Uterus is measuring 30 cm, which is in the normal range. Babies heartbeat sounds excellent. Duly reported acid reflux/nausea/hemorrhoids. Nothing can be done about those symptoms but I said they were happening.

Everything is looking on track. Baby is still lying sideways. That’s not a concern until about week 36/37 when all of a sudden if it is still true there will be some concern. Of course trying to talk the baby into getting into correct head down position will happen. If the baby stays lying sideways until the due date I think that is a mandatory c-section these days. Cause you can’t get a sideways baby out of your vagina. Doesn’t work out logistically. Which would give me the neat opening for a tubal. Convenient.

Not. Having. A. Fourth. Child.

With all the fuss overall happening in my mind and body… I feel really happy about reaching the “My family is almost complete” state. For years I read women write about why they had more children and there was this phrase that felt woo woo and hand wavey “My family isn’t complete yet” and I wondered what the fuck they were on about. It makes sense now.

I want three children. Why? I don’t know. Three is the kiss of death in a lot of opinions. Triangulation for the win! Lose? Something. But I want these children. I want the lessons I will have to learn in order to be a good parent to them. Is it a need?

I don’t think I would have ever figured out how to be ok with not meeting this child. Lightening, I want you so much. I know I cry a lot while making you and that isn’t the warmest welcome ever… but I’ll get over it.

I remind myself that I’m nothing near as psycho as my sister was while pregnant…. Phew that was terrifying. Talk about violence.

Eleven more weeks (ish) until I get to meet this child. That’s the bright spot. I’m having trouble caring about Christmas or anything else… I want to meet my baby. I’ve wanted this child for more than ten years. I get to meet them very soon. I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to have this family that I want so very much.

I’m going to have this family. And I think we are going to move away. And I’m going to stop chasing the family/love I will never get from grown ups in the bay. I will go away and find some new normal.

I wonder if it will be better or if I will be bringing myself with me and I poison everything.

At least I’m pretty confident I won’t keep making the same mistakes. I’m not going to look for intense friendships. I have all the super close friends who know me better than anyone else I’m going to get in this lifetime. I’ll keep contact with them. They don’t need me to be in a place. They will stay in my life no matter what.

The more casual people who only want me for a few hours a year? Maybe it is better that I will lose a lot of those people. They won’t be motivated to maintain contact with me and I can’t carry the load of all these people expecting me to contact them once I move. It’ll be a natural ending point that won’t be all dramatic or mean. Because I don’t feel dramatic or mean about it… Just like it is time for me to move on and start valuing something other than getting a few hours of a few hundred peoples time.

I need to think I deserve something other than that.

I want to be something different. I am tired of trying to hold myself together in between the few hours that people want to know me. I need a different approach to life. I need to be valuable in a different way.

I’m looking forward to the next few years. Noah pointed out that whatever happens… I need to be making plans because when I’m not future tripping I shut down like a clock that has wound down. I have to be looking forward or I completely stop.

That’s part of what makes pregnancy so brutally hard emotionally. I can’t follow through on any future tripping plans and my ability to work is very low. So I can’t distract myself in the now and I feel incompetent to plan much for the future.

There is no fair.

For some reason the third trimester is bringing with it… better sleep. There goes my wacky body giving me the opposite experience of everyone else. I’ve been getting a nice consistent 7-8 hours with 1-2 wake ups for a bit now. It helps that we’ve been really consistently in the bed reading before bed and that definitely helps my sleeping pattern. We are blasting through the How to Train Your Dragon series and all of us are really engaged. These are fun pop corn books. I highly recommend them if you have kids under about 12. I can read a whole book an hour and a half in the bathtub so it isn’t that much reading material for older readers….

I don’t want to leave the bay because I hate people here. Although I hate some people here. Mostly I love a lot of people here. I want to leave the bay for the same reason I don’t want to move to Portland. Every so often I change what I’m willing to accept, how I’m willing to act, what I want and people don’t adapt with me very well. There are a lot of folks in Portland who have known me since I was 18 and interacting with their expectations/opinions kinda sucks. They don’t see me as a changing person and I wouldn’t be able to avoid those people and they would influence the community around me to perceive me in ways I don’t want to be perceived anymore. I may really like the Portland folk, but I’m not interested in spending the rest of my life being treated like I am 19 and willing to put up with assholes lifting my shirt in public places. (Clearly blacksheep is not the problem….)

I would have to break some noses in Portland in order to get some of those men to perceive that they can’t do to me what they used to do to me.

I don’t really want the fight.

So keep looking for a different place. P said she is looking near Tacoma/Seattle and I think… maybe east of there? I don’t want to land in another big metropolis. If I were 2-3 hours outside of somewhere like Seattle I could visit for long weekends when I want to deal with city fuss and I would not come into the city for anything casual. I’m sure going to struggle with lack of diversity outside a big city. Erf.

But I don’t know. We are going to travel first and see where we like it. Because we are spoiled motherfuckers and why the hell not. If Noah can hold on to this job for two more years… that’ll set up the rest of our life. I think. After that I’m pretty sure Noah can do part time consulting and we’ll be fine. I think about it this way because I don’t think Noah would ever be happy if he stopped working but I don’t think it’ll be ideal for him to need to work full time forever. It’s not ideal for anyone to work full time forever and our piece of shit country shouldn’t be doing this to people.

There is no fair.