I apologize for not blogging for a month. I have spent most of the last month overwhelmed & undermotivated. And possibly huddled in a corner, rocking & crying. Surprisingly the crying (or really, desire to) is work-related and NOT pregnancy related. Well most of it.
First - I have survived the Geekling's celebratory luncheon. As most of you know, I HATE with a passion showers of any kind. I attend them to support friends & family, but really would rather go to the dentist. Or take my cat to the vet. Or look at pictures of spiders. (shudder) But I also understand that they tend to be a non-optional social convention that family and friends like to attend for major life events. So I had the "brilliant" idea to just have one big shower instead of having 3 - one for each side of the family & one for friends - but apparently, friends and family LIKE to go to these things and I had like 70 people show up. Seriously. What the hell is wrong with you people. Although based on the amount of talking going on while I opened presents, it was just a great place to catch up, and people paid much less attention to me, which I appreciated. Sure, I loved getting to see people that I don't normally get to see, and people that I do get to normally see. I just really struggle with the people I don't know at all, and who don't know (or understand) me. And its all about this pregnancy - which if you don't understand me, makes for VERY awkward conversations. For example: relative I haven't seen in almost 9 years: "OH! You must be so excited!" Me: smiling uncomfortably, "Sure."
Or a relative reading a poem at my shower - which was sprung on me at the last minute - that was pretty much the EPITOME of everything I don't want my parenting experience to be. I fought off an anxiety attack just sitting there smiling politely while a room of 70+ people stared at me while the poem was read, which I shit you not included the line, "The very walls will be silenced too, where once the laughter broke," BECAUSE APPARENTLY HAVING A CHILD MEANS YOU DON'T LAUGH ANYMORE.
I do hope that my guests had fun - even without any games. I mean, seriously. Who came up with the idea of melted chocolates in diapers?! I want to stab them in the face. So we didn't have any games. I just gave away some prizes cuz I like prizes. And my prizes included wine and beer. Cuz I am amazeballs.
Second - I attended our first baby related class - breastfeeding. I plan to breastfeed, barring some sort of inability to do so. The class was nice, but not much I didn't already know or couldn't have googled (how long can you freeze breastmilk?). But I think Jim learned a lot. Mainly that he got to watch videos of BOOBIES. But as I was standing, waiting for the bathroom - really? a 2 stall bathroom nearest the classroom for all the pregnant ladies? really? - I could hear the ladies from my class chatting inside. "Is it your first?" "Us too! Aren't you SOO excited?!" and I immediately felt like a fraud, immediately outside the group. Like all the times in school when I just wished I could blend into the wall, but now my stomach would stick out too far. So it would have to be a bumpy wall.
And then as I sat through the rest of the class and they focused on all the things that can go wrong, and the Geekling decided that recreating the Alien movie in my stomach was a good idea, I started to make plans for which corner I wanted to huddle in until the anxiety passed. (I decided any of them would do.) When I am not being bombarded with all the OH SHIT things that can go wrong, I can remember that apparently women have babies all the time, and have been doing so for something like eleventy billion years. Or twelve. Either or. But the information overload just did me in. And even today, 24 hours later, I find myself diverting my brain when it strays too close to the dangerous territory of remembering that in 8 weeks, I am supposed to have a baby. In fact, just typing that sentence, was too much.
I think I will go to bed now. With some Tylenol PM. And yoga breathing. And wishing for some alcohol.
