Here there be dragons

So, no Squidbits. That's pretty much all this "blog" has been for years, and I'm a little at a loss for how to continue. Everything I can think of is probably the sort of stuff I should stop posting about. But I do have a whole sector of my life (work) that is not Squid-focused, and a whole series of biological events going on that are discrete from him as well.

Which are also not interacting with one another optimally at the moment, sadly.

I don't remember being this tired last time around. I have to nap in the afternoon more days than not, regardless of how much sleep I get at night. And even though I go to bed by ten at the latest (sometimes more like 8:30) and Himself and our wonderful Squid-wrangler T take most of the Squidmornings, I still manage 9-10 hours a night at best, which is sort of minimum maintenance level for me even when I'm not pregnant. I use a bite guard to keep from grinding my teeth and giving myself headaches. I use white noise and earplugs to keep various house noises from waking me. I read dull non-fiction before bed (currently working my way through 800-page recounting of the history of the American tobacco industry) or listen to a yoga meditation audiofile. I take hot showers, stretch, and do self-massage. But between the fetus merrily squirming on my bladder, the near-constant heartburn of third trimester pregnancy, and the various waves of anxiety brought on by god-knows-what, I am still not getting enough sleep to get me through the days.

So I nap at work, using the camping mat and blanket I keep under my desk. Which my work knows about and sanctions, but I still don't charge that time to any of my projects, naturally. Which means that I'm running out of vacation and sick leave at a rapid rate.

And even when I am awake, my attention span, focus, and general higher thought processes are not all I'd like them to be. It's not all me; I'm running into some issues at work that I don't want to talk about in detail, but which are exacerbating my feelings of being lost and confused, and a lot of that is beyond my control. But it's true that the sort of bizarrely bovine fog I find myself in these days isn't doing me any favors in a work environment that values me for my ability to think analytically, synthesize information and data, and keep multiple components of complex projects moving forward smoothly.

All of which has me kind of down about the eight hours a day I spend in the office. I love my job in general, my co-workers and the department and company administration are fantastic and supportive, and the work is interesting. But I'm frustrated with my own performance, and I'm the critic who gets the most air time in my head. And I'm frustrated with some of my team dynamics, and I'm pretty sure that the hormonal fluctuations of pregnancy aren't helping me handle those situations with the sort of graceful Zen aplomb I'd like. Er, not that graceful Zen aplomb has ever been a hallmark of my interactions with the world, but I feel like I'm on a shorter string than usual.

Lately, I'm also feeling scared that the sadness that's crept up on me in the past week is somehow a sign that my meds, which have made this pregnancy so much more bearable than the last, are no longer sufficing to keep the blues at bay. I made it through seven months without inexplicable misery and crying, and I even flatter myself that I handled February and March with some sort of panache, but the last five days have been very on-again-off-again iffy, exacerbating everything else.

But that's here and now. There have been so many other wonderful things in the past month that I am not talking about, because I am at a dip in the roller coaster and it's hard to see the big picture from here. But we did pretty well for the three weeks Himself was in Chicago and overseas, managing a trip to LA, outings almost every weekend morning (to toy train exhibits, parks with friends, events, museums, and the like) and relaxed afternoons in the sunshine, orderly get-to-preschool mornings (by dint of help from T and my careful night-before prep of lunches, etc.) and pleasant evenings of errands, swim lessons, cooking, and playtime. Neighbors and friends and T took good care of us, and we leaned on our village hard.

Himself came home three days early to surprise us - best surprise ever - just as I was starting to fray at the edges. It has been great to have him home, though the Squid's behavioral regressions that coincided with Himself's absence did not, as I had hoped, immediately revert to normal. And last weekend we went to brunch and the California Academy of Sciences with one of my dearest friends, in from out of town, and had the playgroup over for Easter egg hunting and bagel breakfast. I feel very blessed to have my life and the people around me.

So, good things too. The fetus continues to have a strong heartbeat and is measuring just about at the 50th percentile, 4.3 pounds and approximately 16" of person-to-be, hanging out upside-down in my uterus. We got to "visit" via ultrasound this week and see cheeks, and wee face, and paw-in-mouth, and yawning, and healthy kidneys and heart and amniotic fluid all normal and everything.

I can't believe I have two months to go, though. I'm as big as I was when I had the Squid, because of the low amniotic fluid problem we had with him, and I'm only going to get bigger. And apparently the placement of the placenta this time is different, too, as well as the resilience of my abdominal walls, which means I can feel every squirm and bonk and flail distinctly, and this is a very busy little proto-person indeed. The whole thing is so uncomfortable! Yuck! And this is an easy pregnancy, all systems more or less normal, and I have wide margins on my life to get the sleep and help I need. I seriously don't know how most people do this. Intelligent design, my ass.

Then again, it's probably good that we have two months to go. Not that we're not "ready" in a material sense - we have all the equipment and stuff we need to get started, thanks to loans from friends, leftovers from Squid, hand-me-downs, gifts, and things we lent out that have been returned. But I'm so totally unready in the larger sense. Not like last time, so much, where D-Day felt like the end of Life As I Knew It and I was terrified of everything that came after, but more like my whole calendar after June 3 is just a giant sepia ocean marked "HERE THERE BE DRAGONS," an unknown territory that I can't even begin to think about or plan for from here. I'm sure we'll be fine, and I'm sure it will be different from last time, and I'm sure things will change, but I have no idea what or how; the surety of unsurety is all I've got.

In the meantime, this weekend we're going to Monterey to see the aquarium and have some awesome family downtime. I'm really looking forward to it; with how much I sleep and how much Himself works and how busy we all are in general, we don't get a lot of time to just enjoy each others' company, and getting away from home and the computers and the loads of laundry and the endless beckoning lists of shit to do will be wonderful.

I can't wait.