4/9/23
since after my bath last night (baby fell asleep around 11:30, I got in the bath around midnight, and got out and went to bed around one in the morning), i’ve been feeling pretty good, better than usual regarding skin, which in turn affects my overall total mood. I think what also contributed was i was excited for our egg hunt today in our backyard, have been prepping for it- decorating, stuffing eggs with stickers and hiding them, and it was a nice day out today.
I also just started using this silver gel (made by “Silver Wings”) I got from Sprouts, but I can’t tell if that’s what’s helping because it’s only been a matter of days. Would have to,I guess, go through another breakout and apply this gel, and see if my skin starts responding positively in a few days, again. An experiment I would not at all wish on myself to go through.
in addition to all that, I also started visualizing a little: came across a FB friend’s photo of his bare feet on beach sand, and i made it my phone wallpaper so that every time I open my phone and see it, I try to imagine what it might feel like to have normal smooth feet-skin. I don’t know if it was this, the gel, the Easter happiness, maybe none of these, maybe a combination of these- again, I’m not sure why my skin is feeling a little better now. or maybe it’s the bitter weeds I’ve been eating on my backyard walks that’s helping. (update 4/17: maybe it was none of this and just hormones from being fucking pregnant, which I just found out at night on 4/14. will write about maybe next week, too stressed about it now.)
4/10/23
I had a dream early this morning between when baby finished nursing around 8 o’clock and when he woke up again around 9:20. it was so clear when I dreamt it, but now I can’t remember everything. I just remember my emotions were really strong during. Was in a church, but not a conventional church, it was more like a New Age church. The service was interesting, I think I liked it, I felt compassion coming from the leaders. something done up there during the service-I forget what now- made me think of how much my body has changed or aged (I notice little things, even though the new white hairs and stuff don’t really show up in pictures) because of pregnancy and birth, and it upset me and I started crying really hard in the dream (but it felt like I was crying in real life). I remember at one point thinking if God would see this deep ache and desire I have within my body to not be swept away by the negative changes motherhood brings, with the stress and the no time and everything- but most of all, the like, physical beauty toll it takes. At the same time, I heard a voice in my head asking me, “did you think you would stay the same forever?”
he just went for a few weeks (it seemed) without biting me much during nursing, but then last night, he started again, chomping, the biting down hard, really hurt so that I started crying. Started wearing the bone tooth necklace around my neck today again because of it, to loosen his bite when it’s locked on my nipple at the end of nursing.
today, even though I slept for a little bit in the morning after Baby left, I was extra tired and lethargic all day, and didn’t have much appetite, and felt irritable. I think period is coming soon. (update 4/17: it’s not fucking coming anytime soon.)
4/11/23
I feel like one of the main themes / lessons regarding having a kid is loss of control. There are so many things you can’t control, even in pregnancy and with the birth, and just with your child’s personality- how they are, what they like. and then there are so many toys and not only toys, they pick up everything- especially the things you don’t want them to- and put them down in all kinds of different places and are just moving, moving moving all the time that it’s impossible to keep track of all your physical things and belongings- they could end up anywhere- between the couch, behind places you didn’t even think to look. it’s definitely opening yourself up to more chaos when you have a kid I think, but most of the time, it also feels in line with the natural pull of the universe, somehow, to me.
I feel like one of the things that being with R has taught me is that you can’t really be perfectly ready for anything. Like, when I met him (i wasn’t expecting to really like anyone). Or when I married him (i wasn’t even thinking of a wedding or anything when he asked), or when I had the baby (we weren’t trying – i mean i wasn’t, at least), i never felt truly prepared because I didn’t know what to expect with any of it, I just knew that I loved him. But it all turned out great, beautiful, maybe better than if I had waited and waited. And maybe it was a subconscious reason i was attracted to him – knowing he had this strong impulsive side – because I deep down knew if it were up to me with these big things like kid-having and marriage, I would have tried to forever perfect things/prepare for them and reach the end of my life having done none of them.
4/14/23
today, tried on a new dress, and was looking in the mirror, and thinking how much more comfortable I am with my boobs. I think it started during middle school- this fixation that both the girls and guys had with having good / perfect boobs. And the way I measured up, I guess, I concluded that mine were OK, on the small side but I’m a small girl, and I guess proportionate to my body, but not like the big supermodel-in-swimsuits kind. But today, when I looked at them, I realized all they had done in the past 19 months (all they had been through and survived), the precious boy-life they have sustained, and I’m so much more okay with them now, because I know what they can do. like they’ve been tested, and passed.
4/14-15/23
some thoughts i had tonight:
she’d be born in january.
you think you’re tired now.
i said i would never again.
But i call Hunter “Baby.” what will i call him then, after the baby baby is here?
how did this happen?
i can’t do it.
i haven’t even fully recovered from the last one yet.
who will watch Hunter? who will care for me?
my husband needs a vasectomy tomorrow.
would it be good or bad for Hunter? better or worse for him?
can my body even physically handle breastfeeding and being pregnant at the same time?
do I even have anything more to give?
anything could happen with this pregnancy/birth – maybe you got lucky with Hunter, why don’t you quit while you’re ahead.
why would you do that to yourself? Like why would you knowingly punish yourself by having a baby, after all the self-admitted, journaled-right-here torture you’ve been through – why would you- full knowingly this time around- do it again?
Marriage Journal 