10/25/21
shooting pain sometimes, briefly, in boobs and vag. I think cause of all the breastfeeding, they’re filling up again and being emptied so often, hour by hour, my body has never gone through something like this before, and I feel it’s just part of the process I guess? how both these parts are connected, in a system.
10/28/21
had company-wide zoom mtg this morning. I was nervous that baby was going to wake up, and want to be fed, and cry (all three DID happen just as the meeting was starting, but it was fine, I’d prepared a bottle, and I saw an attorney have his kid on his lap so I didn’t feel like the only one) but it was really nice to see everyone again; some ppl I hadn’t seen since March 2020. After the meeting, I felt, unexpectedly, a little better. A little more like myself. I realized why: these people I’d just seen—they knew me before my identity got consumed by having a baby. They saw me skateboarding down the street to work in Philly, sitting on my break on my phone in the lunchroom, every morning at morning meeting, little interactions in the hallway and elevator, had seen me at company parties and baseball games and just familiar with the everyday work me that was the old me. And that…they were still like, alive to remember this, and that I got a chance to see them today…just felt good, like it brought back more parts of me that went missing when I entered the world of not sleeping and no time – the world of Baby.
kind of related: the other day, realized I started feeling a little less out of control regarding time. I think it’s a mix of: knowing Baby better, so familiar with when he’ll wake up and sleep and just getting the hang of new routine more, in general, and that he’s sleeping a little longer now (seems like we go to sleep around midnight, then he eats around 4 am, then sleeps and eats again around 7 or 8, so it’s turning into 3-4 hour sleep stretches now instead of 2-3 hours, which kind of makes a difference when you’re sleep deprived). The pacifiers don’t really work anymore (he recognizes they are “fake” I think, and will scream-cry with them in his mouth and won’t accept anything but the boob or bottle when he’s hungry). Sometimes I lug him around in a baby sling if I really need to get stuff done and he won’t stand me being away from him. But that I started to feel this semblance of normal returning was weird, bc when I felt it, it also reminded me/showed me just how far from my old self I’d been removed: the other day when I briefly felt well-rested, I was kind of like, “what is this feeling?” I didn’t recognize it because i hadn’t felt it in so long.
seem to not be eating much lately. I think it’s (again) just not enough sleep, so I don’t feel like major eating. I kind of WANT to eat a lot, but have to stop after a few bites because I feel like my body is so tired it can’t digest a big meal. I’m just like grazing throughout the day.
10/29/21
was just cleaning out a closet and found this old keychain ex gave me. It was from Japan, a little wooden red ball-face with two blank eyes and you are supposed to draw in the pupil of one eye when you start your dream, and the other eye when you feel you’ve completed/reached your dream. And I looked and saw I filled out both eyes already – I forgot about this, it was an old keychain, I think maybe many years ago I filled them both out and remember feeling good/truthful about filling the 2nd eye out, and when I found it today I thought, “I’m really happy that I filled these out before I got married and had a baby.” Like, I’m glad I didn’t let anyone make marriage and having baby my “true” dreams; they’re just really nice things that happened along the way.
Marriage Journal 