transcended.net

Still waiting for my boys to return. The little one is sick apparently and wants his mommy.

I am really done with this alone time. I’ve come to realize, I don’t need or prefer it. I am better when I’m a wife and a mother. When I can focus on the people I love, instead of the dark crevices of my subconscious, which I don’t love.

When I am alone for too long, disturbing images creep into my mind. I do things like imagine myself dead in the shower. And the thing is, I’m not suicidal, not at all. My life is a good life, being a wife and a mother give me ample reason to want to see what tomorrow brings. But when I’m alone, my mind just wanders to the idea of being dead. Like what if I could close my eyes and stop existing? Just not be here anymore, and be nothing instead?

I don’t know if that’s normal. Probably not.

It’s just where my mind goes when it has too much space to wander.

One of the things I love about this new work from home regime is I get to see my kiddo in the mornings now. Yesterday as he was getting ready for school he asked me what my favorite memory is of being a child.

Me: I don’t know, I had a pretty good childhood with lots of happy memories. What about you? What’s your favorite memory so far?

T: The day I was old enough to go to school.

Please let this love of school last at least another 14yrs. Now if I could only get him to love violin, my life would be a lot less stressful.

I’m not dead.

I mean, I have a feeling that most of the people who were still reading my few and far between ramblings about life’s goings-ons at the point when my webhost decided it didn’t like something in my code and was going to just error out my site until I fixed it…were all people who had some visibility into my life through other channels and thus knew I was just the mom of a kid who started pre-k and had no time to figure out what was wrong with the damn code.

Feels good to write in run on sentences again – just because I can!

So anyway, no, I didn’t fix the code, I didn’t do anything. I eventually gave up checking my website and just left it for dead while continuing to pay the annual renewal because I was too sentimental to stop. I kept thinking maybe someday I’ll have the energy to do something about this but I never did partially because I was just using my iPad for everything and no longer even had a non-work desktop or laptop that was easily accessible.

Enter….new hobby I picked up last year that has me needing to do a lot more data entry and also left me awash in Microsoft gift cards (long story, maybe I’ll share another day)…so I got myself one of those new fangled half tablet half laptop devices since I’m sort of confused without a touch screen now but I really, really hate life without hotkeys (damn you Apple!).

And after receiving it yesterday, today I was feeling motivated and thought to myself, Self, you should probably at least take a peak at that website and see what you can do about it even if that’s just nuking it and starting over, because hey you have a real Windows device now with an actual keyboard so maybe you will want to bring back the incoherent rambling thing you used to love! So I came here, to this website, expecting it to be dead only to find that lo, indeed it was very much alive and working as though NOTHING HAD EVER BEEN WRONG?

Clearly, the tech support at my webhost was full of the same stuff all over our city streets (shit, it’s shit, and a lot of it) and their whole “your code has death triggers in it” was because they didn’t really know what was wrong at all. And at some point it must have gotten fixed. Now all the “please moderate this spam” emails I started getting in my inbox again makes sense, maybe I can use that to pinpoint the date my website came back to life.

Last Saturday morning, sometime between 7:30am when she called her father and 8am when the police arrived at our building, my neighbor shot herself dead.

We were just waking up in the unit next door and we heard nothing, knew nothing, until we noticed a large contingent of police and firemen gathering in the courtyard outside of our neighbors door.

Our first thought was that it must be the mother. She looks like she’s well into her 80s if not older and her health has steadily declined with each of the seven years we’ve lived next door. We had been preparing ourselves for years that she would likely pass soon.

But no, it was the daughter. She was a lovely women, always something a little sad and lonely about her but I never thought much of it. It was to be expected right? A woman never married in her 50s and the sole caretaker for an elderly and frail mother. Now I look back on all the missed opportunities. Moments that could have been used to create a real friendship were rushed because I was too busy and had things I needed to do or I was just too tired and exhausted to create another connection with somebody.

My heart hurts for her, for the pain she must have been in to do such a thing. The loneliness. I wish I had been more empathetic, understood how lonely she was and reached out. But it’s too late now.

Another reminder to live every day to the fullest. To reach out to people you see in pain. To at least try to help if you can. And to live without regrets.

Everything around here is still stark white (negative). I feel unhappy about this. Go figure.

So three months have passed and I must say, not a whole lot has changed.

Actually that’s not true. A lot of stuff has changed but the baby-limbo continues unabated.

T started his new school at the end of August and adjusted flawlessly. It is more of a “real school” type environment as opposed to the loving daycare-ish environment he has been in for the past three years. I asked him last night if he likes his old teachers better or his new teachers and fully expected him to say his old teachers (because he LOVES them like family) but he actually said he likes his new teachers better. I asked him why and he said because “they teach better.” Looks like I won’t need to sharpen my tiger mom claws, we’ve got a little tiger cub on our hands already.

He also started jiu jitsu, soccer and starts a new art class this week in addition to swimming. So he is a pretty busy kid now but he seems to love it. The one afternoon he had off last week he was like “why don’t I have anything today?” when I picked him up from school and said we were going home.

It’s really starting to hit me now that I have a kid. Not a baby or even a toddler, but an actual full fledged kid. A kid who told me last week as I dropped him off at school that he didn’t need me to walk him in anymore because he’s a big boy. On the one hand – sweet! curbside drop off ftw- but on the other hand – mah bebe 😭. So you know, a lot of emotions.

And then there’s the aforementioned baby limbo. I’m actually technically in the 2ww right now, but I don’t have much hope for this month as I’m already 12dpo and still getting BFNs. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but since I got BFPs starting at 9dpo with T…

It’s just weird. I’m still in this weird place mentally about having another baby. And now that we’ve sort of actually been trying for a few months now part of me is wondering if there’s an issue. This in turns make me wonder if I should get the plumbing checked out just to make sure it’s all even still working. But I’m half afraid that if we do find an issue that I’ll then start to feel pressure to fix it when the truth is we’re not even totally sure we should have number two. Like we’re both competitive people and I’m afraid being told we can’t do something will make us feel like we have to overcome it even if we’re not sure it’s what’s right for our family.

On the other hand maybe finding out we can’t easily get pregnant again would be the closure we need to just let that idea go altogether? Maybe we would feel a sense of relief that the decision was not really one we could make for ourselves anyway?

Shit’s about to get real repetitive up in here.  I apologize in advance.  But this is what my brain is right now and I really need somewhere to puke it all up so I don’t drown between this rock and hard place in my mind.  

Oh, I know, I’m being a little over dramatic.  It’s not that serious right?  Or is it? 

I’m here on my day off, once again trying to figure out our vacation plans and semi-frozen by indecision and uncertainty.  I HATE living in limbo, I HATE not having a concrete plan.  Mostly I hate not knowing the future.  How dare God not give me the ability to see the future?  Ugh. 

T has been all about wanting a baby sister and then this morning he was like, actually I’d rather have a hamster.  I mean, he’s four, so sure why not, but I think on some level Paul and I have been thinking, okay we’ll try for a baby only because T seems to want a sibling.  But if he’d rather have a hamster, then what?!?  And yes, I realize we’re kind of fucked up for putting the decision on the whims of a four year old.  Maybe this is a sign we should not have any more kids after all.

But like, the idea of T going through his life without siblings, or even cousins his age is tough.  We’re trying to plan these vacations and it’s just SO HARD to coordinate with other families you know?  Everyone’s got their own lives and different things happening, and different limitations and what not.  We know some families with only one kiddo and ideally they’d be our vacation mates, but yeah, it’s just tough sometimes.  I keep regretting that we didn’t try harder like six months ago and maybe now we’d already be well on our way to a #2 that would be semi-close enough in age to be a playmate, but you know what?  I can’t do anything about that now so it’s really just needless self-flagellation at this point.  

Part of me feels like we should just shut it all down. Give away the baby stuff.  Forget about having two kids and move on with the family we already have now.  The family that really and truly is enough for us.  I honestly don’t know why the baby #2 question is still so friggin’ difficult when I know that I’m quite happy with what I have.  Is it greediness?  Is it some invisible societal peer pressure thing where you see people with 2+ kids everywhere so it feels like that’s what I’m supposed to aspire to?  What is it?  I can’t figure it out.  Maybe it’s just a primal evolutionary thing where your body is like, “Have some extras! Just in case!” 

I feel though, like my body, should really just shut the fuck up if that’s what it is though.  My body has not earned the right to demand that it carry more babies.  We just barely got through that last pregnancy by the skin of our teeth, and thank God everyone is here and okay, but truly the idea of being pregnant again kind of scares me.  I am five years older (FIVE YEARS OLDER – HOLY SHIT!) and I feel it.  Or at least, I think I do?  Maybe I’ve always been this exhausted, it’s hard to say now.  My blood pressure isn’t as good and my kidney function is poopier.  Let’s face it, I probably shouldn’t have another baby.

And yet, we still have that fucking crib upstairs.  We still have the infant car seat in the god damn garage.  We still have bottles in the cupboards and a whole fuckton of baby clothes packed away in the closets.  

Something about this is hard to let go of.  So we just haven’t.  

So here I am trying to plan out our vacations for the year (and next year) and it’s bringing up a lot of feelings.  Way more feelings than planning a vacation should ever elicit.  Most people are thinking about a few simple questions, when, where, how much will it cost?  

Me, on the other hand, vacation planning has devolved into an internal struggle about whether or not we should try to have another baby.  My thoughts on this are so jumbled, it will be hard to lay this out in such a way that it comes through as even semi-coherent, but I’ll give it a shot.

So. 

First thing, we are trying to plan a trip to Legoland.  T is four and a half now and he does love to play with us but I just know that everyone will have a better time if he has a playmate his own age to enjoy the park with, and it will be easier for us as parents with creaky knees and limited energy.  Cue guilt for not having a sibling for him like two years ago, when my body was all fucked up and in no position to carry a baby but when it would have given him a sibling in a window of time where they would be able to play with each other on trips like this.  Stupid fucking body, seriously fuck you. 

Then I start thinking, okay if we start trying now, and the truth is we have been “trying” for a few months now, except not really trying, just not not trying?  Anyway, nothing has happened so far and since we only had fun-time once at the veeeeeery beginning of my fertile window this past month, I’m not expecting anything interesting is happening in my uterus at the moment either (except that it’s about to shed it’s lining whee!).  But it’s like, dude, T is four and a half.  Even if I get pregnant next month our kids will be 5+yrs apart, and does that even help us at all with the playmate issue?  Because truthfully at this point, that’s kind of my main reason for wanting to have another baby.

It’s just not the same as when we were trying for T.  Before T every fiber of my being was determined that I would have a baby, I physically needed a baby.  I felt like my world and life would not be complete without one, I felt that from the depths of my heart.  

And now?  I feel pretty content most of the time.  T is my miracle. I feel beyond blessed that he is here, he is healthy, I made it through the pregnancy only slightly more damaged than I was before, and my life is pretty manageable.  We have a decent number of friends with kids his age and classmates who’s parents we enjoy spending time with so it’s not like a problem day to day.  The problem only comes up when I’m vacation planning.  Because then it’s just the three of us. And I think he feels it too because he’s started to ask, “Mommy, when will you make me a brother or sister?” He prefers a sister for the record (I think I would prefer another boy, so we’re not exactly on the same page with that – not that it’s in our control!).  Then I feel guilty.  I love my sister, I loved growing up with her and I love having her in my life now and I hate to think I could be depriving T of that kind of bond.  And I do think he would make an excellent big brother, so there’s that.

Anyway, I’ve been looking for Legoland buddies and trying to shove all that shit out of my head for the time being since Paul and I decided we will continue on half-assedly trying for the time being.  We are both just so ambivalent. I’m sure if we had another baby, we would love the heck out of the baby, but the thought of that first year of newborn/babyhood is daunting and terrifying.  Paying for two private school tuitions is probably not do-able.  Paying for a nanny is probably not exactly doable either but I don’t know.  

Okay, so that’s the Legoland existential crisis #1.  The bigger one is the trip we’re planning for next February to Hawaii.  We’re hoping to do five days of Maui & five days of Aulani.  So again, this would be easy if all we had to worry about were normal vacation logistics but here again, we’re attempting to coordinate the Aulani portion of the trip with a friend with a daughter so that T will have a buddy.  Fine, okay, not too bad there.  

BUT then it occurs to me, holy shit, what if this “not trying trying” leads to an actual pregnancy.  And then I have to start thinking about the actual real consequences of being pregnant and how it affects the ability to travel.  I know there’s a strong possibility that even if everything goes as well as it can, the end of any pregnancy will be…hairy…to say the least.  I won’t feel comfortable flying anywhere after 24w, esp since Maui has a super shitty hospital and Aulani is at least an hour out from the nearest hospital with a high level NICU.  Plus by 28 weeks I’ll be into the bi-weekly monitoring phase of the pregnancy and given how quickly T went from fine to not fine I’m not willing to skip 10 days of monitoring even if it is for Hawaii.  

So I guess I’ll just have to book everything, buy trip insurance and pray a lot.  But then this all brings me back to the original question that I’ve been trying to avoid.  

DO I EVEN WANT ANOTHER BABY?  I kind of feel like no I don’t.  And I feel horribly guilty for saying that because we’re still sort of trying and could get pregnant and then will the baby feel like I didn’t want it?  Because if it does come to exist I will obviously love it with every part of me right?  Literally Paul and I talk about this and neither of us really wants to close the door on it but neither of us are like YES WE TOTALLY WANT ANOTHER BABY!  But then I bring up chucking out the crib and all the baby shit we’ve been saving that’s taking up space in our cramped condo and we. Just. Can’t. A part of us just doesn’t want to let go I guess?  

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, thank you for listening to all the whine.  You deserve a medal. 

I tried to post, I really did, and then the wordpress app got stuck publishing and ate my post and I really don’t feel like retyping it all out again so that’s that. We’ll try this again another day I guess.