First day on the nursery

So I’m completely over my crap mood, btw.  I was over it by the next morning.  I have to tell you, one of the most useful things I ever learned in this life was “just because you have a thought, doesn’t mean it’s your thought.”  Growing up as I did, I never learned nor understood just how much we as people (and women in particular) are affected by hormones and chemicals.  Sometime during my “I’m going to beat this depression” thing I discovered that hormones and chemicals can, in fact, make us think things that we’re not actually thinking.  Yes, ugly tuna fish sandwiches.  So even in the midst of my bitterness Saturday I knew it was almost entirely hormonal.  And based on the weird taste in my mouth, I believe this is true.  The next day despite almost no sleep I bounded out of bed and had a swell day.  So, there you go.

Speaking of the swell day, met my book club gals for brunch, one of whom recently had a baby, and I had to ask her the two big questions we had both had before she delivered – “so, do you have time to take a shower?” (in answer to the common myth that once you have a baby you “won’t even have time to take a shower”), and “Cry It Out vs. Rock To Sleep" (her baby is too little for this one yet – although so far she seems to be a good sleeper).  My friend assures me that yes, she does, in fact, have time to take a shower.  So that’s a relief.  And just for the record I have no intention of putting my baby down and shutting the door while he screams his lungs out in an attempt to get him to “self-soothe”.  But I have to say most parents I know admit that at some point you do have to insist on bed time and put the baby (or small child) down whether they want it or not, which I guess could be considered a version of Cry It Out.  I don’t know what the answer is, but I suppose this is just one of those case-by-case scenarios.

So here is a picture of me Saturday night at my gig in my fabulous 40s maternity outfit.  It makes me look HUGE, as if I’m about to deliver tomorrow.  The term “Omar the Tentmaker” comes to mind.  The actual label on the outfit is a super creepy “Welcome, Stranger” which also happens to be the title of a very sick short story I wrote years ago about a woman who accidentally smothers her sister’s baby.  This fact, however, did not make me not buy the outfit.  It’s pretty much going to be my standard gig outfit for the next six months (although I discovered with horror I’m already on the largest setting for the skirt, so I may outgrow at least the skirt part fairly soon.  Should be good for New Year’s, though).

After positively months of searching I at last found a perfect 40s baby buggy on ebay and bought it last night.  It had to have the magical combination of a) clean, not rusted or otherwise hazardous, b) functional, folds down, and c) local pick up, since often shipping these costs upwards of $100.  Again, I may never even use this buggy, but I still feel compelled to have one really fantastic vintage item even if it never ends up being anything but an heirloom.  I intend on having a modern one as well for practical purposes.  I also found a good high chair I’m going to bid on shortly.  This one had to be a) again, clean, not rusted, and fully functional, and b) red.  And again, may not end up using it.  But it sure will look cute in my kitchen.  Pictures to follow when these things arrive.

Yesterday one of my book club gals came over to help me paint the nursery.  We knocked it out in no time.  It’s funny how you don’t realize how messed up your walls are until you’re right up next to them – my walls, at least in that room, are a mess of non-flush angles and bumps and ancient earthquake damage.  My 106-year-old house, you’re showing your age, honey!  And when’s the last time a little kid lived here…?  Very curious about that. 

I have to admit the colors I picked came out a bit darker and more intense than I’d intended – I was picturing soft, muted, mid-century – but it’s cool.  I have no intention of re-doing all that, and again the room will probably only be that way for a year or so and then it’ll be all changed up.  So the whole area is temporary, and my son won’t really spend any time in there.  I’m just trying to make it cute and coordinated for my own entertainment, really. 

Having a Meh-rry Christmas

So I feel like absolute garbage today.  Why?  No reason.  I debated about writing anything about this at all, considering the challenges some of my fellow bloggers are enduring right now.  But then I remembered this is my blog and this is how I’m feeling right now, so, what the heck?

I’m sure I’ll snap out of this.  But I am just getting to that point that probably everyone is right now – I’m worn out, I’m broke, and I’m worried I’m not going to get all the things done that have to be done in the next week.  I spent ALL DAY waiting on lines in stores yesterday, and hauling heavy crap around, and then was too exhausted to go out to this caroling party I had agreed to go to later.  I texted a couple of people how tired I was and how I couldn’t make it, how I had tweaked my shoulder in yoga (true) and felt like crap, and all they wrote back was “boo” and “pfft”.  Not I hope you feel better, not take it easy.  Just the implication that I’m some kind of flake and am letting people down.  Is this my hormones making me more sensitive than usual?  Absolutely.  Still bothers me, though.

Things are randomly breaking and malfunctioning around here – just a bunch of little things, but enough that it’s making every day life just that much more complicated and difficult.  Things that now have to be repaired or replaced, all with money I don’t have.  Yes, even with not buying any presents this year, I am beyond broke.  And the expenses don’t end there – between all the birthday dinners and parties and things I have to plan and/or participate in, I am WAY off on my budget, despite my best efforts.  And now I don’t have a lick of food in the house, I am positively out of everything, which means probably a $200 giant grocery trip, which I also can’t afford.  So my money worries have been ramped up to high stress levels. 

I don’t think all of these little petty things would bother me so much, if I didn’t have the constant thought of, “if I can’t even handle this stupid little thing, how the hell am I going to handle this with a child?”  I think about the things that are annoying me today, and then I think how I’d feel if I had a sick baby in the other room, or a colicky one who hasn’t slept in months, or a toddler with special needs, or a baby with some worrisome health condition.  My hope would be that the petty concerns would just melt away and I’d be focused on the child, and I would just deal with that.  But I often chastise myself for being bothered by such unimportant shit when there’s about to be a kid around here, and I won’t have the luxury of being in a bad mood, or impatient, or depressed, or lazy.  Will I rise to the occasion and cheer the f up for the sake of the child?  Or will I be like my mother and mope around the house or lie in bed all day feeling sorry for myself?  Can I be better than her?  Sometimes I wonder.

Read a news item yesterday about how parents exaggerate the joys of parenthood to make their lives seem better, when in fact childless people test “happier” than their parent counterparts.  I often suspected this years ago; but now I kind of doubt it.  I mean, did the person writing this article or doing this research interview infertile women?  Because I would bet they’d be a lot happier if they had a child.  Just a guess, here.  Also I don’t think they take into account the levels of denial and defensiveness that childless by choice people can have – “no, my life’s great, why would I want to mess everything up with a kid?” when in fact they’re just going to work and then sitting in front of the TV like everyone else, not doing all the meaningful volunteer work and exciting travel they claim.  Also you can’t interview a parent when they have a screaming toddler about how much they love parenting.  Try interviewing that same person on the day their kid graduates with honors from high school, and you’d get a dramatically different answer.  Still, even knowing all this, reading that article kind of bugged me.

Also bug-worthy was a 20/20 about giving birth around the world, and Mexico’s attempt at encouraging people to have smaller families.  Now, I agree with this, absolutely – kids are most likely going to have a better quality of life in a smaller family, especially when the family is already poor.  But again it left me with the message of kids = unhappiness.  That children are a burden, your children’s childhoods are something to be “survived”, that as a parent you just go through the motions to keep your kids alive until they’re old enough to take care of themselves so you can “get back to your life”.  I find all of this incredibly depressing.  Mainly because this is how my mother was, and I SO don’t want to be like that.  I want to enjoy my son’s childhood, even the crappy parts.  I don’t want to just space out and go through the motions.  A woman I know recently who had a son later in life confided in me in a drunken state at a party that she “got an awful kid,” but assured me that somehow I wouldn’t, that mine would be different.  But that hers was “just awful”.  Good times!

I think about all these things, and then I remind myself that I’m not perfect, and no matter what I’m not going to be a perfect mother, no matter how I try.  I’m going to lose my temper, I’m going to not know what to do sometimes, I’m going to do or say things that aren’t the right thing to do or say.  Like it or not, there are going to be things I do to my son that are going to damage him, even though at the time it seemed like the right thing to do.  This terrifies me, but I know it’s just life, and nobody’s perfect.  I’m not going to bound out of bed every day of my son’s life full of energy wanting to cook a nutritious breakfast for him and make up games we can play and spend all day entertaining him without a thought to how I’m going to make a living to keep the roof over our heads.  I have to be mother, father, breadwinner, and housekeeper, and there are going to be times when one or more of these things is going to fall by the wayside.  Can I forgive myself for this?  Right now, I don’t know.

25 weeks and an eggplant

So apparently today is the last of the (relatively) low stress ob appointments.  Starting in January I have to do another glucose test (doesn’t bother me as I’m not horribly ill as I was last time), and they’ll check my “iron stores”, and then after that it’s coming in every two weeks.  I’m fairly confident about the glucose test, but I’m sure I’ll fail the iron test.  Hopefully it just means supplements and not the dreaded “you have to eat red meat now” discussion.  Somehow I doubt it’ll come to that. 

As usual had a minor freak out while waiting.  This means nothing – it’s just that old creepy stuff about fear of doctors and hospitals, because of my history.  I was able to get over it fairly easily.  But I have to say the idea of spending a lot more time in doctors offices, being poked and prodded a lot more, and more at stake every time, makes me very uncomfortable.  In fact, I hate it.  A big part of me wants to play hooky and just not see anyone again until I go into labor.  Of course I won’t do that, but it is tempting.  Kind of reminds me of the scene in Heartburn where Meryl Streep is in labor and says, “I don’t want to do it, honey, can’t we get someone else to do it?”

One fun thing was the midwife showed me how to feel the baby’s head.  I was surprised at how high up it was – it was this softball-type thing above my belly button to the right.  So right now I have a baby doll inside of me.  Or an eggplant, based on the size on the WTE app.  I guess I can see that – there’s no denying the belly at this point.  I certainly look like I’m heading into the third trimester, absolutely.

Just for fun I thought I’d list some 2^nd trimester pregnancy-related issues I’ve had:

Occasional nosebleeds (due to increased blood volume, apparently)

Heartburn (couple of Tums knocks it out every time – no big whoop)

Small red breakouts on my upper arms, also apparently due to increased blood volume

Other than these, everything else is smooth sailing right now.  Haven’t seen any stretch marks, but I expect these to come later (my mother’s body is positively riddled with them).  Weight gain is still slightly more than normal (it’s about 20 pounds as of today) and I was told again to watch it, but how exactly am I going to do that with four Christmas parties, plus Christmas, plus traveling over New Year’s, in the next two weeks?  Plus the fact that it’s cold and gloomy here and all I want to eat is comfort food.  I’m not eating anymore than usual, but it’s just that time of year.  If it were summer it would be a snap to just eat lots of fresh food, salads, cottage cheese, etc.  But trying to diet right now, a week out from Christmas, and six months pregnant?  Ah…no.  I’m not even going to attempt it.  So I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that this is going to be a 35-40 pounder.  It’s ok – there’s so little time left now, I feel like I can relax a little.  I mean, I’m not going to suddenly put on 20 pounds per month; it’ll just be 5-6 pounds instead of the recommended 4.  Eh, so what.

The Great Cull

The “nesting” continues.  I have to admit I kind of don’t like that term, and I’ll tell you why.  It makes it sound like I am being taken over by some instinct that wouldn’t be natural anyway, like some robot.  To me it’s all logical.  I’m in, “if I don’t do this project now, I won’t get around to it until the kid goes to college” mode.  I mean, really, having a contractor over stirring up plaster dust and moving all the furniture around while breastfeeding?  Having strange men tromping in and out all day while my toddler tries to take a nap?  I don’t think so.  I’m trying to set up a situation to keep the chaos at a minimum around here those first few years.  It sucks because all of this involves money I don’t have, but I am willing to go into debt/delay my debt payoff schedule in the service of having the house clean, organized, and ready for when the baby comes, and to not have to do these major projects again for at least ten years.  That’s the goal. 

Yesterday was The Great Book Cull.  It took ALL DAY.  I had planned on a couple of hours – nope.  All day.  My hands were black at the end of it.  But it felt fantastic.  For the first time, well, ever, I got rid of books no longer relevant to my life (independent filmmaking instructions from the late 80s), books that have no sentimental attachment for me, books I’m not interested in ever reading again.  Then I grouped them together which I don’t think I’ve ever done.  The categories were kind of interesting – Old/Cool Looking, Film (I kept a few), Writing, Languages/Travel (most of these I kept only to make me look all continental), Religion/Atheism, Feminism, Psychology, and finally, Kids.  I was surprised by just how many kids books I still have.  Many of them have a girl slant to them – Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, Little House on the Prairie.  Not sure how to handle that when it comes to my son.  Are there great series that have boys as the subject?  It seems like most of the books of our childhood have a girl perspective…or maybe that’s just because I am a girl.  Well, at least there’s Narnia. 

Late that night I got a wild hair up my ass to open a couple of boxes tucked away in a closet that literally have been taped shut since the late 80s, and was amazed by what I found.  Although I didn’t find the original Mary Poppins series I have been looking for for ages (they’ve got to be around here somewhere, dammit), I did find an entire box of even more kids books, almost all of which I’d completely forgotten about.  It’s amazing what happens to an adult’s brain when they just look at the cover of a book from their childhood.  I felt all gooey and good.  There’s one called “King Brioche” which has these fantastic late 60s – early 70s psychedelic illustrations of a king and his love of pastry; there’s one about a new baby in the house that has these adorable pictures of this little hippie family.  So many great memories.  I was huge about books when I was a kid.  I hope my kid gets this from me.  I already have a plan to have a kind of “reading hour” when he gets older where we both turn everything off and just read.  Hopefully I’ll be able to follow through with this. 

I also found some little record albums about Bible stories from my old church, and quite a few books for kids from that religion, too.  I’m a bit torn on what to do with these.  I don’t mind giving them away; I will give some of these books away.  But it did cross my mind that it’s kind of f-d up to give away a book just because it mentions God, Jesus, and the Bible.  Still, that’s not going to be our belief system, so why have them?  Kind of conflicted. 

I also did a Jacket Cull.  I have a coat tree that is positively overloaded with jackets, scarves, hats, and purses and bags, when in fact like most people I only ever wear one or two jackets, one scarf, and use the same purse every day.  So I put all of these things away and will give away the coat tree.  Already the room it was in looks clean and streamlined without that big mess in the corner.  Awesome. 

Today the Book Cull continues.  Then will follow the VHS Cull and the DVD Cull, followed by the Utility Closet Cull (I swear I have every mop and vacuum I’ve ever owned in there, and half of them are worn out or broken), the Big Closet Cull (already did this last year when I put in hardwood floors in that room, but it seriously needs another go over), the Tool Cull (again, I have just about every tool/piece of hardware I’ve ever used for any house project, and nearly all of that can be tossed at this point).  So for me Christmas is all about getting rid of crap, as opposed to acquiring crap.  It feels fantastic.

Nurseries and being the a-hole

So yesterday I got sick of waiting around and decided to move the furniture around myself in order to facilitate starting the nursery.  Mainly I had to move a huge 7 foot tall bookcase, which I didn’t think I’d be able to do.  But I cleared all the books off because I knew eventually somebody would be moving it, and lo and behold, it was very easy to slide forward ten feet while empty.  So this spurred an all day long furniture and tchotchke adjusting session.  This will also result in today’s Great Book Cull.  I don’t think I’ve ever disposed of a book in my life, but this has to begin now.  It’s not that I don’t have room for the books – this bookcase, plus several others around the house – have plenty of shelves for all the books I have.  Mainly it’s about just keeping the things in my house that I really like.  Antique books with awesome worn covers – keep.  Car repair manual from 1990 – discard.  Favorite books from junior high school that I like to read again and again (1984, Grapes of Wrath, etc, all with “John Paul George Ringo” written along the spine in my 12-year-old handwriting) – keep.  “The Rules” – discard.  You get the idea.  I see another trip to the Out of the Closet thrift store in my future.

So now I have a disappointingly dark room in which lives my 1950’s crib, a small shelf thing for diaper changes, a small wardrobe, and, incongruously, a 1930’s green leather club sofa, because there’s nowhere else to put it right now, and I figure my sister can make a nice cheery slipcover for it so it at least matches.  I do miss being able to sit on the toilet and look through to the whole house (the bookcase blocks this view now).  But I figure my days of using the bathroom with the door open *may* be kind of numbered now anyway (at least once my son gets old enough that he shouldn’t see mommy on the potty anymore).

I will reserve painting for when my friend comes over next Sunday to help.  Should be a fun and easy project.  I’m doing grey and blue with an elephant stencil along the line where they meet.  It should all come together quite nicely, especially once I’ve repurposed the blue metal kitchen table that’s been folded up next to my washer/dryer for years into a changing table.  And repurposed the milk box I used to use as a real milk box for when I had a milk man, into a diaper pail.  Still kind of on the fence about this, as it’s lined with Styrofoam which means I’ll have to make sure to always have some kind of wet bag in there in case I ever want to use it as an actual milk box again.  Well, we’ll see if anyone buys me a diaper pail for the shower and I’ll take it from there.

Went to a Christmas party at my FWUMMFLMLIS’s house last night (this is the Friend Who Unintentionally Makes Me Feel Like My Life is Shit) and had a swell time.  There was more than one pregnant woman there, and as again I hadn’t seen a lot of these people in a while – well, since my friend’s wedding back in March – there was a lot of discussion about my pregnancy, since it was news to nearly everyone.  And again I found myself deflecting a lot, and feeling kind of weird and like “so, now I’m the asshole.”  Where does this come from???  I’ve analyzed it a lot over the last few months, and the only thing I can come up with is the fact of having spent so much of my adult life seething with jealousy over people getting married and having babies (more than a decade, really), and having this one issue be the major heartbreak and frustration in my life, that, well, it’s hard to just drop all of that with no lingering aftereffects.  It’s hard to join The Enemy and not feel, just a little bit, like an asshole.  There also is a big part of me that’s afraid of being marginalized – that suddenly all of my identity disappears and I become just another generic mom.  I want to scream from the rooftops, “Yes, this is an amazing blessing that’s happening to me, and I can’t wait to meet my son and be his mom and be all into mom stuff, but I had a full adult life before him and I know about art and music and great films and books and I’m really pretty interesting and smart and I have a lot to talk about!!!”  Not that anybody’s made me feel marginalized, but I sort of anticipate this happening once the baby’s here.  I kind of want to make it clear that this is my son, and I’m me, and we have our relationship, but he’s his own person and I’m my own person.  I think this attitude comes, again, of having had a super all-consuming mother who refused to let us have our own identities and recognize our opinions, thoughts, as valid.  I’m so hyper vigilant about this; it’s a huge issue for me. 

So far I’ve made it 2/3 through this pregnancy without feeling like I’m losing my identity or turning into someone I don’t recognize.  Hopefully this will continue.  I still have a sense of humor, I still like raunchy things and don’t offend easily, I still have an intellectual curiosity (a real hunger, actually, that hopefully my upcoming “early push present” for myself of a Kindle will help to ignite).  And yet I have this little child in my belly currently doing summersaults because I just had a glass of grapefruit juice.  How these two things will be able to continue on side by side, has yet to be seen.