little feet, big sky

Some days are better than others.

Some days, I can’t stand to be alive. I wake up to Spice pulling my hair, or kicking my chest and I want to just smother her with a pillow. I struggle to be cheery when she’s kept me up half the night and I’m anything but. I get annoyed with her easily and in turn, she spends most of the day randomly half-crying, as if to protest my sour mood. I’m tired and frustrated and spend the evening rushing through her bath, our dinner, and then to bed, just to start the whole damn cycle over again. I fall asleep thinking I can’t bear it, I can’t do this for even another day…

Some days, I can’t believe how lucky I am to have her and especially her. I’m in awe of how sweet she is, how enduring, how brilliant, how charming. I look at her and marvel that I have this amazing gem of a daughter, surely more wonderful than any daughter has ever been before. I cuddle her and play with her and think of strange things like how I wish I could just eat her cheeks, she’s so cute. I tuck her in close to me as I nurse her to sleep, wishing for just a moment we could freeze time and keep her small and safe like this forever.

So it goes. Some days are better than others.

This past week had been amazing for me. (For me only, since I know the spouse-unit is struggling a little with the early wake-up times.) I’ve gotten to the gym regularly and have been totally energized run around behind Spice, cook, de-clutter the house and otherwise play Susie Homemaker. I attribute it to the following:

• Getting to the gym at least 4-5 times a week.
• Taking Omega-3’s, recently suggested to combat depression.
• Getting rid of our book clutter via Amazon and Paperbackswap.com.
• Finally getting this blog moved back to WP.org! (Many thanks to the spouse-unit for making it a two-day adventure instead of the two-month ordeal it would have been trying to do it on my own.)
• Snowball effect. The residual warm fuzzies from these things put me in a better mood to take on more feel-good projects, like organizing the bathroom.

I agreed to drive up to Salinas this weekend with my sister adn my nephew to visit my mother. She’ll be here in in an hour to pick me and Spice up.

I’m nervous about this for all sorts of reasons. First of all, my sister and I have been at each other’s throats for the past year, in a civil kind of way. We (violently) disagree on parenting, and why her son often displays such atrocious behavior like hitting and kicking. I also think she’s gotten terribly defensive and in general, we’re not quite good friends. In fact, if we weren’t blood, and that I have no other siblings and that neither of us talk to my father either, I’d have written her off long ago. I also worry about her son tossing a sippy cup or something at my baby’s head… no hard objects in the backseat.

In spite of all this, I agreed to a five-hour drive this weekend. The main reason is that while the spouse will be here, I’ll be away for the holidays and would like to see my mother before I go. I could drive up separately during the week, but I have a huge list of things to get done in the next month, from passports to pediatrician appointments and will need that time to get sorted. And maybe, just perhaps, being stuck in a car with my sister for 10 hours round-trip would help us come to an easier truce of some sort.

The spouse is highly doubtful of this, but has promised not to say “I told you so”. What a gem.

I got the spouse this Mylar balloon when he was in the hospital and it came home with us. I tend to throw out balloons when they deflate, but this one is still going!

The same thing happened with the spouse’s birthday balloon. Kinda makes it less special when they last forever.

Ugh. I don’t know where I went wrong.

I’ve been blogging for years and I’ve never stooped so low. I’ve been looking back on past entries and am sickened. I used to write from the heart, write what I really thought and felt and screw all that didn’t like what I had to say. What is this drivel? I’ve been wasting my time (and yours) with this trash – these useless bits of words. *sigh* This isn’t real writing. This is crap.

I’m tired. Emotionally, I’m tired. Physically, I wonder how it’s possible to be tired and wired at the same time. Which means this is perfect time for quality writing. And more devil-may-care.

If my laptop doesn’t die.. *stealing power cord from spouse’s open laptop*

First, let me debunk some of the crap I’ve been writing. Then I’ll get on to where I am now.

Cloth diapering: Still the easiest part of babyhood. The downside is that it’s hard to get her to sleep long in cloth diapers. I’ve tried pocket diapers, all-in-ones (AIO) and suedecloth “socks” to all help “wick moisture away from the skin”, which it does, but just not in the creepy, chemically efficient way a disposable would. So I’ve started using ’sposies at night. And I’ve packed the mini diaper bag with them. I sill feel a little residual guilt over it, but oh, well. I have a much better relationship with Spice when she sleeps 8 hours through and I’m well-rested the next morning, rather than ready to throw her out the window.

Breastfeeding: The second easiest part. But that’s because I’m one of the lucky few that has had zero problems with sore nipples or low supply. Pure blind luck, maybe helped along by the good birth experience bit. If I’d had problems, I’d be running for the formula as fast as the next mom. Well, almost as fast.

PPD: I’ve never felt crazier in my life. Seriously. I wanted to get myself committed about three weeks in, but I didn’t know how to go about it. Do you need to commit some crazy act for them to lock you up, or can you just walk in and say, “Hey, got a room?” Does the act need to be harmful in some way, or would they accept me lying on the bedroom floor for a week as having lost marbles? The herbs I’ve been on have helped tremendously and time.. time has helped, too. Still, I feel a little unstable, like all it takes is some bad news to plunge me back down a bit.

Sex: The spouse and I stupidly tried a month ago. It hurt like bejeezus. Now, we seem to be having trouble finding the time.

10 a.m.
Me: Wanna have sex tonight?
Him: *grinning* No one would argue with that.

10 p.m.
Me: I’m going to bed.
Him: *fallen asleep on the couch*

Everything else: Having a baby isn’t easy. No shocking revelations here. You just have to bear it as much as possible and take solace in the Grand Lie: it gets easier. See, this needs to be rephrased to be accurate: it gets easier… and it gets harder, too. All the stuff that was hard before, figuring out to to bathe them, create a non-leaky diaper, feed them, get them to sleep – all that gets easier. But then more challenges crop up just as you’re getting into the swing of things, like figuring out to entertain them because they now spend more time awake where they’re not hungry/tired/wet. Oh, well. Babies grow.

The big thing now is that I’m lonely. While we know friends with kids, I don’t know anyone with babies. And even our friends are more the “Hey, wanna come over and grill” type rather than the “Oh, god, I really need to vent right now” kind. *sigh* And I desperately want one of the latter, preferably with a 2-month-old. I’ve joined a couple of meetup.com groups, but part of me is too tired/scared to go out. The last time I went out with Spice was two weeks ago and if she got cranky/fussy while we were out, I started to go bats. The past week, we’ve stayed home and I feel more stable, so I’m reluctant to start going out with her again. I know it’s just like getting back up on the bike after you’ve fallen, but… bleah.

Now that we’re caught up, bullshit-free, let’s move on to what’s up now.

I hate family. I’m on the fence about never talking to family again. I made the stupid mistake of mixing family with money again and wholeheartedly encouraged the spouse that we should lend my sister several thousand smackaroos, as she and her spouse are going through a financial crisis and were possibly going to lose their house. Stupid, stupid me. I should really have done my homework, as usual, because it turns out that they’re more in the hole than I thought. As in, owning the babysitter a couple of thousand(!) and having borrowed from other family members, too. This is the kind of hole where you have to let them hit the bottom and help them back up when they bounce. *sigh* I’m more upset at the principle, since we’re doing okay right now. She had promised to make regular payments on it, even a few hundred a month, and her recent email reply was about how they hadn’t paid anything yet, and “please don’t send monthly statements as that will stress me out”. WTF. The spouse is taking it well, which leaves me even more shamed and horrified.

In the middle of all this, my mother has her own problems and with her health rapidly failing her, it’s suddenly looking like not such a bad option for her to take a few months off on disability and get her health back up. She needs to keep working a few more years to retire, but maybe a three-month break now would help her physically recover from all the stress she’s dealing with from work. I talked to the spouse and we agreed that, if she did, it would be ok/good for her to stay here for a couple of months with us. She could take time off, spend time with Spice, drive over to see my sister, etc. When she’s ready to work again, she could job-hunt from here, close to the city or the valley. She had previously commented that my sister’s place was a bit chaotic, with all their pets. Yesterday morning, I offer this to her. She says she’ll think about it.

Imagine my shock, and outrage, when I talk to her in the afternoon and she tells me that she’s talked to my sister and she’s thinking she’s going to rent a room from them and stay there. Again, let me restate: WTF. She says the money will help them (we were offering free room & board, in case that wasn’t obvious) and I can’t help but point out that it would be pouring more money down the drain, in their current state. She says she knows, but that she needs to try and help them. I was upset/angry enough to just get off the phone at that point, but later, when the spouse was on the phone with her, he mentioned yet again what was obvious to us: with her $80K+ salary, she could help them more by staying (with us) rent-free for a while, and using what she’d be paying them in rent to pay off her last remaining debts. Then she’d have thousands to throw at them. Ugh. And yes, part of me is just upset that she would rather live with my nutty sister than me. I swear, it’s like I’m a green space monster to her.

Of course, there’s more back-story, but this is the abridged version. Add into it juicy extras, like how how my sister thinks her hitting/kicking three-year-old is autistic and somehow thought getting a new dog would help and you have a full-blown soap opera. I’m sure we’ll get into it later. In the meantime, I’m trying to figure out how to turn off the phone in iPhone, and wondering how long I can ignore their calls before I have to talk to them and explain how fucking crazy I think we all are. Maybe we could get a family discount at the looney bin.

My wonderful spouse helped out the other morning by having breakfast ready and waiting for me in the kitchen. There were Post-Its leading from the bedroom door downstairs, and a note on the stovetop explaining where everything was. He had thoughtfully set up a plate in the fridge, complete with sauteed mushrooms (my favorite), strawberries, slices of brie, a small chunk of butter, sliced tomatoes, a spoonful of cinnamon-currant peanut butter and two soft-boiled eggs. “Just add toasted bread”, the note declared. There was also a pre-poured cup of orange juice in the fridge, and a whole watermelon chopped up and in lunch-sized plastic containers. The microwave was preset for 40 seconds to reheat the mushrooms.

Needless to say, wow.

I know that in the last few weeks leading up to my due date I’m supposed to be resting, but it’s hard! I still need to get the bedroom organized, put together a diaper bag, an “emergency” hospital bag, etc. But st the same time, I don’t want to be at home. I keep thinking of errands that I can go run, people to meet up with for lunch, and stuff that really isn’t more important than me resting.

4 weeks to go until my due date.

It’s interesting the things people start to say this far along. “Enjoy it!” “Are you tired yet?” “How exciting!” It hasn’t failed to amaze me once just how much we get involved in OPP: other peoples’ pregnancies. In this day and age where we’ve managed to make social interaction a resurrected art form, and in a city famed for its beautiful yet frequently fake denizens, when it comes to the pregnant woman walking down the street, everyone has an opinion and is happy to shout it from the rooftops.

“Aw, it’s a boy,” says a male parking attendant, as I hand him my keys.

“Well, we don’t know. We’re waiting to find out.” I say this with a smile, even though I dread saying it at all. Like Pandora’s box, this inevitably opens the discussion to guesses as educated as a backcountry grandmother from the 1800s. Without a second thought, everyone from cashiers to postal workers tell me with absolute confidence that I’m having a [insert gender here]. At first, I found the interest charming, but now, months later, the random nature of their guesses grates on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. This is my life, I think with annoyance, not f&%king Wheel of Fortune. Their guesses are for their own entertainment, a way to pass five minutes of a lifetime, and yet whether it’s a girl or boy means nothing to me.

If it’s a boy, will he be anything like my father? I pray not, and I’m not usually one much for praying. (My nephew has his smile and only now, years later, have I stopped being floored, half in horror, when I see it.) If it’s a girl, will she be like mother? Only the good, only the good, I half-chant to myself, imagining the genetic distribution of personality traits spread out before my belly like a roulette wheel. “Half angel, half devil, ” I half-joke to family and friends. (The spouse is the angel, in case you had any doubt.) A strong girl, a sensitive boy, a charmer, an adventurer, a sweetheart – I want to shake the next person that asks me “Is it a girl or a boy” and scream “It’s the personality that you should be concerned with!” God, if only someone would walk up to me and smile and say, “I’m sure your child will do something good for the world one day.”

But maybe I’m going about this all wrong. Maybe I should just be grateful that people seem to care at all. Like the woman that walked up to my sister when she was expecting and warned her about consuming mercury in fish while pregnant. She wished someone had warned her a decade ago when she was pregnant, that she might have prevented her son’s disabilities. In our increasingly self-oriented bubble lives, maybe I should be pleased to see Old World-style community support still kicking, somehow, somewhere in the interest of people around me. We’ve lost it all otherwise, in fear of litigation for being concerned for our neighbors, in fear of intruding on each others’ isolated lives.

“How much longer?,” the attendant asks, actually touching my belly. So far, almost no one has touched me without asking first.

“About four more weeks,” I say, somewhat alarmed at the touching, but slightly amused because he seems so genuinely concerned.

“Ah, so soon! You be careful driving,” he says. “Dangerous, and hot out.”

Perhaps the village hasn’t entirely forgotten its part in raising the child.

I had another appointment with our midwife yesterday morning. (We’re setup for appointments every two weeks now.) Everything looked good, so yay! She said that she started to get tired and heavy around this time, too. She guess-timates that the baby is about five pounds about now, give or take a bit, which is pretty good for 34 weeks. I’ve been cleared for visiting my mother up in NorCal next week, and I’ll probably drive up, taking breaks along the way. (I hate to fly these days, the way TSA is.)

I finally got around to ordering the birth tub yesterday. Today, it’s Errand Day, picking up groceries (as I’m finally tired of eating out) and picking up birth supplies from a list the midwife gave. And I absolutely have to call pediatricians today to set up some interview appointments.

And that’s it. I’m sure by the time I’ve done that, gotten home, put away groceries, made dog food and done a load of laundry, I’ll be wiped out. I’ll have just enough energy to make some rice & curry, or pasta-something for dinner and will crash shortly after. *sigh* Nothing to be done about it, I guess – this is what the end of pregnancy looks like: a messy house, lists of things to do and one tired lady who look like she swallowed a watermelon whole, passed out on the couch.