Tag Archives: pregnancy

There is a void in my day.

I’ve been talking to TB all day every day for four months now. It’s been really amazing. I have enjoyed climbing into his brain so much. Now I understand that doing so is going to block him from finding the future he wants and I have to stop. That’s hard. I feel like I am punishing myself.

I don’t say good morning and good night every day to anyone I don’t live with. That’s a lot of pressure for me. I’m a forgetful person. I have a lot of friends. I haven’t had a “we talk every day” friend since the Bonus Mama. I think I lost her in 2017? I feel absolutely allergic to the idea of having a friend I talk to that much ever again. I don’t trust the dynamic at all. If I talk to someone everyday for a couple of years then it is agonisingly painful when I am rejected because they don’t want to anymore or they found someone they want to talk to more. I don’t handle that detransition very well so I need to ensure that I don’t start that expectation within myself.

I have more abandonment issues than there are grains of sand in the Mojave. I maintain long-term friendships by making sure I never ask for or expect too much. I have to keep my needs to myself. I can share wants with friends easily, needs are harder. I have to be truly desperate before I will ask for help with a need. I would far rather do without or hurt myself doing it alone.

It’s why Noah works so hard at under promising and over delivering. He makes sure his actual promises to me are very conservative and easy to follow. He’s kind like that. He has learned how to be kind to me in this way.

I rarely worry about being too much for Noah. Today I was standing about 100m away from him; I was waiting for him and the kiddos to come in my vague direction. He ran over to me so that I didn’t have to stand alone. There was no reason to run. The kids were playing and having fun. He just wanted to. He didn’t want to be away from me for a second longer than he had to. He’s set the bar so high that other people can’t match it and maybe that’s ok. It sure makes the prospect of poly kind of weird. Someone has to treat me at least as well as Noah does or I am *choosing* to be less well treated every moment I spend with them.

I still believe with my entire soul that there was the potential for a life changing relationship with TB, it’s just not what he wants for his life. That’s ok. I really understand choosing hypothetical children over certain not quite enough. It’s a little funny because I don’t get told I’m the one who is not enough very often. It is fitting at its core though because I never pursued TB in the first place because I assumed I wouldn’t be good enough. Also, he’s nothing like Noah and I need Noah like I need oxygen and water.

TB fills needs I normally don’t even see in myself because they are so buried. I will go back to burying them because they are not things I can fill in my life with my current set up. It won’t kill me. These aren’t food and water and shelter kinds of needs. These are emotional needs around stability and being loved without being hurt. Noah is absolutely amazing and he loves me madly and deeply, but there’s a lot of hurt. I’m not complaining I am acknowledging.

I almost got to find out what it is like to be loved and cherished by a partner without having to endure pain to deserve it. I came really close but this is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades. It was weird seeing the possibility of finding out what that is like. It seemed alienating and impossible and improbable. Turns out I was right. That is not for me in this life.

It is breaking my heart. I wish I had never considered the possibility.

The fucking worst part is I had a hideous thought that makes me feel sick. “Since I am not a suitable partner on my own, maybe I should abort an accidental pregnancy.” I have never tied anyone to me through negligence and I will not start at this stage of my life. Elsenet I have recently done a copious amount of writing about how absolutely not ok I am with the possibility of aborting a child. Especially a fourth child. Especially an unwanted fourth child. I am the fourth unwanted child and I should have been aborted. I will be very careful and not get pregnant. I’m good at being slutty without accidental pregnancies. I feel bad inside myself about myself that I would have such a thought. I would never force someone to be with me. He’s made it clear that I am not enough. That would be true with an oops child in the picture. God that would be so unfair. This particular bit of calculus is why I’m going to have one sex filled trip with him and then not see him again. Apparently there is a hyperfertility uptick during perimenopause. My chance of getting pregnant is higher than it used to be.

Naw. Not playing with that fire a bunch over the next few years. That would be looking for pain.

Why one sex filled trip since this is not going to turn into what I wanted?

I feel like I will think about this and decide over and over and over for a long time. All the way till January. 18 weeks and 2 days. As long as we courted. As long I poured energy to trying to figure out if we could be good for each other as more than friends. That’s a good thing. That gives me time to get over feeling butthurt and go back to being excited.

I get to bang someone I have wanted to bang for 25 fucking years. That’s awesome. I’m looking forward to it. I think it is still going to be tender and sweet and loving. He is my very dear friend and we have both nursed a simmering crush all this time. Being incompatible isn’t something that either of us have done to the other. We are still good people having a good friendship with deep admiration and respect on both sides. It just so happens that I also like having sex with friends. At least I used to a long time ago in another life. I’m not so big on it here in Scotland. I am freaked out by the idea and I can’t consider it.

I feel scared about the amount of fall out that is going to be the result of this failed courtship. I would still like to do some fun travel things with him as just a friend. Maybe I am hoping that the sex is unimpressive so I can get over wanting him. That is the result after sex with quite a lot of people. Most people are not that skilled at sex and sometimes I am not up for the amount of work involved with ensuring I have good sex with someone who isn’t all that good at sex. I can do it. I can push just about anyone through having sex with me in a way that will get me off acceptably; I am both easy to get off and very skilled at directing sex.

I have very strong feelings at this point about the trip. I am not ok with “let’s see what happens”. I am going to direct this very much. I am going to go in knowing what I am trying to get out of each separate encounter. I feel bad, but I’m basically setting up how I can ensure a just and equitable transaction of emotional and physical energy. I’m not going to give more than I get. Oh fuck that.

Nope. That ship sailed away on de Nile and it ain’t ever coming back. I can’t get back on that river again. I will not put pennies in a piggy bank I will never be able to withdraw from. I’m a selfish cunt and I am not running at a surplus in my life. I now need to be a lot more fucking honest with myself about the cost I pay compared to what I am getting back. Is it enough? What do I need to do to make sure that I’m not bleeding out? I can’t have any fucking holes in my bucket and pouring energy into someone who is that actively encouraging me to invest, while planning to walk away suddenly at any point, would put a giant hole into my bucket.

The amount of hurt I feel today is 1/1,000 of what I would feel in two years. I might have started to trust that I was going to be kept come what may. I would never try to keep TB from finding a different primary if keeping me as a comet/distant secondary was a priority. It isn’t a priority for him. I can’t invest more emotionally in someone who will drop me like a hot potato for monogamy. That’s acting like it’s ok to treat me like a resource to use until something better pops up. I will not let my friend treat me so shabbily because then he would have to carry the shame for doing so.

I think at some point along the way this sounded more ok to me? I think there have been too many statements about “for the rest of your/my life”. I can no longer put any trust in the words that are being said. They are not at all reflective of reality. They are things you sorta hope might come true but it’s not a serious priority or demand upon any future partners.

Maybe if I didn’t have that Mojave Desert sand depth of abandonment issues. I’m not securely attached enough in my own self to withstand the level of pain I would feel at being discarded later. That would totally fuck up my ability to parent/teach well. I can’t set my life up for that crashing pain to come down on my kids. That’s fucked up and unfair. I can’t compartmentalise well enough for them to be totally unaffected by my mental state. I have to take steps to increase stability, not make choices that make instability more likely.

“You can depend on me. I will always be there for you.”

Those two sentences really should get me running in the opposite direction as fast as I can run. Usually when someone says that I stop hearing from them soon after and then I never speak to them again. It’s a fucking death curse for my relationships. No, I can’t depend on people. No one will always be there for me. Not even Noah. Not because Noah is shitty or because he doesn’t try hard; life is fucking brutal, dude.

I had very large problems before I ever met Noah. They haven’t all completely gone away despite all the work that we’ve done. Some of these are chronic and permanent. I don’t have a choice. I am always going to fucking struggle. I do stuff for myself long past the point when someone else would complacently accept help. I will fucking cry the whole time I hold a fork but I will not allow myself to be fed. I will eat the food like a fucking dog before I will allow someone to feed me when my hands aren’t working.

I have a lot of big feelings about the increasing disability I am experiencing. I wonder if part of my freak out about TB is I’m well aware I’m going to have slim pickings for folks who want to date me as I get older and more disabled and a lot less rich. Given the reading requirement involved in dating me I might be deciding that I am theoretically poly but I never get around to it. I am fucking difficult. Lowering the admission bar would not improve the success rate, it would make it worse.

95% chance of flaming out before 6 months. I’ve got statistics based on a significant enough sample size that I can use percentages. Yup.

I am difficult and demanding and exacting and way happier being alone over putting up with bullshit. I also have a husband who acts like I hung the fucking moon. I am not in any way deficient in sexual attention.

I spent four months helping a friend learn how to have a variety of adult relationship conversations that he otherwise would have had difficulty with down the line. I can’t call it mentoring because I sure as shit did it with the plan to fuck him. I made sure this vanilla monogamous person was going to be making a well informed decision with regard to the risk involved in being in a relationship with me. There are lot of implications to joining my life. It exists in a lot of layers and either you are in it or you are someone I talk to sometimes.

I’m not being mean. I have to keep walking. No matter what I feel or what happens to me I have to keep walking until I can’t walk anymore and then I will fucking crawl. I will fucking horrify the NHS because I’m not going to ask for help until it’s pretty ridiculous. They will scold me for not calling them in sooner to help. After all I am entitled.

I don’t really believe I am entitled to much in this life. I have acquired much. I am doing what I can to make this house into a place that will survive for a generation after me before needing more significant repair work. Sure, someone will probably paint over my art. I know. Deep sigh. My kids will have a secure home from which to figure out their lives. I’m not promising to make them rich enough to not need jobs but they will be able to survive without assistance from the government and without needing a job like Noah’s. I am planning as hard as I can for a future where we don’t need that kind of money anymore to be ok. I have been paying Future Us hand over fist in a variety of ways that will outlast me.

I think our days of regular, unplanned, expensive travel are over. I don’t think we can come to the weddings. If Noah hadn’t lost the last big tech job, sure we could have done all of them without a problem. We would have been on track even with the bulge of unexpected financial loss. Now he hasn’t worked in six months and it looks like his next job will be pretty much exactly how much we need to live on and we will no longer be contributing towards retirement. Awesome. That’s with a lot of cutting out expenses in terms of “what we need to live on”. I’ll need to cut expenses by 50%. I’m going to be fixing less on the house and at a much slower rate. Good thing I already got most of the biggest ones done.

Was I so intrigued by TB because I am an asshole and I wanted help fixing my house? It’s not a 0% chance. That takes the air out of my balloon in terms of being indignant about him not wanting me. Am I mad about the benefits I won’t get? Don’t get all self righteous here, Krissy. Sure he wants to keep getting the emotional support benefits without the commitment. Are my motives actually only pure and altruistic or some bullshit like that?

Probably not. I’m a selfish cunt. Yo, brutal honesty dictates I say that I was frankly concerned about the mismatch in physical size for intimate matters. That was going to be a difficult thing for me. Combining that mismatch with the other disparities in sexual preferences I wouldn’t be getting so much out of the sex that it would fill up my end of need for emotional support.

I have a high opinion of the value of the support I offer as a partner. Demanding high return support in exchange has historically resulted in my life steadily improving and me having increasingly healthy and positive relationships.

I feel weird about that kind of a statement right now. It feels like a pie crust promise. It feels like a big claim without evidence. I don’t jump into bed with everyone I want to be friends with because it’s the primary way I know to get people to like me. It’s been more than 8 years since I’ve had sex with a friend. Holy moly it is the longest stretch of monogamy in my life. I think twice as long as previous stints? Why do I want it to end so much?

I have a narrow window. For one week I will have a travel boyfriend that I will have a lot of fun with. I have negotiated it painstakingly with my husband so that I can be as respectful as possible of his feelings through this whole experience. I think Noah will fall in love again some day. I think he will have friends he wants to have sex with. I have some hope about my ability to send him off for adventures with a big smile on my face. It will be a lot easier to do when I am not feeling constant anxiety about when TB will be dumping me. Noah and I will keep negotiating and talking. We will make friends slowly and not go out hunting for strangers/near-strangers here.

I have a husband who will give the full measure of devotion in service to my safety, health, and longevity. I don’t get to feel actual bitterness about not being so sparkly and shiny that I get to have another serious partner who is nearly so devoted. That’s a big fucking ego you have there, Krissy. Really think a lot of yourself, do you?

I guess I do. I think I need to be honest with myself and with anyone who ever tries to date me that I don’t accept inconsistency. Do not make pie crust promises while asking me to trust you. That’s not something I can work with. Know your own mind. Think about your shit. Figure out what you want. If it isn’t me then don’t waste my fucking time. I have a short life. Trying to prevent me from spending my time in ways that will build towards my long-term future is absofuckinglutely disrespectful. As I will try hard not to waste your time. It’s about respect.

I’m disabled. What I can get done in a day is distinctly finite. I have bursts of time where I overextend on a project and get an unhealthy amount done. I always pay in big and small ways.

What I do with my time is a big McFlippin Deal. Time is my most scarce resource in this life. I will be spending the vast majority of my time with my family. If a person does not particularly have any desire to integrate with that unit then they need to be a person I talk to sometimes.

I don’t have enough self to give to be doling out big chunks to a bunch of off-stage people who are not actually part of my life. It’s just math. It’s pragmatism. It’s reality. I need to treat people as not good matches for me when they are happy to use a lot of my time with no regard to the effect that has on my ability to live the life I want to lead. If someone does not notice or care about the holistic reality of my life then I need to keep them in a small box away from my life where I limit how far down the rabbit hole I go.

I need to believe that I deserve a good match. There is a void in my day right now because I want to be poking TB. I don’t want to though. I want to be poking in the direction of a fantasy I had, which isn’t at all the same thing as poking him. I want to be poking at a partner who is doing work to making themself better actively like I am to remind one another that there is fun in trade for the hard and the boring. “Hey asshole, poke your husband.”

I do. I poke and prod and talk to him all day long. I have a lot of RAM in my brain. Once he gets a job I won’t be able to take up all his time like I have been doing. Holy cheese I’m looking forward to retirement. I could keep more people busy. God I am a bottomless pit of need. I don’t want to do it for someone where I don’t get the long run benefit of nipping at their heels to get them to run just a little faster. It’s a lot of fucking energy.

The trade value for my time as a girlfriend experience is quite high. It’s not your soul but it’s pretty close.That is probably a highly inappropriate amount of hubris. Oh well. The down side is less time spent with people who don’t want to put much energy into me. That doesn’t sound like a down side when I say it like that. It kind of sounds like healthy self regard.

I don’t have a lot of unrequited loves left to come knocking. I think the ties of the past are finally fraying. I think that going forward it’s going to be a very weird process. Good thing I am primarily interested in making friends. That is a worthy endeavour and I strive to not have a lot of standards and demands for friends. Friends are free to be whatever kinds of fuck offs they want to be. It doesn’t impact my life too badly because of boundaries. I keep people in small boxes.

My standards for Noah are shockingly high at this point in a lot of ways. Very low in other ways. I don’t ever get to expect my birthday to be a good day for me. The most peaceful birthdays I spend alone. I don’t have expectations of anyone that way. I don’t have to take care of anyone. I don’t have to carefully monitor my tone to ensure that I am being respectful even when I feel shitty. My birthday is not a day that is good for me. TB has long since proposed me spending my birthdays with him.

He offered to be the one who made sure my birthdays are special while planning to dump me if someone better comes along.

I’m 10 days out from my birthday. I am glad I am downgrading my expectations in my mind from “boyfriend” to “friend with benefits”. That means I can stringently avoid getting myself into a situation where yet another person makes my birthdays feel full of memories of not being wanted or good enough. Fuck. That really fucking hurts. That’s not a small thing to offer. I refused it instantly. No. I couldn’t do that to Noah or the kids. They would take that very personally. I can go away with Aunt Jenny and everyone wishes me well with a smile.

If I am going to get back to interviews then I need to get my sleep schedule under better control. Good night.

Good morning day 8

I have been having steady contractions for 8 days. They are never more than 30 minutes apart and sometimes are as little as 2 minutes apart for hours on end. All of this is not part of the labor tally because I am not yet 4cm. As the kids would say: FML. I don’t really have a lot of choice about the matter so I persevere. Last night was one of my worst nights of sleep in a while and my lower back is super achey this morning. Hopefully that’s a good sign but at this point I don’t know that I believe anything.

I called my doula yesterday. I’m… far less than pleased with her reaction. I don’t feel like she takes it very seriously that she screwed up. Her ‘apology’ sounds very flippant and teenager like. And I had to call her and bitch her out to get it. Uhm. Yeah. On one hand I sort of feel like I should just fire her and not deal with the drama. But I hired her because I like her and other than one stupid comment she has done her job extremely well. I spent a while angsting last night at people and realized that if she was my friend I would absolutely let this go. She was tired, hungry, and cranky–I have some sympathy for that. But she’s not my friend. She’s someone I’m hiring to do a service and I’m not sure I should be accommodating her mood swings. I have a few more hours to decide. Maybe. Depends on how this back ache goes.

I am more pregnant than I have ever been before. So much for second kids coming earlier.

Follow up

My midwife called me a little bit ago. She thought we should process. This was a good thing because she opened the conversation somewhat neutrally and then she accepted complete responsibility and apologized. She explained that she has been feeling really bad and trying to figure out why she didn’t suggest the test to start with. She said that she thinks that it was an emotional reaction because she didn’t want me to feel like she didn’t believe me. I told her that I would have jumped on the chance to know for sure because I don’t want to be put on a timer. She acknowledged that in retrospect she knows that and she is really sorry she made the call she did.

We also talked about child care logistical issues at great length. We figured out a compromise that I hope is going to work out well–she also doesn’t have a whole lot of good options for childcare (which in my opinion is a bad thing for her professionally but that’s a different matter). That was very useful.

We talked about her ambiguous feelings about driving this far and how it is obvious she is irritated with driving up here. She feels like every single time I have called her it was 100% appropriate and she wants me to continue calling her for the things I am calling her for… but man she hates the drive to Fremont. I get that. But it means she is sending mixed signals that feel bad for me. This overall part of the conversation was left at the place of–she is glad she is doing this for me because she cares about me but she needs to never get herself in a position like this again. This is just too far for her to really handle for work. So it’s not the best situation but we need to work with it for now and make the best of it and she is going to try and check her irritation.

We talked about the 180 degree behavioral change she has between her office and showing up here to check stuff for potential birth. I told her that my logical brain feels that she is more casual in the office because there is less pressure on her to ‘perform’ and when it comes to showing up for births she has to be more clinical and distant so that she can potentially make decisions that have serious weight so she doesn’t read as ‘friendly’ any more. I pointed out that I feel like I can read her body language pretty well in the office to know when she is having different moods/reactions but in my house it feels like trying to read a brick wall and that’s hard. She said she will reflect on this and see how true it feels for her and decide what to do about it. That’s perfectly valid and fair.

I brought up the parting crack from my doula and she agreed that she was pretty shocked and unhappy with that comment. She agrees that I need to have a serious conversation with V because that just wasn’t ok. I didn’t do anything wrong at any point and I didn’t deserve that.

So yeah. I’m feeling significantly less pissed off. I feel that my midwife calling today was a really good thing and absolutely the best thing for figuring out stuff between us. I feel that I was really brave in laying out my issues the way I did (God it was hard) and I feel like she totally validated me and listened and was supportive. I feel that she did a really good job of listening to constructive feedback that was probably more than occasionally uncomfortable without being defensive. I don’t think I can ask for more than that. She continually stressed that she really wants to work with me. She really wants me to keep calling her early. She really thinks that I have done everything right. I needed that.

I’m really happy with how she has chosen to deal with this conflict. I’m not completely ‘over it’ at this point but I’m most of the way there. It’s good because I don’t really have a lot more time to be fusstastic before I’m probably going to really need her help.

So.fucking.pissed.

ETA: If you give me any fucking advice or ‘next time you should’ in any way shape or fucking form I will delete the fucking comment and ban you from ever commenting again. I’m not sure I can express how fucking foul my mood is.

Today has been a fucking horrible day. So I spent most of the day trying like mad to induce labor. It’s a hard thing to do. It’s often painful and never fun. My doula was here for most of the day with us because she brought over a pretty powerful abortifacient that often, but not always works. I was taking it every fifteen minutes for hours an hours and it was certainly causing gnarly strong contractions. No cervical progress. At some point in the afternoon my midwife showed up and when she got here with her kid and the whole circus… the contractions stopped. The noise, the distraction, just EVERYTHING was too much. I asked for her kid (and my doula’s) to leave. So they arranged childcare and it was a couple of hours before both kids could be picked up. At some point in here I finally got my midwife to sit down and talk about what was going on with my labor–or lack there of. She told me that in her opinion I had ~24 more hours before she would call it and I had to go to a hospital anyway. Given the clusterfuck that would be having to deal with transferring childcare around I asked her if we should just go today and she said that was probably a good decision.

The circus moved to the hospital. We got there, checked in, did some exam stuff… then comes this startling revelation! They can tell if my water has broken by doing a super quick swab then wiping it on this little piece of litmus tape. Literally a fucking 30 second procedure and there is no god damn reason in the world that my fucking midwife should not be able to perform this procedure. The doctor said it is very possible that I did have a high leak because they often reseal themselves but at this time I don’t have a problem and I should just go home. (Then there was fuss with him being called out to deliver a baby RIGHT NOW and I wasn’t allowed to leave until he officially came back and signed me out. This was annoying because the nurse required me to stay on the table with the monitors.)

Then my doula says that she wants to go and she leaves me with the parting crack of, “And remember the next time I see you it should be real labor–five minutes in between contractions, for at least a minute for an hour.” Wow. Awesome way of giving me a smack for wasting your time. My midwife bailed at that point too. Fine. Then Noah and I wait around for a while and get a lovely little lecture from the doctor and nurse about how when my labor actually starts I should just come straight back to the hospital because what I am planning is a bad idea.

This whole fucking day is fired. Most of what I did today was unpleasant or flat out hurt. And it all could have been fucking prevented if my midwife had done a god damn 30 second long low-tech test.

“false labor” can fuck off

So I started having contractions a few days ago. The kind that hurt and take a lot of processing. It really didn’t help that kiddo’s position was suboptimal and I was getting to find out what is meant by ‘back labor’. Not.My.Favorite. So I had a few days of inconsistent, painful, breathe through them contractions. Uhm, they seem to have stopped again. WTF. I’m not thrilled about on again off again labor. Although I am thrilled that the baby rotated. Whoo yay acupressure.

But I guess I am back to waiting. The silver lining is that it’s only 7 days till Virgo. Maybe I will make it after all.

Differences

I could totally be wrong about these impressions. My memory is never the sharpest and it is especially cloudy lately.

It is interesting to me how my mindset is different this pregnancy. I feel a lot more confident about the early parenting stuff so I just don’t need to do much research at this point. I keep doing my gradual stuff for Shanna’s development, but overall I don’t feel like there is much that is super pressing RIGHT NOW. So my mind is wandering a lot. I’m spending a lot more time thinking about sex (my lack of interest and how much that pisses me off); non-monogamy (both how that will work out in my life over time and how I feel about it as an abstract concept;, feminism (My Fault, I’m Female has been a big part of this); adoption/fostering issues (this is an ongoing thing in the back of my mind. I don’t know that I will ever go back to teaching, but it is still important to me that I do some kind of work with children at some point); how to balance this crunchy shit (I’m feeling more and more like the fanaticism approach just isn’t one that works for me); lots of time thinking about abuse stuff–a lot of this is because I have been hanging out in the Surviving Abuse forum on MDC a lot. Other people have very different experiences than me and that’s interesting. (Uhm, not interesting in a bad way, more like

I feel like there is a lot more ‘me’ in this pregnancy. I am not just in this haze of hormonal love for the fetus and obsessed with all things baby. I have everything I need for the homebirth (I uhhh didn’t actually get that far last time–oops). I feel like I have done sufficient preparation of the house for incoming child, but I’m not actually all that focused on it. I’m sick to death of being held back by pregnancy. I want to hurry up and get birth over with so I can move on with my life. I know the first few months will be challenging, but I can’t help but think that I will actually have way more energy than I do right now. I feel like Shanna will get out of the house more. That’ll be good.

I didn’t start looking at me as a separate entity until Shanna was over a year old. Then I started getting really antsy. I wonder if I will get the hormone rush with birth again and be completely immersed in “Mommy” being my whole world. I might not. If I don’t get that rush, am I going to feel more resentful of the extreme dependence early on? Hm. Interesting.

It’s up and it’s down

Don’t like my current mood? Wait for it… 5…4…3…2…1… There. There’s a completely different one.

Jesus Christ on a Pogo Stick I’d like to be able to have a consistent mood for more than half an hour. And I’d like to not feel horribly terribly depressed. And I’d like to not be so angry that I really and truly do seriously consider keying the asshole who parked next to me in such a way that I literally could not get into my vehicle. (Luckily there were more nimble non-pregnant people with me who could drive.) I was mellow for at least a little while yesterday. In between the intermittent temper tantrums and fuss.

I want my body back. I want my hormones to get off this fucking roller coaster. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I don’t know how I am going to handle four more weeks. 🙁 I’m at this place where I really need help (thank you Miss Jenny for once again rescuing me this pregnancy) but I’m pretty worried about fucking up friendships by asking for help right now because I’m pretty seriously not a nice person. (Jenny is being patient and all but she has the audacity to want to LEAVE THE COUNTRY on Tuesday. I’m going to be screwed.)

Just breathe. Just breathe.

And most of the labs are back

The pee test is ongoing. Joy.

The blood tests don’t indicate preeclampsia. Whoo! This is a good thing. Apparently some things are a little bit unusual and my midwife says she will be spending some quality time with a reference book trying to determine if they mean anything but she isn’t too concerned at this point.

ETA: the slightly weird stuff seems to boil down to ‘Yup. Yer pregnant.’ So completely all good. Yay for less nervousness.

Now if I could get this damn headache to go away.

(I now get to feel more comfortable shrugging off all the weird symptoms as probably Meniere’s related. Yay!)

Yup, not doing this again.

So this afternoon I need to go in to have liver testing stuff done and get a container for a 24 hour urine catch. Apparently I’ve been shrugging things off as no big deal that could actually be a big deal. Things like blurry vision with little spots of light dancing in my vision (I knew that some vision weirdness was semi-common during pregnancy). Severe sudden lower back pain (not crampy so I figured it was just a weird thing). Headache lasting multiple days that Tylenol won’t make go away (headaches are so common in my friends group that I don’t think that much of them). Mental confusion (isn’t everyone kind of batty when they are pregnant?). Major shoulder pain (I figured this was from sleeping on my side for months). Sudden nausea in the third trimester (I thought I was just unlucky). Stomach pain after not having a problem for months (different from my normal stomach acid pain–I can’t tell if I am hungry or full my stomach just aches like mad).

Hey, when you list all this out like this it looks kind of lame that I’ve been ignoring it. Well… it was always just one thing at a time and easy to ignore…

*sigh* I still have very good blood pressure (110/60) and my weight gain is still rather moderate (less than 12 pounds at 34 weeks) so I figured everything was all good. Guess not. Time to head off to the lab. 🙁

Pregnancy sucks so very much.

A good day

I spend most of my time on lj posting about being unhappy or talking about Shanna. That is totally not representative of my every day so uhm, here’s a post that is less depressing.

Today is a good day. I got a little bit of yard work done out front. It’s been bugging me so I’m glad I’ve gotten around to it. I scheduled house cleaning stuff for the next several months so that I can stop feeling bad about how little cleaning I do. (Noah [whom I do not spend nearly enough time talking up–he’s so fabulous] does most of the ‘picking up’ so our house isn’t too bad, but he doesn’t really like doing the deeper cleaning.) Currently it sucks for me to bend over and do it so we decided that three or four months of someone else cleaning our house was a Good Idea. The vast majority of this additional spending right now is coming out of the much larger than anticipated tax refund, so I am thanking my lucky stars that we got it. I really and truly see the financial privilege I have these days and I feel so grateful that I have it. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure can do a lot of work towards making life easier so that you have less stress. That leads to increased happiness. So I thank anyone upstairs who is listening that my life is so easy at this point.

For all that I’m not a great pregnant person I am deeply grateful that this pregnancy is easier than Shanna’s. I’m super tired. I have a lot of random body discomfort. I’m cranky. But I haven’t puked once! I am not so completely listless that I am not functioning! I do manage to take Shanna out to play at least once a week and I’m arranging for her to have more opportunities than that with other people. I’m cranky with her, but she’s spectacular about telling me, “It’s not nice to yell at me.” Which really puts a fast halt to my temper tantrums. Having a two year old call me on my behavior is incredibly humbling in a good for me way. I really love having her.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the sexual assault stuff and I am feeling… better isn’t quite the word but less disturbed. I’m feeling more like I really have handled things in a way that is ultimately good for me. Of course I have done things poorly at times. Of course I have not always been in the best place right that minute. But overall I don’t feel like I am a terrible non-functioning crazy person. And sometimes good enough is good enough. 🙂

Mostly I had a really good weekend. I really love my family. I have a wonderful, supportive, amazing husband. I feel like I had the most perfect-for-me little girl possible. I like her so much. I’m rather excited about meeting kid 2.0. If Noah and I combined to make one kid this awesome, what will 2.0 be like? I strongly suspect that next kid will be very very different from Shanna. I base this on the differences in the pregnancy. This kid is active in a way that Shanna wasn’t. This makes me slightly nervous because of the potential differences in sleeping habits. Shanna has been an awesome sleeper since birth. But we’ll roll with it. Whatever happens is what is meant to happen. I think that I am nervous about having expectations this time. Before Shanna I had almost zero exposure to babies. I had no idea what to expect and then she was so easy. (Maybe my memory is already getting fuzzy… who knows.) Now I’ve had a kid so I have a bit more of the ‘I know about kids’ attitude. I’d be better off assuming that I know nothing again. 🙂

So, yeah. Life is plugging along. I have 6ish weeks to go. I’m nervous but looking forward to the birth. It will be a rather different experience this time. Shanna has expressed rather strongly that she wants to be at the birth so that’s going to be interesting. Luckily nipple stimulation is a big help because there is no way I will be able to keep her from nursing during labor. 😀 I’m really looking forward to tandem nursing for some weird, masochistic reason. Something about it just seems really… I don’t know… motherly? Like even if I feel like psychologically I am not always the best at mothering my body is doing GREAT at the physical parts! I can’t quite figure out why I am looking forward to it so much. Too many years on MDC. They have infected my brain. 😀

So yeah. It’s a good day after having a couple of other good days in a row. 🙂

In non-cranky news

Dear god I’m huge. Getting around is getting difficult. But! Baby is happy and healthy and that’s awesome.

I am going over to Alex’s to paint Shanna’s kitchen today. I will hopefully get that bit done today so that we can finish the rest of it very quickly cause uhhh her birthday is Monday. Oops. 🙂

Holy shit. Her birthday is Monday. Expect tons of schmoop coming about that.

May has been fucking psychotic and I think that June is going to be a month of staying home and pidddling around with getting the house ready. I won’t want to have to do that at the last minute and there is a lot that could use adjusting before the baby comes. I can feel nesting hitting rather hard.

Well howdy

No wonder I’ve had a few people call/IM me to see if I’m ok. I don’t skip a week on lj very often without saying, “HEY I’M GOING OUT OF TOWN”. Uhm… yeah.

So I’m still feeling fairly depressed. It’s not fun. I’m trying to deal with the individual issues as they come up. Lots of crying. But I’m not the kind of depressed where I feel suicidal or like cutting so I consider this pretty manageable. The therapy appointment is for the 28th cause that’s when she gets back from a conference.

I’m exhausted and fussy. My house is a complete and total mess and I’m having a really hard time caring. I have way too much shit to get done and I will only be home for a whole day one day for the rest of the month. I’m really really tired. I feel like my ambition is maybe not at an all time low but it’s pretty pathetic.

I’ve had a great visit with my midwife this week and a really good conversation last night with a friend wherein she basically said, “Yeah we aren’t having issues so it’d be good if you stopped thinking I hate you.” (only minor paraphrasing, I swear.) It’s a really good thing that people are so patient with me. I appreciate it lots. I also appreciate that regardless of my depth of current self loathing my friends continue to whack me in the head and say, “Yeah, well I like you; so shut up.” It’s all useful and shit.

And I have the coolest midwife ever. Completely supportive and awesome. No weight gain but my uterus is now measuring several weeks ahead even though I’ve been exactly on target so far. I’m working on my issues around childbirth and I’m pretty sure I’m hiring a doula. There is a particular chick I’ve known/been talking to for years whom I really like and that seems like a good plan. I really really really need a level of support this time I didn’t get last time. I’m all kinds of emotionally delicate. It’s kind of funny that I was physically fucked during my pregnancy with Shanna but I was 100% confident in how I would handle labor. This time I’m not awesome physically but head and shoulders better than last time and I’m completely freaked about labor. Brains are weird.

Body changes

I reach a stage in pregnancy where I have zero interest in having any clothing touch my skin. I’m there. I’m actually thrilled that I am going to be in late pregnancy during summer. I really really wanted to go out today in a lycra tube top and a loose skirt. That sounds like the appropriate amount of material in contact with my body. But the high is going to be 62 and there will be scattered showers. Damnit. I’m not quite warm blooded enough for that combo. Life, she is unfair. 🙂

Oy.

What I have done today:
Put our blankets and pillows in the car.
Eaten two meals.
Played on the internet.
Taken a bath.

And I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m totally wasted. Yeah, it’s time to go home. Luckily Jenny is in the air right now. I pick her up from the airport in ~3 hours and 40 minutes. She will get some time to stretch and then she will start the drive home. I owe her big time.

Oh crap.

I seem to have hit that narcoleptic stage of pregnancy like a brick wall. This is really not good. 🙁 I went out to run errands this morning and I almost fell down in Target because I was suddenly so tired I couldn’t stand. Keeping my eyes open long enough to drive less than two miles back to Sarah’s house was really hard.

Oh shit.

and… now contractions are starting. Uhm. I think I pushed too hard over the past few days. 🙁

ETA:
Talked to midwife. She says rest, overhydrate, drink wine (have I mentioned that I love her), get a friend to drive me home on Wednesday or Thursday at the earliest, and under no circumstances should I do any more work in the house. Right. Shit. Well. Uhm.

I’d be ok with a non-dramatic pregnancy.

Oh yeah, I’m pregnant

It’s kind of interesting that I’m not talking about this pregnancy that much. I think that a portion of that is that the miscarriages instilled a sense of doom around being too attached to a pregnancy and that’s hard for me to think about. The worst ongoing symptom I have is acid stomach. I have only found one thing that seriously works for it and I can’t use it all the time but I’m glad I have something at all. Otherwise I’m ungainly and slow but doing alright. I’m already starting to have to be very careful how I sit/stand/twist because I’m feeling ‘oh that’s a muscle on the verge of hitting it’s end of range. right’ stuff. It’s festive! If I cook anything elaborate I can’t eat it. I can’t eat things too many times within a week or two period because I seem to have a smell memory that hits my gag reflex if I eat too repetitively. This is inconvenient but not the end of the world. All of a sudden in the last week or two tiny baby moved positions somehow and I can sleep through the night without getting up to pee. I don’t know how that worked out but I am Not Complaining. 🙂

I have less energy than I have when I am not pregnant but I think I hit my version of the mythical energetic second trimester. I get more done in an average day right now than I got done in an average week of Shanna’s pregnancy and I’ve had bursts where I’ve done HUGE projects and that was just never possible with her. I’m enjoying this. 🙂 I’m feeling incredibly stupid. My memory is in the crapper. I have to sit there and chant 5,000 times that I have to do something in a day or I forget. (Like picking Jenny up from the airport today. I am repeating over and over to myself that I have to leave the house at 1:30. I probably should be telling myself when I have to start getting ready or I’ll be late. Oy.) My normal punctuality is even harder than it is just with Shanna. I just move slowly. I have to stop and think about normal habitual actions. It’s not bad it’s just kind of inconvenient some days.

I keep meaning to have Noah take belly pictures. And I keep forgetting. See how this works out? At this point I am starting to outgrow my early maternity clothes (which is why I am doing my best to be quiet about my opinion of other people getting ‘huge’). I was at the grocery store last night and overheard two women talking about how one is due in Mid-June and the other is due in September. The September chick didn’t even look pregnant and the June chick looked how I look at 8 weeks. *sigh* I have gained approximately one pound but my belly is huge. Near as I can tell (angles are hard to judge and all) right now I am about as big as I was at 6 or 7 months last time. I’m 20 weeks so about 4.5 months. I have totally googled if it is possible to miss a twin with a 14 week ultrasound and the belief seems to be that it happens very very occasionally, but not likely. I just get fucking huge. OUTGROWING MATERNITY CLOTHES. Let me just say that again because it irritates me so much. It’s a good thing I’m going to be in the third trimester in the summer because I’m going to have to tie a sarong around my hips and wear a sports bra. Nothing else is going to get around my girth. 😛 It’s a good thing I don’t mind showing off my stretch marks. 😀

Uhhh… I think that’s about it. 🙂

Brain dump

I just kind of want to babble and I feel guilty doing it at folks on IM sometimes. 🙂

We bought into the Disney Vacation Club. It is probably not the very best timing ever given all the other financial schtuff coming up right now (teeth issues, birth, increased health insurance costs with the new job) but it’s not going to screw us over in any way. I have been feeling really trapped lately and just knowing that I have that ability to go to a hotel for a few days and it is already paid for is actually helping me feel less panicked. Not to mention that as I’ve had a few days recently of feeling fussy/not well I have really enjoyed the escapism of getting to look into possibilities for future vacations. It’s kind of like playing Lottery Fantasy only I will almost certainly get to actually do it. 😀

Loneliness comes and goes. I’m doing better than I was for a while. I have started scheduling specific time with a friend and it’s actually helping. Knowing that he cares enough to carve out a specific day every month even though he is pretty frantically busy is giving me a hefty dose of, “Yes I’m worth some effort.” It helps that he and I share some very strong core values of shared labor. Granted I can’t do a lot of physical labor right this minute, but I can provide a big vehicle that enables him to get supplies for his projects in a way that doesn’t cost him extra money. 😀 And he knows I will start doing labor as soon as I am able. And he loves my kid. 🙂 Stuff with other people is less predictable so I’m kind of hanging my hat on this hang-out with this friend. It’s a lot of pressure for him but he has indicated that he doesn’t mind. And it’s only once a month. 🙂

I’m strangely excited about the kids resale event this weekend. (www.outrageousoutgrowns.com) I’m selling stuff we don’t want/need and I’m getting a cheap thrill out of making at least a little bit of money on the stuff that we have already used as much as we want to. I’m hoping to make enough money to pay for the next size up in Shanna’s wardrobe. Given that I don’t spend much money on her clothes it is a relatively modest goal and I’m selling an awful lot of stuff. So it’s random but I’m excited. I’m less excited about going to drop the stuff off early tomorrow morning with Shanna because I have to place everything out on the sales-floor by myself. That’s going to be uncomfortable. It’ll be ok though. Would anyone have any interest in going with me to the sellers early buying time on Friday evening?

I think it is really funny that I have turned Fetlife into a place where I go to argue about parenting stuff. Not how I pictured that involvement…

I don’t feel all that present in this pregnancy, which is kind of a hard thing to explain. I had that lovely haze of pregnancy euphoria a bit for a few weeks a few weeks ago. Lately I just feel kind of clumsy and lazy but not particularly excited about being pregnant. I have constant low level sour stomach (it always feels wrong to call it heart burn) but Tums make me feel disgusting in a whole different festive way. I’m having trouble feeling really attached to this fetus. I’ve been feeling movement every so often for a while. I’m definitely growing. But… it’s like the miscarriages made me afraid to love the baby before it arrives. I don’t like feeling this way.

I’m having a hard time processing how I feel about the upcoming delivery and how I feel about Shanna’s birth in retrospect. I feel… kind of defensive. I feel like the fact that I got pain meds means that I can’t ‘really’ handle labor even though I never got to the point where it felt all that painful. I feel like I must be lying to myself about the experience. Even though no one has ever contradicted my experience of my birth in any way I feel like there must be people who think that I am weak because I went to the hospital. I feel overwhelming shame about the fact that I needed sleep that badly. Which is really pretty stupid. I know logically that I am not a wuss/weak/pathetic because I needed sleep but I feel like those things are true. I’m scared I am not going to be able to handle the second labor. I’m scared that if it takes a long time I am going to cave much easier and not see a point in fighting for a natural labor because I am obviously too pathetic to handle one. I really don’t know how to handle these feelings. This physical sensation of being too weak/pathetic is overwhelming and I can feel it shutting down huge parts of my brain/body. I know that being afraid is going to cause me problems. My labor with Shanna wasn’t painful until I was beyond exhausted and terrified wondering how many more days would go by before it ended. I really don’t know what to do with these feelings.

Shanna says I am out of babbling time today.

Not the excitement I was looking for.

Maybe I should stop complaining that my life is boring. My life is not boring. My life is stable, safe, and awesome. Let’s go back to that. So uhm, I got to spend 5 hours in the ER today. Around 1:45pm I started experiencing mild lower abdominal cramps. They were intermittent and not too severe. Around 2:00 they started getting a little worse and it started getting hard to stand up completely straight. I started calling folks like my midwife, Noah, a friend who is also a midwife. The only person who answered was Noah. (I was at a friend’s house.) I told Noah I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted to do about it but I was concerned. Once I started getting fairly fierce lower back ache I burst into tears and announced it was time for the ER.

I sat in the waiting room for hours before finally getting seen at all. I spent a lot of time in the waiting room hunched over crying from pain. My midwife arrived after not too terribly long and we snuck off to the bathroom so that she could listen to the baby with the doppler. She said she didn’t know what was going on with me, but the baby sounded fine. My blood pressure instantly dropped. I stopped crying every time the fierce pain came and instead started breathing through what I was pretty certain was contractions.

For those following at home: I am 14 weeks pregnant. There is no way my baby could survive outside of me at this point.

Eventually I got in to see a doctor. (Amusingly this doctor is well known in the dance community. She immediately offered to get a different doctor if I felt uncomfortable with her giving me a pelvic exam. I muttered that given how many of her friends have already seen my crotch, one more person was no big deal. She tactfully ignored me. :D) She was friendly and professional. She didn’t feel anything problematic so I was back out to the waiting room so that I could wait and wait and wait for an ultrasound. It took another hour or so. The ultrasound technician was WAY chatty compared to my previous experiences telling me all kinds of interpretations of what he was finding. I’m pretty sure he was actually breaking rules but oh man am I not going to report him. The baby looked great. The baby is measuring a couple of days ahead of my dates but that’s not a big deal. The heartbeat was lovely. Development is universally on target or a couple days ahead. This is awesome. But I had a whole lot of confirmation that I was having very fierce contractions. My cervix was long and thick (that’s a good thing). I am no where near having a baby any time soon.

I had to wait a while longer to see a different doctor (shift change) so that I could get final results. No UTI. No obvious anything other than me having severe contractions. Uhm, I guess those just happen. Take Tylenol for the pain.

Then we were released. My midwife said that if I am not opposed, half a glass of wine should probably take care of quieting my uterus. I am currently sipping an awesome vintage.

You know, given how stressful my pregnancies are I really really really really don’t need to go through this a third time.

Weight

It’s ok to talk about weight while pregnant, right? It’s not somehow verboten? Just checking.

So a friend whom I like and respect has told me that the best thing to do while pregnant is to look at your weight, cut that in half, then drink that many ounces a day in liquid (mostly water, of course). Thing is… I’m trying like mad to do this and I’m dropping weight. I feel hungry but unable to eat because my stomach capacity is maxed out. I’m shaky and kind of weak on the days I manage to get to 11 cups of liquid. (I should be drinking 12+ according to that theory.) But if I drink only as much as my body feels inclined to take in I’m drinking 6-8 cups of liquid a day and I can eat. I feel much better physically. I don’t shake.

I think that the ideal of tons of water might just be an ideal for me. I’m beginning to think that is really a bad idea for my health and my pregnancy for me to focus that hard on water.

(For the record my midwife’s general philosophy is: don’t get dehydrated.)

I’m thinking about this because I’ve been trying really hard to get in my liquid today. I am up to 7ish cups of liquid. And I’m shaking like a leaf. I feel like shit. I can barely move around. And I feel like I am starving but my stomach is full. I think I’m done with this.