Today I have been so fucking bitchy. I’m tired of my kids whining for sugar. It happened about half the hours they were awake today. That gets old. This is not constant for them. They did a bunch of cleaning, but we got to the end organization bits and everyone ran out of steam. They did work hard.

I just woke up in a god awful mood.

I’m tired but I feel wired for sound. I don’t feel sleepy, which is weird because I took my normal night med almost three hours ago. Usually I’m pretty damn sleepy. I feel cranky and restless and fussy and I don’t know why.

Because I’m a day shy of being 39 fucking weeks pregnant and this shit fucking sucks.

I want to meet my kid.

I want to stop waiting. I want to get the show on the road. You’ve baked. Move out.

I said that out loud and I got the fiercest kick. I’m going to have another feisty little snot. I am so excited. I’m not being sarcastic.

Maybe this kid will be less obedient. hahahaha…*sob*

It is utterly bizarre to me the way this person… yeah. They are the last. I have no desire in my heart to bear more children. I want this person. I don’t know them yet but I will and it will be awesome. And then I can spend a few years getting this person inculcated into the family culture. Then I might be ready to foster.

I love our family culture. I love the family I get to introduce this child to. I love the boundaries and limits and respect and consideration that is shown in our house.

Even when I’m a cranky bitch and I want to fuss at everyone for BREATHING SO FUCKING LOUD IN THE SAME ROOM AS ME it isn’t that I don’t like them. It’s that my body is pissed off today.

Weirdly… I haven’t pooped at all today and I’ve eaten a lot of vegetables in the past 36-ish hours and I have this absolutely bizarre feeling that I’m partially angry because my intestine is full. But I don’t seem to be able to poop. I don’t know. It’s… really weird. This does not usually happen to me.

Less than 24 hours till labor can go ahead and start without us having a problem. I mean… I don’t have my “pre-admission intake appointment” till Wednesday but whatever. I can fill out paperwork between contractions. I’m talented.

I found the advance directive! Doesn’t that count for anything?!

This here dude Noah is allowed to make decisions for my body. Even if I’m not in a coma. It’s kind of wacky.

I feel like I am absolutely going to explode with energy. But I’m tired. This is weird. I’m contracting but it’s not anything regular or majorly intense. It’s just “Yup. Still contracting occasionally.”

I think I may have officially past the point where I can do a sit up. I tried to get up earlier and I almost pulled a damn muscle. That fucking hurt. Ok, so I’ll claim it as I made it to 38 weeks and count myself thrilled. That’s way the fuck more strength in my abdomen than I ever expected to have. And that is probably a lot of why I haven’t had big back problems this pregnancy.

Hey, past self: well done! You maintained fitness! That’s really fucking cool! You can still walk three miles without a problem! You are doing so great at staying strong this time!

I’m told it will help.

I asked blacksheep how she psychs herself up to be a bad ass. Her response was… I almost fell over backwards laughing. She is such a tremendous bad ass that she doesn’t need to psych herself up to be a bad ass. She just decides she’s going to do something and then it gets done.

I aspire to that kind of self regard. I have worked so hard in the past 12-13 years to make a lot of her words my inside voice.

I can’t live like someone else. My needs are too weird. I can’t be like someone else. My brain and my body are odd. But god damn I can have people become part of my inside voice and that part’s great.

When I feel like shit and I want to give up I think of how loving and gentle blacksheep was as she coaxed me through just one minute of running at a time.

She didn’t need me to hurry or meet a schedule. She wanted me to challenge myself and do my best. She didn’t complain even once about how fucking slow I was. She accepted me. She could encourage me from where I started through where I needed to get without causing me to feel even a little bit bad about not being better.

It’s basically a fucking miracle. That kind of feat hasn’t been accomplished very many times in my whole life.

I want a birth that ends like that. Where I feel like I did exactly what I needed to do to get through my process and it was totally ok it happened like it did.

I tell people I didn’t run a marathon I energetically walked a marathon. I completed a marathon. I did it because I signed up to run it with my brother and I said I would go so I went. Even though he didn’t race. I did it because I wanted to be physically fit enough to handle my kids and frankly… I’m still coasting on the fitness I gained and I’m so glad I did it. I did it because I need to change how living in my body goes and I need to change how I perceive myself.

I completed a god damn marathon. Not quickly… but I did it. When the vast majority of all people don’t have the stamina. Even though my body is shitty. Even though I’m usually in a lot of pain. I can put that to the side and say, “It doesn’t matter how I feel; it matters what I do.” Even though I could barely fucking breathe.

“After you get this surgery you will feel so good you will want to go run a marathon!” “Uhhhh. I’ve already done that.” “You ran a marathon with a septum this deviated?” “Yup.” “Wow.”

That’s part of my inside voice too.

What is true and what is not true. Many things can be true at the same time even if they directly contradict one another.

I can be a bitch and still be a nice mother. We all have our bad days. My poor family. They are being so patient. And they’ve worked so hard lately.

There is no fair.

I couldn’t eat much dinner. My belly just said no. This feels related to the not really pooping thing. I hear (because I talk to pregnant folk a lot) that right before labor there is usually a massive cleansing of the system to make room and shift things about. Somehow this weirdly feels related to, “Babysitting hasn’t gotten here yet. Sit tight. Almost. Soooooooon. Then just go.”

I understand that all of my lovely friends are telling me how much easier their later births were because they are trying to be comforting. I totally get it. That does not align with my personal experience to date so I really apologize if I’m tetchy. Right at this point I’m barely holding my tone of voice together at all. If I sound massively cunty, please forgive me. Or avoid me for a while. That would make sense.

I didn’t post much on the forum today. I’m not sure I posted at all. My arms are so pissed. I have to slow down.

But that’s part of why I have this pent up need to whine here.

Also: I will never be this pregnant again. It’ll be interesting to remember how I felt. If I ever go back and read. I really wonder if my kids will ever read. I hope not. But this shit is public because I don’t keep many secrets. It’s too hard to keep secrets straight. I know my stories drift over time as my perspective and perception and memory change. That’s… not something I know how to avoid. It’s part of why I try to record stuff as soon as possible after it happens.

I am very sad to report that my massage therapist’s mother died. She has been frail and barely hanging on for some time. She was 99 1/2 years old. I feel bad that my massage therapist, in her grief, reached out to me to offer me a massage because now she doesn’t have to worry about every sniffle and illness as much. But given that I know I am her highest paying client and I know she just had a bunch of bills fall in her lap… I went in to see her. Clearly my body has missed her as my family has been persistently sick and I haven’t been to her. I brought chicken and dumpling soup that Noah made.

She told me that I am consistently the only person who gives anything to her that is thoughtful. That makes me sad. Her brother is self absorbed and doesn’t do much for her beyond helping to manage their mother. Her mother… stopped being there like almost a decade ago. No one else looks at her and thinks about her.

Dude. She just lost her mother. Show up with fucking food. She is going to have trouble getting up and making food to nourish herself. She is going to get super fucking depressed. I gave her an electric blanket for Christmas because she can’t afford to heat her house and she was in so much pain from the cold she couldn’t sleep. When she was talking about trying to figure out what she could afford to make for Christmas dinner last year for her and her brother… I brought over meat from my freezer. Because dude… I won’t miss a damn roast.

People have given so much to me in this life. I have some friends who blow my mind with their generosity and their love. Why do I deserve it? Why do I get it? Why in the hell doesn’t my massage therapist have friends who love her too?

I don’t deserve to take up more space than her. I don’t deserve more than my share.

If I’m even a little bit honest with myself… my life is preternaturally good compared to hers. She has not lived for herself.

I won’t see her for a while. I was planning to take the 4th trimester off. She said she was invited to go stay with some folks out of state and she’s going to take them up on it. She’s going to go find herself.

I am so glad. I hope that what she lacks here she can find there. I am not going to be here forever any more than her mother could be.

And she matters. Her needs matter. Her health matters.

It’s already been a year full of death. And here comes new life. Because it is all part of this big never ending process. Things start and end and change and change again and there will always be pain. Pain at the beginning and pain at the ending. Change hurts. That doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong. It means you are part of the human experience.

This person, who is kicking the shit out of my ribs, has something to teach me that I need to learn very badly. They will have behaviors and needs that will trigger the shit out of me. And I need to look past myself, I need to set myself aside and reach for a love that is bigger than me and see what does my child need?

This is my church.

I am going to be un-PC and potentially offensive to my non-breeders for a moment here. This isn’t about you and it might sound fucking rude.

I go on. I have an obligation to get up and go on because there are these people that I created who entirely depend on me at this stage. When they no longer need me to help them survive, they will still have something they need from me. It might be closeness and it might be distance. We’ll see.

I check to see that my mother is alive. I may need distance… but I don’t wish death upon her. As long as she is alive there is a chance she might cyberstalk me and feel pride in what she finds. Hey maybe it’ll make her hate me more. Whatever. I can’t control that. But I think very hard about the fact that her story continues. It continues in my children. In the hair my kid is growing out to their waist. They have my mother’s hair. I spent a lot of time brushing my mother’s hair. The texture is in my fingertips. My mama used to love having me brush her hair. She always said I was good at it. She was rough and she even hurt herself. She could do some things with such delicacy… but she could not be gentle with bodies.

When I teach my children to be gentle I think of my mother and how her story is changing and growing. What she could not give… I can. My children will not grow up knowing constant pain just for inhabiting a body as their due.

Stories can change.

People can change. But they have to work like a motherfucker. It’s hard. But if you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and think “Wow I really sucked” you aren’t trying hard enough. Noah is part of my inside voice now too. Sometimes in good ways. Sometimes in mixed ways and we are trying to figure that out.

I feel incredible envy towards my friends who feel confident that their body just knows what to do for labor and it’ll all be fine. My body is a little shit head who did not study for the fucking exam.

BUT I DID STUDY. I READ BOOKS. I WENT TO CLASSES. I LEARNED BREATHING TECHNIQUES. I DID FUCKING HYPNOSIS AND NLP. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Want to know how I completely fucked my relationship with Anna up beyond all possibility of repair? I told her she needed to be realistic about the needs and limitations of her body and she needed to get a new dream that was actually attainable given her issues.

I deserved that divorce. I was a cunt.

I have to get a new dream with regard to god damn birth. I don’t need to prove that my body is a wonderful magical strong natural creature who will just do the right thing. hahahahahaha

*cough*

My body likes to get dragged kicking and screaming over the finish line minutes before folks are saying, “Well never mind then.”

I procrastinate on shit like a motherfucker. Then I race the clock because I live for pressure.

Then I try to mask my exhaustion and terror that I may have failed anyway.

I went to CSUH for 5 quarters after I finished bouncing through a bunch of junior colleges. Those were the only terms of my entire scholastic career where I consistently did all of my work in advance and turned everything in with time to spare. I think it was because I was trying to please my Owner. He had opinions about my “laziness”. Yeah I’ve never kept that kind of thing up before or since.

EC’s birth I was able to labor down just fine once I was given the epidural so I could sleep. But I had to argue against “Just go ahead and c-section” the whole time. They would have opened me up the hour I came in if I had let them. I was not interested. I had a chip on my shoulder.

MC’s birth I was dealing with the fact that my labor support was pissy about having to spend so much time with me. That sucked.

This time… I’ll just deal with shift changes. Ta da! No pressure to hurry already. But I get to decide when it has hurt enough.

I’m not looking for another merit badge. I’m not proving that my body knows how to do something cool. I’m trying to get through a bloody shit show of an experience where my body will… have to fucking cooperate one way or another. Mother fucker.

As I get kicked viciously. Yeah. I mean you.

It’s gonna hurt and I’m going to bleed. Because that is just life.

And at the end I will meet a person. A person who will be part of the story of my blood line. And they will not grow up being denigrated. And they will not be abused. They will be cherished and loved and told that they were very much wanted. They will not be treated like an unwanted burden.

I get to make that true. Because I have the power to write that part of the story.

My mother did not understand the power she had to create my inside voice. I work very hard on making sure that I am careful what I am programming.

Baby I have so much I want to teach you about. I love seeing your siblings already believe it. You will be a complex person. You are going to suck sometimes. You are going to be awesome sometimes. You are going to hurt people. You are going to be hurt. You are not defined by one part of yourself… you are instead defined by the patterns you create.

Once is a mistake. Make new mistakes. Doing the same thing over and over ceases being a mistake and becomes a choice.

I wonder how much my depression this pregnancy has been related to knowing that this is one of the most selfish decisions I’ve made. The world doesn’t need another person like me. Not really.

But here I am. Making another one. Because I’m a selfish piece of shit and I want to see a reflection of myself that is better than me.

Luckily! I made sure that isn’t that hard.

If you start out a piece of shit… not that hard to be better than that.

I can make a whole twig of my family tree free from incest. It’ll be awesome.

I think meds have hit enough that I should eat something else before sleeping.