Fighting a Losing Battle?

As with any season in life there are good days and there are bad days. Only during pregnancy it's been very different kinds of good and bad days.

I didn't really think of a good day as simply being able to get the dishes done. Because I didn't have this evil thing called 'sciatica.' Before my good days were getting more things crossed off my list than were added to it. Now my good days are getting any amount of anything done.
It's been a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Maybe the Almighty has given me this no so fun pregnancy to get me used to being "even worse" than I was before. I cannot keep my house Martha Steward tidy, I don't decorate, and most of the time I'm doing my best just to find permanent homes for our junk. But the house stays clean. The countertops get wiped down, the fridge gets cleaned out and sprayed down once a month, vacuuming kept the dog hair down a lot more than I thought it did, and the bathrooms were always clean.

Now I feel like I'm "losing a game of Jumanji" as it was so aptly said on a meme a friend shared on the book of face a while back. I don't know how long that basket of clothes has been on the love seat. There are little tribbles of dog fur in the corners of the house, and we'll not talk about how long it took me to get the sink clear. Things are buried under other things and I'm trying my best to help my husband with his homework, too.

I'm not being lazy. I don't think. I changed the sheets on the bed yesterday and came up huffing and puffing as if I'd jogged 2 miles. I did dishes today till my back hurt so badly I couldn't stand any longer and had to lay down, then I got back up and did more dishes. Towels got put in the wash machine and I don't know if I'll be able to get them back out and into the dryer. I bent over to pick up stuff off the coffee table and almost threw up so I sat down and made little piles of what should go where just so the entire surface isn't covered anymore.
It's really hard for me because I have this 'works based' thought process that was ground into my little skull by who knows who. Probably church people with good intentions, most likely my mother who struggled with that kind of stuff, which was passed to her by her mother. Regardless of why I'm this way, I am in fact this way. If I don't do enough, if I don't earn my way, my right to be alive is suspect. I cannot be a failure, it simply is not an option.

And I look around my house and that's what I see. I see failure on all the surfaces collecting 'stuff.' Failure in the carpet that desperately needs vacuumed. It's in the bathroom sinks that haven't been cleaned out in only god knows how long. The mess in the fridge mocks my right to stay at home instead of going and finding a job to help with finances. None of it is right. I know that, I know I'm doing what I can in my situation.

It just feels like I'm fighting a losing battle. People have told me "Oh it gets worse when the baby is born." So, I sit down and cry when that thought crosses my mind. It simply cannot get worse. There are really only two options. Hire a maid service or shift my perspective. We don't have the money for the first so I'll have to struggle with the second even more than I have to this point.

Now, I make lists of things that I have done that day, rather than looking around and getting overwhelmed by what needs to be done. I do what I can when I can. I let myself take naps. When I realize I can't do something that day, like say bending over without throwing up, I find things that don't involve that thing I can't do. Most of all I'm learning to give myself grace, to forgive myself for not being perfect or doing near enough to be a 'successful' Homemaker.

No, I'm not watching youtube all day or giving myself a free pass to do nothing. Psh! I'm just not beating myself up if I can't do much more than get up at 0500 to pack Jex's lunch, or crying in frustration because pregnancy brain won't let me remember hardly anything anymore. I do what I can that day, I do it and let that much be enough.
It's hard, it's so difficult. But it's the first step.

My need for 'earning' my value through what I get done isn't going to help my be a good mom to this baby. It's not going to help me deal with marriage issues that come with such a huge life change. Having an empty sink isn't going to make my life better. Cleaner, sure, but not necessarily better.

Letting go of that driving insanity (dude, anything that sends you into a downward spiral to the point that you cry yourself to sleep is bad for you, trust me) can only be good for my family. If I'm more content my husband will feel like he's doing a good job (which he totally is). If the chores mean less to me then babybell won't ever feel like s/he is just in the way (which I've felt as a kid and it was aweful). If I can be ok with simply getting done what I can that day, doing my best that day, then whatever gets done will be enough and by my twisted logic I will be enough.

Letting go of this will lighten my heart, and as we all know The Light Heart Lives Long.

Babies aren't cute

Guys, I have a confession to make.

Babies aren't cute.

In the first few weeks of life, sometimes the first few months, I just see this squishy faced little glow worm. A little red human larva if you will. My brothers were squishy faced larva, my nephew (sorry Q you're cute now, but you were the froggiest newborn), I'm sure I'll look at my little bundle and think "oh your face is so... squishy. Don't worry, in 3 moths you'll be the cutest."

Very, very, few babies are born 'pretty.' But even then. Nope, brand new little humans just don't hit the cute button for me.

The best I can do is say "Oh he looks healthy." or "strong" or "ready for a nap." I don't find anything wrong with this. However I can clearly see that I am in the minority. Unless all ya'll are lying through your teeth when you tell a new mom her baby is 'adorable.' So, I feel this is yet another area where I fail as a woman.

Which brings me to an issue I'm not going to touch with a 30 foot pole.

So, moral of the story. If you don't follow a certain pattern of thought, it's probably not too bad of a thing. It may make you feel a little bad and 'off' somehow, but I'm sure if more people were more honest more often you'd find out that you're in good company. And most of that company is completely sane! Hahaha!
Or are we? *evil grin*

Till next time my lovelies,
The light heart lives long.

Baby Weight and Stretch Marks, Eeeee Gads!

Let's just start with the fact that I am absolutely loving all the positive body image stuff that's been tossed about on the internet recently. I feel like people forget to add the tagline *as long as you're healthy* but I guess the pendulum has to swing hard at first if it's going to get anywhere at all. So Yay!

That's probably why it makes me sad how absolutely obsessed a hefty chunk of women are about baby weight and stretch marks. How do I get my old body back? How do I make stretch marks go away? What diet, cleanse, wrap, oil, product, miracle should I buy to be what I was before but better?! 

Pregnancy is crazy; you don't know how your body is going to change. Chances are you'll have to combine a lot of advice and mix and match story bits from others to match what you will go through, and if you are blessed enough to have another baby that pregnancy will probably be completely different than the first one was. It really grates on our modern sensibilities, our need for solid, unchangeable courses of action. Our need to become this unattainable ideal of what a human body should be.

As women we have it bad. I don't know who did it to you, I don't know why they did it, I can't tell you when it happened to you, but I remember the moment it happened to me. When the 'self image' monster ate my courage and logic and left me with an issue I might have to carry and fight till the day I die. 

I was 5 or 6, my sister had just cut all the hair off my brand new barbie doll that I'd gotten as an Easter gift. As a poor kid I didn't get a lot of new toys, this doll was the most awesome and beautiful thing to me and my little sister had ruined it. While crying and yelling at my little sister my grandmother came in the room and tried to console me. I would not be consoled; I was justified in my angry sadness and I would cry! She turned me to face the vanity mirror over the dresser and said words that are burned into my mind in perfect clarity. Even now almost a quarter of a century later I can hear her voice as if she still had her head over my left shoulder looking in the mirror with me. "Look at that ugly face. A pretty girl like you should never make a face that ugly."
To this day I cannot cry in front of another person without hiding my face. I will run away to be alone, I will hide, I will do the ridiculous to keep people from seeing my 'ugly face.' If Jex and I are arguing and I get upset enough to cry I cover my face with my hands so we can keep trying to resolve the issue but so he can't see my ugliness. 

Pregnancy is the great inflater. It takes these things and makes them more real, harder to ignore, bigger and heavier than they are. Women who would like to have lost a pant size and eat healthier are now absolutely horrified at their waist measurement even though that waist has another human being growing inside of it! They loose their minds when they have to eat saltines and coke for a day because they're too nauseated for anything else. These perfectly sane women are distraught over the marks that will forever 'ban' them from cute swimwear for the rest of their lives. They focus so hard on the weight they're gaining (Is it too much? Too little?!) and the flaws they're getting, or might get, on their skin. It almost becomes an obsession. 

It breaks my heart. 

Baby weight and stretchmarks, the price we pay for precious babies, become scars instead of badges of honor or rights of passage. Sure, if we lived where we could afford good food and traditional diets we might not be so bad off. But the fact of the matter is we don't. We live in our world, however imperfect. We need to remember that a little extra weight makes our laps more inviting to sleepy children and comforting to our hurting and confused middle-schooler. We need to remember that our stretch marks are proof of our babies' life inside of us and the strength we had to carry them for as long as we did. We need to remember that we are human and there is no such thing as 'perfect.' 

We need to allow ourselves to be good enough and let go of the idol ideal that screams at us in magazine adds and covers, that people fight against in strange and extreme ways, and be who and what we are without shame. Doing our best to be better every day. To let our hearts be lighter than before. 

My mom's lap is a comforting place to be, she is soft and warm with arms strong enough to protect me from anything. Her stretch marks look like fire, and remind me that if she loved me before she could see me or know me, she can love me even now. 

Remember my lovlies, The light heart lives long. 

Pregnancy, the great inflater.

Not only does it inflate your midsection, your face, and your appetite for [insert random and slightly weird item here] it also inflates what you feel.

No kidding. You can expect to bawl over a happy cat food commercial for any number of "reasons" or laugh for 10 minutes about your husband's chest hair... because fuzzy?

What's not as fun is when you have a legitimate unhappiness. Like today for me, I'm really lonely. I miss my friends, my family, I miss fall, I miss my husband who is working his ass off right now. Everything, I'm missing everything that I could possibly miss. I want to go back 'home' to Wohlsfeld, I want to go back 'home' to Misawa, I want to go back 'home' to Charleston and play with the gamers and talk with Mr Scott and Ms Adrianna. I am legitimately upset and lonely and the hormones are making it hard to deal with in a very mature way.

I feel like a little kid. Pouting in a corner for whatever totally justified, totally childish, reason. It hurts my pride that I can't just see the feelings, accept them, shake them off and keep going today. Part of me wonders if this is what it's like for people who actually have clinical depression (I think a lot of things get misdiagnosed/ overdiagnosed but totally believe these conditions exist). It makes my heart ache for anyone who has to fight this stuff on the regular.

I feel like everyone focuses on the physical aspects of pregnancy. How much you'll throw up, gain, eat, weird hormonal side effects. Sometimes in the weird hormones bit of a book they glaze over depression and other emotional things that will get inflated. Lots of people are like: "If you feel depressed seek help!" but no one ever goes into detail and for some one who is usually very capable in dealing with these things it's really hard to understand.
Well who do I talk to? Why can't I just buck up and do what needs to be done like I usually can? When will my face be dry again? lol But, really it's hard to know what to do, or even what kind of help you really need.

Do you just need a friend to listen to you whine, give you a hug, and then go out for milkshakes? Or do you need legitimate professional help? Wandering aimlessly around a pregnancy forum, hoping someone will hold a conversation with you, trying not to cry because no one is online you feel like bugging with your negativity, and having zero drive to actually do anything productive, what does all that tell you to do? I think it could easily be either. I think that some one with these same feelings could need to talk to an actual therapist to find the root of the issue. I also think another person in the same boat might just need some ice cream with a friend.

It's so hard to pinpoint the proper response. So I'm blogging! Because writing is totally my coping mechanism and some one wandering the vastness of the internet might end up here and relate. I want them to know that it's gonna be ok. Start with that awesome sauce milk shake and work your way up from there. Pregnancy is a crazy roller coaster ride in one way or another, for some it's totally about baby weight and back pain, and for others it's all about what's going on inside our heads and hearts.

I think next time I'll complain about how obsessed women are with how much weight they'll gain. lol

The light heart lives long, my lovlies, it really does. (^_^)

The Weird Places I Find Myself.

Unless you've run across my blog on accident, just now, you already know that I'm weird. This weirdness plants me in some very hard to deal with situations. The most recent being that I wish I could find a doctor that spoke German so we could go over the German vaccine schedule. Then there's the whole "Germany uses different vaccines than we do" thing, and lets not forget that this is America and we have the best blah blah blah.
*cough*wereallydont*cough*
I am not an antivaxer. Do not take this the wrong way. I simply don't drink anyone's kool-aid.

It's really frustrating. I read this great article as soon as I found out I was pregnant on nutrition and exercise for pregnancy. It was concise, easily understandable, and sited research for every suggestion. It also suggested a glass of red wine and/or a dark beer at least once a week for mineral content. And it's not like I can just print it out and take it with me to my next appointment. They can't read it, they're not going to take my word for it, and google-translate is awefulsauce. I'm going to say "a glass of dark beer" and they're going to put the breaks on and give me some CDC report filled with fetal alcohol syndrome horror stories. Not my midwives, they're awesome, but most of the medical professionals I've met are really uptight about that kind of stuff.

I have never been so flustered. Even when I first moved back to the States and was struggling with our Bi-Polar societal norms (still working on finding all the invisible lines) I wasn't this flustered. At least then I could talk to some one and explain myself. I didn't need to prove that in Japan you take your shoes off by the door to keep the inside of your house clean. That was one google search away, and in English. Medical studies, not so much.

But hey! At least I found integrated medicine while on this wild goose chase. Maybe the pediatrician I choose will let me translate some of the stuff for him/her and happiness and rainbows.... hey I can be optimistic.

Scenes from a Marriage

You get two scenes today! Lucky you; either that or Jex has just been extra silly lately.

Scene 1: In the living room. I have just eaten the last of my expensive, but totally worth it, Bubbies pickles (they don't have corn syrup in them or vinegar, they are ligit pickles). The jar mostly full of brine sits on our rad new coffee table.

Jex: Pickle juice is ok to drink right?
Me: Yeah, it's just salt and water. Maybe some spices.
Jex: So it's like Gatorade but better!
Me: Yeah I guess so.
*A few minutes later while doing the dishes I hear this joyous announcement*
Jex: It's like a tasty ocean!!!



Scene 2: On the phone with my wonderful husband.

Jex: You have the cookie stuff ready for me?
Me: Yeah, it's in the freezer ready to be baked. How many did you need?
Jex: Not many, like 6 or 8.
Me: Ok, yeah there should be enough from the last batch of cookies I made.
Jex: Also I need you to find me a tupperware that has no friends.
Me: A tupperware that has no friends?!
Jex: Yeah, like one that isn't part of a set, and you wouldn't mind losing.
[I totally laughed at him, and will shamelessly continue to chuckle all day.]

Thoughts on the "Mommy Wars"

22 weeks! Yay!

So at this stage of pregnancy I'm trying to figure out important things like which pediatrician will treat me like a sentient being, if I should save for a pump, and where to put the baby gear. I do know that most my plans at this point will go flying into hyperspace as soon as the little human is around, but it doesn't hurt to have a plan.

One of the things I'm trying to decide is whether or not to spend the time to make a nursing cover. In this endeavor I have run face first into what is affectionately called 'the mommy wars.' Yeah sure I saw that formula commercial, but I thought it mostly summed up parenting forum trolls not the more reasonable masses. Honestly, I'm a little shocked at how quickly and sharply people get their nickers in a twist.
I saw a response post on one of those fancy popular blogs, about breast feeding with a cover and how the bloggess' children stopped tolerating it at about 4 months old, that was well written. The woman didn't point fingers or call names. She simply stated some scientific facts that she'd read somewhere, shared an experience she had with a nursing mother in a restaurant and her 7 year old daughter, and said that that she didn't understand why covering was so hard unless the kid had gotten into a no cover routine at home. Simple, straight forward, not trying to be a jerk. She had some 'scientific facts' and was trying to join the conversation. Nice.
Not so nice were the majority of the responses. It was like she had dropped a nice bit of troll bait in the comment box and they came rolling in from every corner of the internet. Some were trying to be nice, oh they were trying, but for the most part people just let their comments fly because they were confident and convicted. Being me I've been contemplating the phenomenon much more than I probably need to.

It frustrates me because I don't deal with this crap. Arguing over the internet is about as effective as writing a letter with an apple. Because of my aversion to trolls I don't feel like I can join any of these mommy forums (I'd get too upset at people treating others with disrespect). Which frustrates me more because, look a goldmine of knowledge and experience that might help me... but the floor is made entirely of fresh manure and broken glass, and wouldn't you know I'm wearing moccasins.

Over the years, and surprisingly mostly in the last 10ish weeks, I have lost a lot of my tolerance. Maybe that's why there are so many women who jump on each other when one of them states that something that's a personal choice is 'the worst possible thing.' Our tolerance for most everything gets eaten by our unborn children or something?
Really though, I'm kind of afraid I'm going to be the jerk. If it's the truth I'm probably going to blurt it out. I see it going kinda like this:

Random Stranger (RS): "You need to cover up or go to the bathroom, your boob is making us lose our appetite."
Me: *blinks at person owlishly* "Is this really happening right now?"
RS: "You should have some courtesy for the people around you!"
Me: "Like the courtesy you're showing me?" *looks down at nursing baby* "You could see more of my boobs in a V neck that what you're seeing now!"
RS: "That's not the point."
Me: "Then what is the point?"
RS: "Just please, cover up or go to the bathroom to do that."
Me: "Would you like to eat your meal in the bathroom?"
[this is where I imagine it devolving into sarcasm/ cursing/ or pissing off RS badly enough they either leave or bring restaurant management into the (non)issue]

I don't see myself as a judgmental person. My husband tells me I'm too accepting most the time. I don't really care if someone has an opinion different than mine (though I do get mad when people blow off strong evidence in favor of their own beliefs, that's annoying). We do our best to understand and move on. Even better, I have some one to ask questions of when I don't understand something that comes from that vein of thought.
Maybe it's a flaw, but the moment some one tells me that I'm wrong, need to be like them, and they're going to talk at me (notice the word 'at') till I concede to their correctness I turn into something straight out of Labyrinth; a sarcastic stone wall. Which will, in all likelihood, only add gasoline to the raging fires of the 'mommy wars' and that's the one thing I really don't want to do.

Till next time my lovelies!
~ The light heart lives long.