Monthly Archives: February 2018

smks: hug edition

I haven’t used Shit My Kids Say in a while.

Yesterday my big girl asked me what I want for Mother’s Day. We are planners in this house. I told her that what I wanted was to be a mother. She squinched up her face at me. She asked me what I want to get. I said hugs and kisses.

She sighed and said, “We give you hugs and kisses every day. They aren’t special.”

This is one of those moments where my heart isn’t sure how to respond. Wow. I can’t imagine having that kind of hubris about physical affection. It is just so expected and standard that it isn’t special? I’m still grateful for every single day of morning snuggles. I don’t take it for granted. Some day my kids won’t be little and they won’t want to start every single day with touching me. I need to appreciate the fuck out of this while I have it.

And my daughter… she just can’t perceive a future where things might change or be different. Being loved is just… life for her.

On one hand I feel like I have done something wrong by not teaching her to value this more. On the other hand… I taught her that love is so plentiful and common and constant that you should expect it every single day.

I did that. Noah certainly helped and I don’t denigrate that. But…. I did that. Noah would have skipped days. Noah wasn’t with us on the road trip. Noah has absolutely filled in the gaps when I wasn’t available (like my Alaska trip) but he wasn’t the one who created the absolute assumption that the kids would be loved on daily. Partially because back when he worked out of the house things were just more catch as catch can. I think he could provide it now.

My kids can’t imagine a world where they feel anything for me other than complete adoration.

I did that. Even on days when I was pissed at them. Even on days when they were grounded or they received some punishment that infuriated them. They know with all of their heart that they can’t be so bad that I will stop loving them and hugging them.

I did that.

This ache I feel inside about how I will never be good enough to deserve being loved? It is a foreign language to them. They can’t imagine having this feeling.

I did that.

I’m so excited about this third journey through motherhood. What will it be like to parent a baby and a toddler when I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I can dig deep and find the patience to do this right. The first two times I was so riddled with self-doubt. I was always afraid that I was going to absolutely fail them and be their monster instead of their mother. Instead my kids have no desire to be away from me and they think that spending their days with me is the absolute best way they can spend their time.

I don’t know for sure that my third kid will end up liking me as much. But I no longer fear that I will completely fail them. Maybe we will end up having non-compatible personalities. I feel pretty ok about our ability to figure that out.

We have already figured out a lot of things together and I don’t see that trend slowing down.

We finally negotiated food stuff yesterday. The kids were… surprisingly plucky about it. They were almost delighted to decide some of their own restrictions. Like, we are cutting back on how often we have dessert and sweet breakfast because the kids can admit that we have assigned “sweets” 6 days a week and we get random treats and… that’s too much. That means sugar is not a sometimes food it is… the food we eat and that’s bad for us. And when they get to listing off the fruits and vegetables they like to eat… it doesn’t sound so bad. They have plenty of stuff they like to eat.

We agreed to a pattern of eating and they said they will try to manage it for themselves without parents having to police it. Breakfast and dessert we should each try to have a piece of fruit so we feel like we are getting the sweet burst we like to have. For lunch kids are going to try to have two vegetable servings and for dinner we will try for one vegetable serving. I know that isn’t a lot in the scheme of things. But the kids trying to be responsible for eating their vegetables without reminding is kind of new for us.

I’m really tired of asking them every day what they have eaten and if they have gotten enough food groups. I just… I need a break. So we agreed to a pattern of eating that won’t require as much thought on anyone’s part or as much negotiation on my part. They said this is how they want to manage their dietary needs. Other snacks should lean heavily towards protein. We have a great many options in our house.

We’ll see how long this negotiation lasts. *sigh*

If I got a month of not having to nag I’d be happy.

Support is amazing.

There’s a thing going on with my child that I haven’t written much about because it isn’t my story to tell and I’m worried about their boundaries. But I want to express gratitude for part of it in my records so that in the future when I feel like stuff is hopeless I will have to acknowledge that hope does exist.

That thing that happened last summer. Between my big kids. The thing that wasn’t cool and one kid ended up feeling upset but not permanently wounded and another kid ended up feeling like they are a monster in training.

My child isn’t a monster. But a serious mistake was made and learning from it and growing past it are part of life’s difficult process.

We’ve been struggling a lot with the growing past it part. Kiddo is still feeling like they are bad and there is no redemption for them. Dude. There’s so little in this life that cannot be redeemed. Especially something you do as an under ten year old child. That’s just… life… Just about all of us fuck up. How do you internalize that and integrate it and become a better person?

That’s what life is? I think?

But the support I am giving my kid is insufficient. I reached out. I emailed my shrink, the kid shrink, our family shrink and I said, “I don’t know how to help my kid through this. I am failing them and that means we need to find new tools because it is not ok to fail them on this topic.”

I feel so grateful that we have these folks in our life. Hey L, you recommended a great shrink for me! And they have been able to recommend a whole string of useful people! This has been the best therapy rec of my life! Gosh I owe you for this.

So the three therapists talked to one another. They came up with a couple of layers of strategies and they emailed back. They are going to help us as a family create a ritual to release the shame. We are so woo and this absolutely right up our alley.

I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that I found support folks to help my family learn how to grow together towards health and love without shame.

We are so fucking lucky.

Sitting is hard

This is the hard part of the fourth trimester. I’m already getting bored. But I believe in this. We are only 11 damn days into this mess. Well, once she can handle being in a carrier a little better so we can get off of sitting in a chair it will be a little easier to move around the house and yard. This tiny fragile person needing us to sit still phase is rough. I feel like a whiner for thinking it is rough. But it is.

People are coming to visit us. It’s not like we are just watching the grass grow through the windows…

Still. It was a long pregnancy of feeling awful and I’m super antsy. But I’m also exhausted and physically recovering still. Ugh.

I went for a walk on days three, six, and nine. Today on day eleven I feel like I’d probably enjoy going out again. That’s a good sign in terms of energy and physical recovery.

Noah is currently holding the baby for the longest stretch he has managed in a few days. I’m so grateful. It’s hard that early on the babies only want mama. I get weary. But then later they like him better so it all evens out.

I’m feeling like the most boring awful person lately because I’m trapped in the house with three video game addicts and I’m not being as nice as I ought to be. But the only way to have less of it shoved in my face is for me to go sit in a bedroom with the door closed. It would be like if I lived with someone who was completely obsessed with sports and I had to go hide in a closet to get away from it.

I feel small and petty and bad because I feel bored and so uninterested in trying harder to care about other peoples interests. I’m feeling ungenerous about listening to information about other peoples games and books and movies.

I don’t want to fill my head with your interests. I want to be allowed to have my own.

But then I feel like I am not even sure what my interests are beyond “moving around and people being there to talk to”.

I am glad I got to see two friends over the past two days. That was nice.

I’m scared that I’m doing that thing where I spend so much time being silent that when a grown up comes over and wants to talk to me I am really bad at listening because there are so many words trapped behind my teeth that I’m never allowed to speak. Because my interests aren’t interesting or ok.

I feel boring and bored.

I asked my family about going to see Jenny’s family this year and my whole family kind of deflated. They really really really want to go sit on a beach somewhere warm. They don’t want to go to cold Scotland so that I can see people I care about that they barely know. I get it. And I pick almost all of our travel so it seems sporting for me to not demand that yet another trip be all about me. But I’d like to go see Jenny. I don’t get to have everything I want. So we will go to Mexico. Which seems weirdly awful because we had to be selfish assholes who didn’t go the entire time P was there (was it selfishness or pregnancy…)

Why do I think that travel is mostly about seeing people.

Because people are my entire motivation to live.

That’s complicated because I want people to want things from me in order for me to feel like I get to have them. And that’s fucked up.

Sometimes I wonder if I resent the fact that Noah really doesn’t care about my appearance so I have no reason to ever feel like it is a good idea to try and look pretty. That was a real problem in my relationship with my Owner. He was intensely focused on how I looked and I am not a pretty girl so I constantly felt like I was letting him down. I was a failure as a trophy girlfriend. Too many things are physically uncomfortable so I can’t be bothered to do them. The idea of spending money every week or two on my nails makes me want to have a panic attack. What a fucking waste of money. I’m not actually judging other people doing it… I don’t care.

It’s just… not for me.

I am not the kind of pretty girl who should have a cared for body. It takes effort and money and time and… no. It’s not for me.

That was true before Noah so it isn’t like I think my issues are about Noah. But he doesn’t care about me looking nice so when I have the vague flickering barely there impulse to try I simultaneously want to cry because no one wants that from me. They want it from other people and that is not for me.

It’s hard that what he would prefer to have is me playing video games. So I go from something I barely have an interest in to something I have a complete negative interest in and I feel like I’m failing to be what I should be. I’m not really interested in trying to be a pretty girl but I feel sad that I fail at it. I would love to never hear about video games again in my entire life and I can’t go an hour without them.

So yeah. The words get dammed up behind my lips and they come out in this flood. “Am I ok? Are the things that I want to have define me allowed? Is anyone interested in the person I would like to be but I feel like I need permission?”

It’s weird to me how often people tell me that they admire how myself I am.

You don’t see how much I cry because I feel like everything about me is wrong and not permitted and I am bad. I do not conform how I should. I don’t even know what I should be conforming to.

But I feel wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong.

I am very burnt out on doing almost nothing for the pregnancy. Everything about my self identity cracks when I cannot do much. I feel like my personhood stops existing. Now that most of what I’m doing is being a chair/nursing service for a baby…

There is so little me in this situation.

I’m sure Noah isn’t feeling much “like himself” but at least he is playing video games, which he likes.

I’m looking at online shopping shit I won’t let myself buy because it is all too much money. But it’s something to do while I’m trapped and bored. I’ve read several books. I’m bored. I feel frustrated and trapped and incompetent.

I feel like I want to be mean and mean and mean and mean. So mostly what I am is quiet.

Sarah–North Face looks better than Duluth Trading Company for the heavy long johns. Since we were talking about it. But at $100 a pop… yeah… my mid-weight long johns from REI will have to be enough. They are waaaaaaaaaaay cheaper. Maybe if I move somewhere with weather I will get desperate. But for the frigid California 50 degree winter… It’s ridiculous.

Overall Duluth Trading Company pants look fun though. I am not stylish.

I have found exactly one nursing dress I like. Apparently what I like in a nursing dress is hard to find? All of the previous dresses I had that were nursing compatible have died an ignoble death. I have a maternity dress that is nursing compatible (Thanks R! I am seriously living in your hand me downs.) and a dress that Ma gave me that has a loose neckline and I can just lower it. It wasn’t intended as a nursing dress but I have no modesty.

Otherwise I had retreated firmly into my overly modest what-do-you-mean-do-I-have-boobs sort of clothing. I expected to gain a lot more weight so a bunch of the maternity/nursing stuff I got second hand… doesn’t fit. I am not an XL. Apparently.

I’m so god damn bored. I don’t care about this shit. But it is something to think about when I would otherwise like to do mean things to myself because I am so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so bored.

I have even been productive. It’s disgusting.

I want people. I want socialization. I don’t want to reach out and risk rejection. I want to crawl into a closet and never come out. I feel so wrong today.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy is my mood so shitty.

Trying to find our places

We are experiencing growing pains as a family. We are struggling with how to communicate around our current needs and limitations. It’s not just me who is short tempered and sharp. I am probably the sharpest but I’m not sure my temper is the shortest.

The big kids want to be helpful. They want to be responsible for their sister. They want to feel competent. This is tricky because there are pieces they can help with… but those aren’t the times that feel most satisfying to them and I get it. They want to comfort the baby and it feels really bad to them that the baby screams until she gets mommy. That feels bad and I get it. It is also hard that when the baby is distressed and screaming I am not good at patiently saying, “Please move so that I can do what I am doing to help the baby.” Instead I am irritable and I want to just nudge their head the heck out of my way.

We are trying to talk gently about these things when everything is calm, but this is hard. None of us have experience with this kind of thing. When MC was born EC was only two. She didn’t push hard to be helpful in the same way. She was still nursing and wearing diapers. Now she is on the verge of being ten and she wants to be allowed to sling the baby over her shoulder and carry her off for a diaper change.

Can we have a couple of weeks to let the baby get more sturdy first? Newborns are so terrifying in their fragility. By the time she is three or four months old I will probably be comfortable with that. I’m still not going to direct/demand such behavior. You are not a little mama who has to be responsible for the baby. But since you want to so bad… I will let you… soon…

But right now when her hips could dislocate so easily if you just lift too hard… I’m scared to let you. Newborns are terrifyingly vulnerable to me.

EC is struggling with the mix of responsibility, limitations, and privileges she has. She wants more and less. MC is struggling in different ways. They are feeling overwhelmed by not being older/more competent already. They are really upset about the things they can’t do yet. The stuff might be minor.

We need to find ways for MC to feel competence right now. They have to be allowed to try at things. EC needs to have access to a little more time to feel smug and delighted over her privileges.

They are both running headfirst, as fast as possible, into their limitations and that sucks. I have so much sympathy.

MC read me a book today!!!! They read The Gingerbread Man and they only needed help with half a dozen or so words! That was super exciting!!!! EC has been a little bit of a punk with making fun of MCs reading mistakes. I pointed out that at this exact same age EC couldn’t read a board book let alone a long picture book so just shut all the way up. Don’t you dare mock someone who is younger than you for their growing competence not being exactly the same as yours. This is my grumpiest face of all.

MC has actually made waaaaaaaaaaay more academic progress than I expected this year. They are doing great. EC continues to resist making math progress but has otherwise made fantastic leaps and bounds of progress in writing, storyboarding, research and documentation, science, reading, grammar, spelling, javascript, and general logic. She is working on a whole bunch of stuff and I’m impressed by her dedication to every subject other than math. Math is pissing her off. But math is improving now that we bought a whole bunch of manipulatives and I’m making her sit down to work on making math visual instead of just in her head. I’m also forcing her to work with scratch paper to write down the entire process of doing problems because just doing it in her head is not adequate. She got far that way and now she needs to see how far she can get with the proper support of seeing the steps worked out.

I’m actually kind of weirded out by how well she does with doing math in her head. I struggle to keep some of those concepts in my head the way she does it. I have to write stuff out or I can’t manage some of the problems she can just do. I think that giving her a few more ways to visualize and a little practice writing the steps out will be all she needs to leap frog through the areas she has struggled. We’ll see. I’m really looking forward to quitting the charter school so we can go back to block units. Doing everything all at once is so much harder for us.

MC’s shrink is excited we are getting them screened for ADHD because the shrink has seen definite signs even in one on one non-stressful settings and they are happy that MC will get support/recognition for how hard focus is for them.

We all learn best when we can fully immerse ourselves in a single subject for a few weeks or months at a time. We can cheerfully spend 4+ hours a day on something we are trying to learn but we really struggle with covering four or five subjects in a shorter amount of time spent every day. We struggle with getting our attention to shift. We struggle with feeling like we get tired and we don’t want to think anymore after the second or third subject. When we do one subject in a day we can spend a looooooong time enjoying it and we don’t get tired in the same way. The transitions wear us out. It wears out our patience and focus and attention and we just can’t absorb very much if there are more transitions.

I feel so grateful that my children ended up with brains like mine so that I am not failing to provide the kind of change/stimulation that someone else would need.

The kids did like 80% of the work to make a cake today and I bet they will handle all the decorating. We have mixes that are kind of old so I’m thinking this will be a nice trick to play a few times over the next few weeks. MC got to practice splitting egg yolks from whites, which is tricky and gives a sense of satisfaction of mastery as they learn. EC got to feel hyper-competent as they read all the directions and bossed the shit out of the process. And then we will eat it for dessert over the next few days. The kids feel so happy when they are able to provide for the table. They do a lot of other types of food, but making a dessert feels like a reward to cook and then eat.

I’m trying to think of tasks to set them that will allow them to learn something and feel happy about doing it.

Making another damn savory food… isn’t quite as satisfying in this moment. Because MC isn’t as motivated to cook and EC is already so good at making so many things.

They don’t want more responsibility for cleaning. They are both actively resisting a lot of the out-of-the-house social opportunities… they like hanging out with me and Noah more than other people.

I never anticipated this. My children just flat like me more than they like other people. Being with Noah is awesome. Why would they want to go hang out with children who will inevitably get on their nerves?

It’s fascinating. I really didn’t think it would work like this. I thought they would be irritated with me. I thought they would be demanding more social opportunities and classes and maybe school by now just to have more freedom. They feel like they have as much freedom as possible being with me rather than risking being under the auspice of any other adult.

I didn’t think I would be so cool to anyone ever in my life.

It’s interesting how EC is talking about moving. She has pretty much decided that she’s not going to hunt hard for new friends in our area. The people she likes the most are GU (Geographically Undesirable) and she doesn’t get to see them much. The neighborhood friends she has made have all moved away and we’ve lost contact because their parents are not interested in maintaining contact. All the other moms work and don’t have time to facilitate a relationship and that’s totally fair.

EC is looking forward to independent teenage/tween friendships and she has flat stated that it isn’t that good of an idea to hunt hard for people like that when we are getting ready to move because then moving will hurt too much.

She is so wise I can barely stand it.

MC is still holding on to a few local friends who have mothers who will still do play dates. That’s continuing to be good for them.

I’m thinking almost constantly about why I want to move. I’ve written up a few long posts and shoved them in my draft folder and they will never see the light of the internet proper. Pieces of this thought process are disgustingly petty and about running away from problems. I think way the fuck too much about people who probably don’t think about me at all.

Other pieces… I feel like there are layers of petty on top of real stuff and I’m trying to figure out how to handle the real stuff moving forward.

How do I move into having real friendships that are less codependent? How do I teach myself to pick friendships based on factors other than people needing me to do a kind of work for them? How do I learn how to feel like I can be part of a community?

It’s really bullshit that I don’t feel like I belong in any communities here. There are a bunch of communities where 90% of the people involved either enthusiastically welcome me or are 100% neutral because I’m a stranger. There are only a few people in any community that don’t like me much. It’s not really about those people.

Those people might be lenses through which some of my issues are magnified, but those people have no power over me.

How do I teach my brain that before I go meet new communities?

How do I teach myself to not be such an asshole? People don’t need me to fix their problems. They need me to accept and love them. I don’t need to clean someone’s house for them to be worthy of a friend. I don’t need to teach someone how to do something in order to be worthy of friendship.

I don’t have to buy friends, not with money and not with time spent working.

Hanging out with my family so much really does make it easier to understand that people don’t just value me for how much work I can do. There are long stretches where I’m a useless motherfucker and my kids and Noah still want me around even if I’m just sitting in a chair and being kind of a butthead.

It’s really weird.

This is such a healing experience.

I’m trying to figure out how to have this experience be healing for all the deep inherited wounds my kids have. Sometimes when they get upset about something, I feel like I can see the edges of ancestral guilt coming out. Sometimes when I explain why something works the way it does and I see the kids visibly relax I feel like I am doing the only work that can be done to heal my family line.

Even though I feel very guilty about not “having a job” and “doing something useful for society” this feels useful too. Learning what being ok feels like and learning how to talk about it… that feels useful and like I will never be able to help anyone else until I learn this in my bones.

I have never been able to learn this at the speed of life while doing other things. I’ve tried. This family is the most healing experience of my life. In ways big and small I struggle with fully articulating. These people make all the suffering worth while. I am glad I am here so I can feel this good.

Even as my back hurts like a motherfucker. Let’s not discuss my arms. It’s bad.

There are many kinds of pain. Physical pain is really not the worst thing that has happened to me. I’m conscious that other people have had far more physical pain than me and maybe I shouldn’t have so much hubris about my insignificant bone breaks and maulings. I could experience far more physical pain.

But when I felt the ring of fire my internal response was, “Awesome! Now this is real!”

I was so glad to have that pain. It meant my baby was almost earth side and I wanted to meet her more than anything.

I’m not so good at the emotional pain. I have been in a loving family for almost 12 years. Almost 1/3 of my life. I feel so lucky that I get to be here with these people.

This is my dream come true.

And I want to move somewhere with my favorite people and build connections to new communities. Communities that I did not join when I was desperately broken and I felt like I had to earn my place with sex and pain and work. I want to know what it would be like to not walk into parties and be able to count off my lovers.

I want to know what it would be like to interact with communities from the point of view of coming from a family unit instead of being perceived as extremely expendable.

It’s going to be a whole new world for me.

So that’s what it takes.

We have now heard our baby scream like someone was yanking her finger nails off. It happened when she spit up in her sleep and a bunch of it went up her nose. She screamed like she was being murdered until I went and got the nose sucker thing (a Frida… not the bulb thing) and sucked all the spit up out of her nose.

Then she went back to sleep.

Oh.

Yeah. Now I understand why P&A used to say that EC was a high needs baby. If my first child had been this mellow we would have had more kids.

going well

This kid is so damn chill. I have never hung out with a baby who was this mellow before. And I can’t attribute it to the pot because I started using that before MC came along. This kid is… just chill.

I would sign up for a study like this in a hot minute.

I hurt. That’s my dominant physical experience right now. All of me. Particularly my neck and left hip. But everything.

She is nursing like a champ and getting chubby already. It is absolutely ridiculous how good I feel about my kids getting double chins. I’m praying we get to a third chin again. (Was easy with EC. Never happened with MC.)

Swaddling is fucking awesome. She got a 6 hour block of sleep and I slept for a little over 5 hours. That’s as much as I’ve gotten in 2-4 broken chunks over the past few nights. That’s so much sleep at one time that I will have trouble going back to bed. Luckily she’s cluster feeding right now so me being awake is good.

She’s nursed for over an hour, almost an hour and a half now. My boobs hurt less. Good.

It’s interesting navigating how the big kids are searching for control right now. They are struggling with not being allowed to do what they want to YC. She isn’t a doll and you can’t casually sling her around. They aren’t trying to be rough. They just aren’t good at careful yet.

And gosh they want to tell me how to take care of her. I confess my tone of voice has been incredibly shitty when they scoff at me and tell me it would be easy to take care of her if I just followed their orders.

Oh helllllll no.

Have you dropped crotch fruit since I wasn’t looking? No? Then hush your mouth.

Do not fucking tell me how to parent my baby.

But.. outside of that the big kids adore her and are happy to hold her as much as they are permitted. Outside of a boundary stomp per morning (gosh my kids are pushing their luck) we are having great days. I’ve been sharp with them every morning (stop yelling/don’t tell me how to parent/if you keep fighting about these toys we will bleeping donate them) but then the day settles down and we don’t keep fighting. But holy crap am I over screaming matches that start at 6am over who owns which stupid little rubber Shopkin piece. I can solve this argument. It involves a garbage can. You both lose. Argument over.

(I totally didn’t throw their stuff away. But they did stop yelling the argument.)

Ok, sore hands.

Beeee yourself

Eldest Child wanted to sleep with my nipple in her mouth at all times. Middle Child wanted to nurse enough to not be starving and then get that dang boob out of their face. Youngest Child wants to nurse probably slightly past satiation so that she has a good vomit towards the end but then she wants to sleep with the nipple against her lips in case she wants it later. If the nipple moves away she is terribly upset.

EC could not be put down. MC liked being left alone to look around a room a little. YC mostly wants to be held but if you put her down for a few minutes she’s ok with it and she doesn’t start indicating that she’s lonely until I’ve been gone 5-10 minutes.

EC and MC both screamed in the car as if we were lying them on a bed of nails. YC… is mostly chill unless she got into the car hungry.

EC was the most violently anti-diaper changes; she screamed hysterically through every diaper change for months. MC didn’t like them but didn’t cry 100% of the time. YC sometimes gets annoyed with being cold and complains about that but mostly she’s thrilled to get poop taken off her and she is quiet and cooperative.

Noah points out that this baby is the least… fussed post birth and she’s the only birth where I didn’t feel traumatized.

It is wonderful to me that I can’t see my family or Noah’s family in YC’s face the way I can in EC or MC. She is so completely and totally her own person. YC has a few facial expressions in common with EC (oh they have a mighty pirate YARRRRRRR face) and her face shape is suggestive of EC’s face… but very different. My Youngest Child looks like herself and that’s it.

This child seems so relaxed and mellow. She seems happy and like she’s getting exactly what she needs. I don’t feel as anxious and on the verge of ruining her life/killing her as I did with the older kids. She feels so fragile, but she also seems happy and sturdy. I think she feels fragile because I have acclimated to big kids and the difference is striking.

My milk is fully in. I’m at my pre-pregnancy weight (I’M EATING EVERYTHING THAT ISN’T NAILED DOWN). My house is shockingly tidy. My kids have not fallen behind on school work. I’m doing 1-3ish hours of chores a day and mostly resting.

I’m doing “the right things”. I’m a little bored because sitting this still is not my favorite. I think that today I will be up for trying another walk. I tried making breakfast on day three and squatting to get stuff out of the bottom of the fridge fucking hurt so bad I wanted to scream so I didn’t try a walk yesterday or day three. I’m on day five now.

It’s amazing that she’s only been here five days. I like her so much.

I think YC will be fully out of newborn size by the time she is ten days old. I can barely sorta get it on her now.

I am back to the point where I’m looking at all of my clothes and thinking, “How much boob access does this have?” I have multiple years in front of me where all of my clothes need to be picked based on access to my nipples. This is kind of hilarious to me. Given our plans in this time period I’m a little confused as to how much of this I should box up for “some day” and how much I should just pass along.

I already took all of my maternity stuff out and put it in bags to donate. I could barely wear it pregnant because I never got that big and I’m already shrunk down to about the middle of my size range. I’m mushy and I have extra skin, but my girth is not anywhere near as big as I am sometimes without being pregnant so my clothes are fitting fairly normally already.

My boobs are ridiculous. Rock hard and almost the size of EC’s skull. Which is disturbing because she’s almost 10 and has an adult sized head. YC’s skull looks tiny and insignificant next to my mighty tits. This makes me giggle so much. Bodies are weird. I miss tandem nursing right now. Having a big kid to relieve all the pain of engorgement was a gift.

Yesterday I hit the wall of “Oh my god every single piece of me is in pain. Ow Ow Fucking Ow.”

Blacksheep followed up on me asking her how she psyches herself up to be bad ass. She said that part of it is she never says to herself that she can’t do something.

I really do aspire to be as bad ass as this woman someday.

But the thing is… I have limits. I have physical, emotional, and mental limits. There are things I can’t do.

That’s hard. I think that my limits are often pretty extreme… there are many ways in which my limits greatly exceed “average” so folks are confused by the vehemence of my expression of limits. Mostly… I am not what people think of when they think “disabled” which is completely legit.

My limits move around based on a lot of factors. When I did the elimination diet from hell my body was so sick. I could not do a fraction of what I normally can. It was rough. I go through periods where I have no energy or ability to think and I essentially shut down. I plan around these things and try to avoid hitting the wall so that I fail people.

I think that I am so certain and defensive of my limits because I’m well aware of how often I could fail people if I were more casual about how I observe my boundaries. If I didn’t watch my limits like a hawk I would let people down and I really don’t want to. I have so much to give and then I’m done and I don’t want someone standing around needing me to continue or they will fail too. That’s not fair.

So I am adamant and fierce about my boundaries because if I don’t then I will hurt people. I know where I will fail and I identify that point and I do my best to avoid it. I know how to work me until I am absolutely spent… but I got through the necessary bits.

So when it comes to talking myself into doing something hard… I have to look at the whole picture before I decide if I can or can’t do something. There are millions of things I could do if I was supported properly and they were all I was doing. Can I do those things within the structure and framework of my life given my other obligations? That’s a harder question. The calculus is intense.

So as much as I admire and look up to the idea of seeing yourself as just so fucking competent it isn’t in question… I’m pretty sure that will always be aspirational for me. There are too many ways I fail for me to have such hubris. (I’m not saying it is hubris for someone else… I’m talking about my failings here.)

I am really enjoying how much mothering feels like something I can do even though it is hard and draining and demanding. Mothering really kind of sucks as a job. It’s painful and often not that rewarding moment by moment.

But I get to look at my glorious children and know that I did that. I made them from scratch and then I fed their bodies and nurtured their minds and their spirits. I don’t think that mothering is the best task for everyone. I don’t think it should be a mandatory part of anyone’s life. But I want it to be part of my life and I want to be good at it.

And I am.

Normal

On one hand, I worry about how much sleep I’m getting. On the other hand… I’m actually getting a fairly normal amount of sleep for me when I am unmedicated at night. This is what my body… does.

There is this belief that you must get a “reasonable” amount of sleep or you can’t be healthy. I believe it is true… to a point. Do you know how grateful I have been to have doctors start telling me that my sleep stuff is probably related to a combination of ADHD (I burn more energy with less need for rest than average) and PTSD hypervigilance. I probably don’t NEED as much sleep as other people. Seven hours is pretty average for me with heavy sleep meds.

So getting 3-5 hours is low but… not scary low for me?

One of my favorite parts of giving birth is my horrifying anxiety just… lifts. I have a little anxiety about my babies but not a lot. Mostly I feel competent in a way I rarely feel in life. I can’t sit around like a queen giving orders when I’m pregnant but I don’t hesitate postpartum. Bring me that. Fetch the other thing. Go do this chore. No problem!

I will sit here and hold my baby and somehow manage to still be wildly productive because my mind feels so thrilled to be doing what it is doing.

I love my baby. She is perfect. If she weren’t canonically perfect she would be perfect to me. I’m not scared of my children having problems. I have problems. We cope.

Like, we get to take her to Stanford for an ultrasound for her kidney because stuff wasn’t perfect at birth. I don’t care. Whatever I have to do for her will get done. She is my baby.

If I have to blow things up to take care of her I will. If I have to mow someone down because they are blocking something I need for her… I won’t flinch.

My children motivate me in a way nothing else on this earth ever has or ever will. I will find a way to change for my children. I will become whatever they need from me. It doesn’t matter if it is hard or if it hurts. I brought you into this world. I owe you. I owe you everything.

I don’t mean “everything” like every class or toy or treat you want. Boundaries make healthy people. But I owe you my life. I owe you my sanity. I owe you my need to get up in the morning and try again.

Apparently in our house we now have a Sissy and a Sibby. (Sister/Sibling) This is… making me cry in a nice way. My big kids are so happy about the baby they are about to burst.

After the next diaper change I’m starting a load of diaper laundry. This makes me weirdly very happy. Let the next cycle begin. I am so ready. I am ready to take care of you and do what you need. You are worth all the work I could possibly put into you and more. I will give you what I have. It will fall short of your needs because life is like that. Luckily you have a daddy who loves you to distraction. And you have a Sissy and a Sibby who want to take care of you when I can’t do everything.

You, my lovely daughter, are going to be ok. We will make sure of it.

My milk hasn’t fully come in yet, but my boobs are sweeeeeelling. It’s hilarious and painful because my boobs are already getting to that point where my nipples are hard for a newborn to manage. Overwhelmed by boob is a hilarious facial expression. By later today my boobs will dwarf her head. Ha.

Last night I swaddled the baby super well and gave her to Noah. I went to bed a few minutes before 8. I got up for the day at 2:30 for the second feeding (the first feeding was around 11, I think?). Amusingly… that’s barely short of sleep for me. I hope Noah will sleep in. If I get up and get breakfast for the kids, this may be a fairly good pattern for a couple of weeks. I get a solid chunk of sleep for the first shift then Noah gets to sleep.

We’ll see what normal we find.

post-partum healing

If you’ve been reading me since the poop chronicles this will seem like a normal/gross piece from me. If you think body information is tmi, maybe skip this post.

I have figured out the best regime for caring for my mutilated crotch post childbirth. The afterpains suck monkeys but my external bits are gloriously cared for.

Before the birth I set up a station in the bathroom. A big pile of cloth pads interspersed with Thinx underwear. I loaded up the different panties with pads and stacked them up on a shelf. I have witch hazel pads, “Bottom cream” which is a bunch of herbs and essential oils, a hand mirror, the peri bottle the hospital gives you, and a bunch of the softest cloth wipes I’ve ever found.

I start out by emptying the pipes as much as possible. (I’m living in a weird alternative universe where my body shits like a champ. I don’t know what the heck happened but it’s all coming out formed and perfect. I have mastered pooping! It only took till age 36 for it to just… work!) Then I use the mirror and the peri bottle to clean as much gunk/blood/poop as possible. The mirror helps. Because of the mirror I can tell you that my cunt is not nearly as fucked up as it was after ECs birth. That was… hamburger. Ugh. Three god damn hours of pushing in that birth. Ugh.

After the water I carefully and gently use a cloth wipe to blot the area. I don’t really wipe with this cloth. I just make sure there is no poop or blood clots hanging out. Then I get a with hazel wipe (like Tuck’s but a different brand). These are tiny and little. I wipe with these to get the edge of my vagina and my hemorrhoids clean. It’s important to geeeeeeeeently wipe the hemorrhoids. Leaving any bits of poop in there can lead to infection.

Then I use my finger and scoop out a big wad of the bottom cream. Ahhhhhhhhhh soothing. Of course I start in the front and slather my entire inner labia/around the vagina opening and then I make it back to my anus. Those hemorrhoids get covered entirely. Then I put on the nice Thinx panties with a cloth pad.

Ahhhhh. Soothing. Nothing abrasive. Nothing that irritates.

My crotch is so happy with my care. I want to pat myself on the back for being so nice to my cunt. Forward thinking on this plan is giving me so much ease and comfort.

The pad is taken off after 2-4 hours (the time span is getting longer) and the panties last an extra 1-3 hours past the pad coming off. The pad/panties are all nice flannel/cotton feeling. Disposable products give me rashes.

I truly wish I had figured out this system for the first kid.

Third time’s the charm.

I have said for ten years that any amount of labor time under 24 hours would be easy. I was right! 21 hours were fine.

First: this could not possibly have gone so well without our wonderfully kind friend who moved in for a week so that when I had a full day of contractions and they petered out I had no extra stress about feeling guilty about prodromal labor. I got to ride the waves and take whatever experience. It was a gift. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My official labor got going around 8:30am on Monday. My contractions built in intensity and regularity all day. I went in around 7pm because my contractions were about 5 minutes apart and a minute long and consistently more than 10/hour. Mostly I was fretful because she had slowed her moving down and I was worried. It’s so hard not being able to see if the baby inside of you is ok.

I got to the hospital 3cm dilated (which isn’t that much and they could have sent me home) and 90% effaced with a bulging water sack. They wanted me to stay. Around 10:30ish they started Pitocin. The epidural was started around 11. Then I went to sleep. I was checked at some point. I was woken up/checked again around 4. During the 4am check the doctor accidentally broke my water bag because whoops it was in the way. At first she said 8cm. Then a minute later she declared me complete and instantly there were six extra people, lots of lights, and a whole bunch of beeping machines.

When my water was broken my blood pressure and her heart rate dropped dramatically. I was put on oxygen instantly. They started IV meds to support the baby.

Between 4:30ish and 5 I was in position and they started encouraging me towards pushing. Another moment of intense gratitude: my friend’s mom came to the hospital with us around 10pm. She was there talking and being supportive whenever I needed her. Her voice did sound above the crowd to give encouragement and feedback.

I might actually send out thank you cards. I’m really in awe of how people showed up for me.

The nurses also did a good job of giving feedback and support. But Ma’s voice was louder and more insistent.

Noah did a wonderful job of supporting me this time. He kept his face soft and loving the whole time. No grimacing at my pain. Well done, fantastic husband.

Ze baby emerged at 5:28am. I didn’t tear or get a skid mark or nothing. I am shocked by how relatively comfortable my external genitalia feel. I’m sore but it’s not bad. Internally the continued contractions to get my uterus back to size suuuuuuuuuuck. And why don’t I take 400mg of Ibuprofen three times a day and I wont have pain, right?! Oh man.

Several folks, including the lactation consultant, asked me about my THC usage. We clarified that I don’t smoke it basically at all (inhaling it is one of the most dangerous steps–we know there are problems from breathing smoke) and I went into details about why I use it and what I have replaced with it and why my medical team thinks this is the best choice for me. I was rather stunned by the extent of support I received. Most folks were like, “You are clearly very educated on this topic and you are making the best choice for your body. Alright. Excellent.” My pain management doctor telling me that my next line is Oxycontin and Ativan really helps. No one wants me on those meds. Definitely not when I’m breeding/feeding a kid.

I didn’t find out till we got home that one pediatrician had a judgy conversation with Noah about my THC when I was out of the room. I’m tempted to follow up on that because it might be a HIPAA violation for her to discuss my medication without me present and that kind of bugs me. What if I had been using birth control behind my husband’s back and she just wanted to mention that it might impact my baby and I am going to go home and get in trouble? You don’t report on other peoples medical care when they are not present. That shit’s not cool.

What if my husband didn’t approve but it was still the best mediation option and now he is going to make my life a living hell? That’s very realistic.

Anyway.

The baby feels slightly more fragile to me than my previous kids. Specifically: she’s having trouble with reflux. Her first whole night of life I barely slept because she would spit up, fill her mouth with fluid, and be unable to do anything about it. She couldn’t move her head to let it fall out and she couldn’t swallow it. So I spent a lot of time flipping her over and clearing her mouth. The lactation consultant agreed that putting her in the bassinet would be stupid. She needed to be up against my body with me paranoid and watching her. It was a festive/non-restful/wonderful night. Oh, I sent Noah home so he could sleep because otherwise we would both be exhausted and useless.

8:30am-5:30am. 21 hours. It was great. The first day of hospital recovery was lovely.

She was 20.5″ long (so .5″ shorter than the two older kids) and 8lbs 9oz. So heavier than both siblings, who were 8lbs and 8lbs 4 oz. I am steadily gaining 4ish oz per kid and that’s a great time to stop. Ha.

It took us till 1pm to secure check out because the hospital kind of wanted me to stay an extra night. But I got shifted from the maternity section to the pediatrics section and I kind of fell out of the “we will pay a lot of attention to you” rotation and that was difficult for me. I didn’t feel good about calling my nurse all the time to get the same care I had previously gotten for existing. So I didn’t drink or eat almost at all the second day in the hospital because she wasn’t offering anymore.

That was suboptimal. I came home and scarfed a big bag of salami because I needed protein before I killed someone.

Our friend went home last night. Her dog was experiencing a lot of stress from the new rules with a baby. My house had already been hard because there were more rules than usual and it was just not fair to keep cracking down on her. I am so so so so so so grateful my friend stayed as long as she did. The dog’s behavior was great. She never did anything inappropriate. She was just done with the restrictions. I would have flipped out long before she did. Such a good girl.

I tried to tell Noah to watch the baby and let me sleep in between nursing last night. Ha. That uhhh… didn’t work very well. He did a 7.5 hour shift and I probably got 1.5-2 hours of sleep. Sigh. It’ll be ok. I will sleep today.

It is fascinating to me how excited and complete I feel. I am so happy I get to learn about this wonderful daughter. She gets cold! Like me! She shivers a lot. She needs a fair bit of bundling in our frigid California weather. Ha. I really can’t tell who she looks like yet. She looks like a whole new person and it is so neato. She’s beautiful and I feel completely overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to keep her and take care of her. She is my responsibility. I am allowed to love her with my whole heart.

I can’t express what that means to me.

I don’t feel sad about wanting more children. I feel like I am at my limit emotionally and physically. This is my family. This is what I want/wanted. In the future I will have the spoons to foster, but I don’t think I will ever take on a baby again. This is my journey.

I feel so lucky.

Big kids are ecstatic. They are snuggling her and talking to her and trying to learn how to be helpful. It will be a process and I’m glad to be on it with them.

I get to have two daughters and a non-binary kid. I get to have a husband who thinks I am the best thing since sliced bread. I get to have friends who show up to help me and support me through complications and challenges. I get to have a home I am allowed to alter and be safe in however I want. I get to have healthy meat and vegetables every day so that my body achieves a level of functioning I didn’t believe possible for me.

I can’t believe this is my life. I am one of the luckiest people ever born. I have so much. I am so grateful.

I am glad I am still alive for this feeling.

Ze baby has already had 8, maybe 9 poopy diapers and 2 or 3 wet diapers. I’m getting confused already. This is a great sign though. Her digestion is working. Her kidneys are starting to function as we hoped. We have a pediatrician check up in about 6 hours.

This is going as well as something can go. I am eternally grateful.

Random note: to the best of my knowledge my child is the only person in the entire world with her legal first/last name combo. I will do my best to never put it on the internet for her. That will happen when she chooses.

Being a mother

I don’t know what it means to be a father. I’m not sure I care. What I know is what it means to be a mother.

I don’t know what it means to have an accidental child. My children were built out of purpose and intention. My children exist because I wanted to learn from them. My children exist because I wanted to see them. My children exist because I need teachers that cannot be stolen from me.

My children are about my own selfishness. And yet they aren’t.

My children are about me having something to give.

My children are about me and yet they aren’t… not even a little.

My children are about continuation that has nothing to do with me. I am not important. The continuation is important. In medias res. This story will continue without me.

Blood of my blood. Bond of my bone. Child, I love you. What is love. Love is the feeling that I would crawl across broken glass if you needed a ride upon my back. Love is the feeling that I would swim directly towards a shark if that would give you a few moments of freedom to swim towards safety. Love is that feeling that I would destroy myself to guarantee you one second of delight.

Love is knowing that any resource, any anything I have is better spent in your hands. Because you are more important.

You are the gift that I give myself. All of my children are gifts from my past self. See, if you survive you get to meet these people. These glorious, bright, wonderful people. My first two children were the gifts of beauty that I get to look at. This third child is the gift of my spirit. The gift of charm of suavity I get to experience.

Child, I want to meet you.

“What is an angel”

An angel is the spirit of that which was, and that which is, and that which can be again. An angel is you.

Transformation. Becoming. Change.

When I think of the stream of children coming, I think of you. When I think of the future, I think of you.

This is progress!!!!

THERE IS BLOOD COMING OUT OF MY TWAT. This is an excellent sign. It’s called the bloody show. It’s the mucus plug starting to come out. It’s often a precursor of labor.

One day before my 40 week visit. Because my kids apparently really like to bake for 40 fucking weeks exactly.

woo references

My massage therapist is a lovely California woo. By which I mean she calls herself a Christian but she does a lot of energy work and can reference multiple schools of thought on how the body stores energy. Yesterday her thing was how the various fingers are tied to current and past emotions.

The finger I knocked out of joint is supposed to be connected with current worry. The finger I jammed so badly it was hard to get any movement back in the joints is tied to past anger.

When she said these two things I burst into tears. I don’t cry with her much. It freaks her out.

But I started instantaneously sobbing and talking about how angry I am that those motherfuckers are still god damn making my life hard because they just had to fuck up a child’s pussy.

I don’t think I had been terribly aware of just how much anger I am holding on to about the fact that my labors are so hard partially because of what was done to me. My ability to have a normal body process was taken away when I was a child. And I am fucking bitter. I am so tired of suffering because of assholes.

This is where the whole victim/survivor thing becomes a problem. I’m still carrying around the impact of the incest and the rapes. Does that mean that even my labors are part of my victim experience? Is being a survivor what makes everything so awful? Cohort. Cohort members frequently experience difficulty because of being part of the cohort.

That doesn’t feel as violating to me.

It’s almost 3am. That means I have approximately 74 hours until eviction gets started. There is a 0% chance I will still be pregnant in 100 hours. I will have a baby in my arms. One way or another.

It’s funny how her movements keep changing. She used to move all the damn time. Little sharp movements that rarely stopped. Now she has stretches where she seems to be storing up energy for the next big flip flopping session. She is still until my entire abdomen moves like there is a sea creature doing otter rolls inside of me. It hurts. Her movements are becoming quite painful. She’s too dang big to be hanging out in there any more.

I keep telling her she doesn’t actually want a Valentine’s birthday but so far she doesn’t believe me. So far she thinks it’ll be fiiiiiiiiine.

My sister got married on Valentine’s Day when she was 17. She has spent the rest of her life talking about how the day is ruined. Somehow… this just might be redemption for me. Cause I’m going to ride the gravy train forever that this child will be my sweetness and love. Even if they are a total shithead. That would be so apropos.

I feel like a wounded water buffalo when I try to move around because of all the flip flopping and awkwardness.

I would like more sleep but my shoulders hurt so badly.

This relaxin bullshit can go ahead and stop. My body is crumbling.

I’m trying as hard as I can to keep my mood as level as I can manage. I feel so bad that I am being bitchy. I have a lot of feelings going on in my body and being regulated with my emotions is basically impossible at this point. I’m trying. I’m trying to shut my fucking mouth instead of expressing pissiness when it won’t god damn help a thing. The situation will be fixed. It’s not a big deal.

Breathe. Everyone around me is trying so hard to be helpful. I’m sorry I am so impatient and bitchy right now. I see y’alls wonderful efforts and I’m trying to give you the response you deserve for your lovely behavior. It’s really hard to keep my mood level as my pain levels are spiking like this.

But it doesn’t actually matter how I feel. It matters how I act. If I want to preserve these relationships I need to get my shit together. No pissiness over minor mistakes. Shit happens. Shake it off. It can be fixed. That is absolutely my favorite part of becoming a rich old person. Do you know how many mistakes I can’t fix? The number is small. Most mistakes really don’t fucking matter now. It’s ok.

It really is.

But hopefully when I heard news of the small mistake I didn’t cause a mistake that can’t be fixed. That’s the important dynamic.

The stupid little shit that needs to be handled? That’s not a big deal. How people feel about the mistake? That can have longer lasting consequences.

fuuuuuuuuuuuck

Breathe.

My hands need me to stop typing. But I still have feelings. Bury them, motherfucker.

Oh good grief.

Yesterday felt brutal and painful and like why am I not getting this baby out of my twat today. Today… I’ve barely had any contractions. Things are pretty chill. I feel physically pretty ok. I’m not in a lot of pain. I’m not feeling like forward progress is being made.

Fucking body.

Drugs sound so nice.

I’m definitely in early labor. But this is me. What the fuck does that even mean. Does that mean an eon of suffering? Naw. I have an induction scheduled for the 14th. And no interest in laboring long and hard so I’ll be done delivering on the 14th either with a vaginal birth or a c-section so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

But today has been shit. Twice early today I got this horrible shooting/stabbing pain in my lower right abdomen. It hurt so fucking bad I started screaming and kicking out uncontrollably. That’s not usual for me with contractions. But it hasn’t happened again. I messaged a friend who is a mom of many who worked in an OB office for years and asked her for advice. She said, “Hrm. I wouldn’t necessarily call this second but if it happens a third time you have to call the advice nurse and you should probably go in.” It didn’t happen a third time. So I sit at home.

I have felt like a fucking psycho hose beast all day. I can’t tell if this is just a feeling inside of me or if I have genuinely been nasty to everyone all day. I’m randomly crying. I hurt everywhere.

Ok, I’m seriously fucking pissed about this. I have this major remission of fibromyalgia pain during the pregnancy. That ended yesterday. My entire body is an explosion of pain and I would like to rip someones fucking head off so that I can piss down their throat because that is the only thing that sounds fun when I hurt this badly.

“Is it all happening again” – Godfather 3

love. sex. family. community. health. history. awareness. california woo. having your place. pain. commitment. relaxation. controlled vs uncontrolled bloodlines. queer vs heteronormative dynamics. 36 years old–at the middle of life?

You are not going to die. Neither am I, motherfucker.

But there will have to be a passage. And those sometimes hurt like a mother fucker. Don’t fear. That shit just makes you clench up and everything hurts more

Do you rise through your own merits or through the recommendation of those with merit?

Know your history.

In medias res.

I do not aspire to be that which is looked at.

I shun beauty.

What am I then if I am not a vain motherfucker?

I want to be known and understood. Which is so much more than to be looked at. To be looked at to be is to be projected upon. I want to change you.

That is what art aims to do. It aims to change that which looks upon it.

Like a pond. Like a bodyguard.

Joints. Connection. Pain.

love

1st cousin.

1st

mary

movement

cognitive dissonance. the misspelling reveals the flaw.

thank you autocorrect. even if I fucking hate you.

home. any. minute.

fingers hurt

No one dies.

Today I went to the hospital for an interview. They wanted to know what I wanted from labor. It was an hour long interview so there were more questions. But I was asked what my goal was for labor. I said “No one dying.” The lady conducting the interview almost fell out of her chair. She enjoyed my irreverence over all.

She asked me if I’d ever had thoughts of hurting myself. I said, “Ok let me start my spiel. I have long-term chronic suicidal ideation but I am not in imminent danger and I have no specific plans to hurt myself.”

She commented that I know the right words to say.

This ain’t my first rodeo.

I’ve been rewatching the Jaws series and The Godfather. I guess this is my week for violent grown up movies. Who are you. Where do you belong? What does it mean to be you?

How much does what your parents want for you matter?

Do your children belong to you or your spouse?

What is belonging?

Does it matter what your name is? What art you want to hang on the wall? Who you hang out with?

What defines who you are?

Who. Are. You.?

How much of who you are rests on your ability to control yourself through stimuli or pain or whatever?

If you can stand still as someone hits you, does that make you tough?

If you define yourself…. what does that mean?

Who. Are. You.

Do you rest upon the shattered dreams of everyone who looks like you or shares your religion or who had grandparents born within 100 miles of your grandparents?

What is safety? What is security?

39 weeks

I am still only 1.5 dilated, but I am up to 70% effaced. The effacement bit is cool because Noah has never felt me this effaced before and I had him do a lot of twat checks through the last two labors. So I am sitting at the physical spot now that I was at most of the way through my last labor. I got this effaced in the last three hours or so of labor previously.

This is good news.

My OB stripped my membranes today. And she’s talking about an induction next week. I’m on board.

It was kind of funny that she was worried about hurting me with the stripping of the membranes. I did not mention that I’ve had much more painful things happen to my twat.

Perception and reality

I feel like a lot of my adult life has focused in some intense ways on trying to determine how to accurately perceive reality. This is complicated because people genuinely do inhabit different realities.

The reality of being a homeless person is different than the reality of a rich, housed person. It’s not that the people are just perceiving things differently… they are different realities. 

I have jumped so many layers of human existence that sometimes it is very hard to determine what is a holdover perception, what is a true perception, and what is entirely in my fucking head.

Like… I have struggled through a lot of my pregnancy with the feeling of being abandoned. As my wonderful friends have checked up on me consistently and made sure that I was never alone for long.

Some days I sort of wish the flow of love would slow down because I’m overwhelmed trying to get back to people and some days I fail at reciprocating how I mean to. Because I feel so empty. THAT’S NOT ABOUT PEOPLE ABANDONING ME! That’s about an old belief and being out of date. I have not been abandoned this pregnancy. Not even for a day.

That’s…

oh.

That’s true. I haven’t talked to the same people every day. I don’t have a mother who is constantly checking up on me because she is concerned. Instead I have this extended web of people who are tagging in and out as they have spoons for dealing with me.

Oh. That’s really special.

I am so tremendously, overwhelmingly lucky. This doesn’t happen to everyone.

Randomly: given that I almost certainly know you, oh bond-hardware visitor… someday I will find out who you are. And I am going to be a turkey butt about teasing you about your lack of desire to fess up to your identity for years. I’m just saying.

Also randomly: I am feeling so proud of myself for how I handled the kids lying about screen stuff. I didn’t fly of the handle. I didn’t escalate in a nasty or inappropriate way. I didn’t scream. I am not imposing ridiculous consequences or causing my children to be afraid of me. I kept my shit together and told them I wasn’t ready to state a consequence immediately because I needed to think about it. I stated very reasonable, age appropriate consequences. My kids feel like the punishment fits the crime and they are totally on board with what they earned.

We are all going to fuck up sometimes. What did we learn from this experience? That they are capable of lying to me for an extended period of time (this is an important life skill) and that lying to me makes their stomach hurt a lot so they don’t want to do it again for something petty. That’s such a win-win.

I don’t love being lied to. It pisses me off. But I fully recognize that it is better for my children in the long run for them to be capable of lying.

Not everything is about me. They need to have skills I won’t love them having. That is life.

And I’m super happy that MC did not rat on EC. That feels like a big deal too. Often MC will throw EC under a bus just to see her squirm and I really have a problem with that. MC likes watching EC get in trouble and that pisses me off so much. I’m really happy that MC picked their sister’s side this time. That was good.

Even if I don’t like what they did I can recognize the layers of complexity and complication and I can see how some pieces of it are awesome even if I’m pissed about other layers. Life is so tricky.

Our wonderful friend is here for child care. She moved in last night and she’s here until the baby is here. I feel a tremendous load of stress relief.

This whole experience is going so freaking well. I feel supported. I feel loved. I feel like an awful lot of people have more confidence in me than I have in myself. Excellent. I can work with that. I am good at borrowing other peoples confidence in me.

After having the almost manic preparation days I am so thrilled to feel this calm. I feel like it’s going to be ok. I am looking forward to my OB check this morning. I’m pretty sure she is going to tell me that there has been progress.

The way my crotch hurts feels useful. Which is so funny. And this contraction… feels useful too. Phew. Ouch. Ok. Time to go pay attention to humans.