTIRELY. I AM AN IDIOT.
But god I want this baby. Even though I don’t feel deserving. Even though I feel like my existence is a horrible thing that shouldn’t be inflicted on the world. I am selfish and bad and I want this baby.
I want to love this person and dote on them and encourage them and find out what flavor of asshole they are. Because they are going to be an asshole sometimes. Just like everyone else.
Speaking of assholes… time to go yell at my kids and throw them into the backyard at 7:30 in the morning.
It’s getting easier
The last couple of days have been interesting in my brain. I feel like I am closing a loop of understanding around codependency stuff. It’s helping with pieces of my depression. It all started with an off-hand comment I made to a gal from the forums. I said we are all there because we are codependent and we want to “fix” someone. She hadn’t thought about it that way. That has made me have a lot of thoughts about my sex life.
I haven’t been writing much mostly because I would not have been able to do so without saying things I would regret in the future. As much as I am ok with most of my lame-ass and/or bitchy thoughts being recorded for posterity… there’s a level of respect I owe my marriage and that’s a fascinating thing to discover as the years go by.
It’s not that I won’t say bad things about Noah. I totally will. But they have to be true and said for a purpose. Sometimes that purpose is that I need to write it so I can see it and prove to my brain that something is real. But for the past few weeks… I’ve been bitchy as fuck and most of the things I wanted to say are true and not true and the only purpose of saying them would have been because I was feeling bitchy as fuck.
So I shut up.
When I am in a better mindset it is very easy to see that Noah fails upward. He tends to only make the same mistake once or twice. He has worked unfathomably hard for our family. He has changed in ways that I am not always sure are healthy but he god damn did it. He still fucks up. We still have issues.
But a lot of our fuck ups are about me. Our sex problems are mostly my sex problems. He has tried. And I am just about fully unable to communicate at the level necessary for really solving these problems. This also happens to be a not so hot month of my life for dealing with sexual dysfunction issues. For one thing, semen ripens the cervix and makes labor go faster. I want this over with so all the penis in vagina needs to be happening. Luckily I’m so god damn wet all the time that tearing isn’t happening.
I have to admit that physically this has been by far my easiest pregnancy. I am depressed as shit and I don’t feel good but I’m doing way better than any previous time.
I think all that stupid exercise helped. And the nutrition work. My body is in a much happier place than it was when I started this experience.
But what about my mind. A buddy sent me a neat article on microchimeras, which is a fancy name for the cells from babies that live in mothers forever. Even not full term babies seem to leave some hint of their presence forever. They were testing women in their 90’s and they had clear signs of their children’s cells. The cells are sometimes antagonists that cause health problems and sometimes are like little stem cells that protect the mother from issues.
It’s been interesting to think of that in terms of my increasing depression with later pregnancies. How much is that related to the cells of my previous children yelling at me bitch you have nothing more to give. Shut this god damn factory down.
Yeah yeah. This is the last. I promise myself. I wanted this one so very much. I don’t know why yet. Whatever challenge this child is going to bring to my life I need it so badly that I’ll fuck up big chunks of my life plan. We won’t do a lot of the travel I dreamed about. It will be hard to save up yet more money to put another kid through college. It will delay Noah’s retirement quite a bit. But I hunger for this child deep in my soul. I need to know them even if it will make my life harder.
I didn’t have children because I was looking for a convenient life. I had children because I wanted to feel what it was like to have a happy family and I knew that the parents have to create the frame for that. I have lost my shot in this life at experiencing that as a child. The best I can do is figure out what it means and go do it for my children.
That means listening to them and getting to know them as individuals. It means setting them up for success and letting them totally fuck up sometimes without rescuing them. It means learning what boundaries feel like because I have lots of developmental books telling me what should and shouldn’t happen at various developmental stages.
I look for broad agreement. I don’t like following any single philosophy. I’m not a good follower of any “ideal”. I think that there are a million ways to be right, you have to judge your own circumstance.
And temperament matters. I am so grateful that my children and I have incredibly complimentary personality types. We don’t fight much and it’s not because my children are cowed. They are sassy little things who absolutely voice every discontent. They just… don’t have many. I mean, there are probably complaints that they keep behind their teeth because they are afraid to tell me. Assume “afraid” in that sentence is really a stand in for a lot of complex emotions that can’t be simplified to fear. My kids want me to be happy and I’m sure that sometimes they would rather not upset me than voice an issue. I try to do my best all the time to accept “no” well and to give them space for their own opinions and boundaries. They do voice complaints sometimes about me and I try to address them with speed and good humor.
I mean, I asked them if they wanted to see therapists so that they could have a safe adult to talk to about problems with me. I’m trying to create space for them.
So I feel like this is a you can lead a horse to water situation.
I have put a lot of responsibility on Noah for a lot of years to fix my problems with sex. That’s really not gone very well and maybe I need to try something different. He can’t fix this. This is big. There’s a lot going on here that I literally can’t clearly articulate at this point and I’m not really heading into a time of my life where I have traditionally had a lot of access to thoughts about sex. Maybe we are waiting another five years. Oh god I hope not.
I feel really done with sex being something I owe. And that’s incredibly complicated for a laundry list of reasons.
It’s been interesting talking to Noah about the ways I have done sex. I didn’t fuck all those people by looking for intimacy. What does “feeling good” mean to someone who dissociates at the drop of a hair.
Part of the problem is that Noah worked really hard on helping me stop dissociating. And then I figured out that sex hurts and I can’t do that any more. I can do things that help me dissociate more and that therefore help me process a lot of sex. But those things all have a very high cost to my relationship and are probably off the table for the rest of my life.
So… then we need to change sex and I don’t even know what that means.
And I’m not going to be in the best physical or mental place to work on it for a long time.
Complete topic shift.
I have been having petty, stupid, bitchy thoughts about a situation. I am angry with myself for not responding more. I am giving away too much energy to someone who doesn’t matter. I know I’m being a dumbass. MAKE LIKE FUCKING ELSA ALREADY.
Why an I letting it take up space in my brain? Someone can only make you feel small if you let them. It’s ok to have different life priorities. But yeah. I like staying home for many good reasons.
I didn’t say something snottier because… even though I have bitchy ass thoughts… I don’t actually want to model that behavior for my children. I will directly address things but it’s… different?
I don’t get bitchy with people. I get forceful.
But I still wish I got to be bitchy. It would be satisfying sometimes. At least it is in my snide comments to Noah. But I won’t even write them down here. Because it’s really stupid and even I’m not that immature.
But I’ll acknowledge that the struggle is real. Being nice is shit.
This is all superego. My id is ready to be mean to someone for sport. Because I’m petty. sigh
But I didn’t and I won’t.
Because I really am staying alive for this “good role model” experience. And soon there will be three. And the third will be such a different experience.
Why do I start most of my sentences with fucking prepositions?! It’s a god damn nervous tic.
Everything is related to something else. I guess it feels more appropriate to start every sentence as if it were a continuation of a previous thought. It’s all building from somewhere. But where is it going?
To bed.
Procrastination, future tripping, refusals, and gifts
I need to take attendance and create the PE log for this grading period. It’s due today. I am… clearly not doing it yet. I have been too busy pressuring my kids to get their stuff done in the past few days to get my share done. Instead I figured out how to spend almost $2,000 worth of school funding money. I probably wouldn’t be done with that project if Sarah hadn’t had an unexpected few hours to browse at the same time as me. Thank you, Sarah. That was such a huge help. It took at least 8 hours of my time to do that project… and Sarah probably put 2-3 hours in as well. Yes, home schooling is work for the parent. I’m shocked by every person who asks me if home schooling is easier. Uhhh… in what way? I don’t have to enforce being dressed and out the door at a reasonable hour…
My wonderful Jenny gave me a great gift today. She told me that they will not be able to vacation with us this year. She didn’t belabor it. She didn’t make it a long drawn out guilt trippy sort of no. She didn’t tell me about how other people are more important so she will spend her time/money on them. She just said they can’t this year.
I am so happy with her I could cry. A good solid respectful “no” is a treasure. I totally understand that vacations are costly and difficult to arrange. I have no expectation or feeling of entitlement that I should receive that kind of money/time expenditure. But I’m told that I should ask for things I want. A messy no is really hard. This was lovely. I’m so happy.
And that means I can talk to my family about what we want to do and not think about anyone else’s preferences. My kids are asking for snow and the beach. I don’t think they understand how contradictory these requests are. It shows their limited California weather life.
So maybe we will have a split trip. Or who knows. Maybe we will have to pick one after I look at the price of air travel. I just know that now I get to future trip and hang out in my happy place where I think of what I could do instead of what I am doing.
Pregnancy is so miserable.
P&A have been inviting me to the Bahamas for years. Maybe…
It’s a big world. Our bank account is recovering from the remodel hell. Maybe… we’ll see….
Maybe we should wait until after the house is sold? I don’t know. We’ve got some serious logistics to look at for the next 12-18 months….
STOP COUGHING ON ME
Everyone in my house has a cough. I went and bought cough medication/treatment for suppressing it. They don’t want to take it. Instead they want to not cover their mouths and cough on me all day long.
I am going to be a raging bitch if I have a terrible wracking cough when I am in labor. That is Not Fucking Fair.
Oh yeah, that’s why.
Every so often I go off my meds for stupid reasons. Forgetfulness, or self-punishment, or feeling ashamed of myself for being a drug addict.
I forgot a full day of meds in the past few days. Whoops. That’s why I’m feeling so god damn bad. That’s a lot of medication missing from my system.
The medication that lets me: eat, sleep, feel less pain, have more of a pause in my brain so I don’t panic, feel less suicidal, reduces overall anxiety, reduces stomach pain…
Sure. I’ll just stop. And see what happens. Because “If I really cared about my baby I wouldn’t give them drugs.” So it is better for me to be unable to eat solid food. It is better for me to violently vomit up my attempts at solid food rather than use this medication. Better that I wake up every 20 minutes all night long crying from pain. Better that I feel like I should die and I am so consumed with managing that obsessive thought that I pretty much cease all other meaningful work. Better that I be in so much burning stomach pain that anything I eat or drink makes me cry. Better that I have nothing but burning diarrhea because my body cannot handle the amount of stress it is feeling and it flushes everything as fast as possible.
Because if I cared about my baby I wouldn’t use drugs.
If I stopped using drugs I’m not sure I would live to see the delivery. Would it be ideal if I didn’t need drugs? Of course. I wish I could do ok without these fucking meds. They are expensive and taste like shit. But my life isn’t usually full of me getting to choose just what I would like to do. My life is full of a lot of “What do you have to do?”
I have to be able to function. I have not been able to think much this week. I’m dropping balls all over the place. I’m not responding to emails. I’m missing appointments. I’m not doing mandatory online work that is supposed to happen.
I’m just sitting around feeling like a pile of dog shit. Because I was stupid about taking my meds. Missing pills has consequences. But it’s hard to take them all and not feel ashamed of myself. It’s a totally fucked up system.
But after almost a full 24 hours of being fully medicated as I should be… I’m hungry again. After days of not eating. Do I want to need this medication? No. But nothing else has ever worked.
I need to stop opening the fucking cannabis threads.
Very little sleep
My whole god damn body is an explosion of pain. I feel like I am minutes away from vomiting and I’ve felt like this for hours. I try to sleep and my shoulders hurt so bad I wake myself up every 20 or so minutes.
My massage therapist won’t work on me if there is ANY illness in my house because her mother is very elderly and sick and at risk. It’s totally reasonable for her to have this boundary but it sucks to be me. So I didn’t get work last week and I won’t this week. I may need to look for another massage therapist and that’s not a pleasant thought right now.
I think I’m spiking a fever based on the fact that I’m so hot I feel like I’m about to burst into flames. I am so hot I am sitting in my currently unheated house naked. This Does Not Happen. My breasts feel like little fire balls.
I’ve had terrible diarrhea all night.
I’m really over being pregnant. And this whole damn sick season. This fall/winter has been so brutal. My kids haven’t had more than a week or two of consecutive health since October.
But once I turned the humidifier and air purifier on in the bedroom FMC stopped coughing. So there’s one tiny victory… Haven’t heard a cough in hours.
Stripping my clothes off did help me feel slightly less on the verge of immediate vomiting. Ugh.
Didn’t puke till 8:20. wooooo
35 weeks
I’m measuring a week ahead, which is pretty incredible given that I’ve gained 11 lbs. I also look visually small… which is kind of funny.
Doctor said I have one fingertip of dilation and no effacement. I’m pretty likely to make it to 40 weeks.
We talked about my anxiety and depression and came to the conclusion that I’m doing what I can do for it. She’s super awesome about my pot usage. She’s very blunt about the fact that she doesn’t know what impacts it could have on my kid. There are no statistics. That makes me want to kiss her hand. Thank you for admitting that we are flying blind here. I adore you for that.
We talked about measures in the hospital and why this birth is just not going to be able to go how the last one did.
I feel comfortable with her. I just wish I knew I would be able to actually see her in the hospital…
Baby is head down and fairly engaged in my pelvis. Now to wait five weeks. Sigh. I know it is best for the baby to cook full term. I’m really getting over being pregnant.
Just came to say, goodbye love
Michael Shannon died. I talked to him three weeks ago. The last thing he ever said to me is that he is touched by how fiercely and unequivocally I am on my children’s side. He was always good at the kind observations.
I am so sad he won’t get to finish growing up and have kids. He was going to be such a good dad.
Rest in peace, Michael. You will be missed.
Ultrasound
Head is down. The kid is positioned so that their feet are in exactly the same damn spot they were when side ways. Well, this is good… I guess.
Right kidney is barely enlarged. Like, sitting right at the “max” reading and there is slight swelling of the ureter but baaaaaarely. So we need to notify the pediatrician and do a check at about seven days old. It’s not a super emergency.
That’s probably all good news.