the one where i wrote a post for in the trenches

I almost forgot to mention I wrote another post over on www.inthetrenches.com. I'm grateful for the opportunity to write some more, and this is the first of what I hope will be many "top five" lists.

Have you ever seen the movie High Fidelity? Totally one of my all-time favorites. I love basically everything about it and every time I watch it I feel compelled to make top five lists about everything. It's fun to limit yourself to only five of the all-time best whatever.

Anyway, my post is called Five Fabulous Apps for Brand New Mamas! Check it out, let me know what you think, and tell me what your favorite mama apps are! I'm always looking for new ones.

there's beauty in the breakdown

This week I've been thinking about privacy and the Internet and pictures and my family. I don't know entirely how to handle it. I want to write and share things and don't mind if strangers read this here blog and I'd love to get comments on every entry I post. I think the problem is with the very small handful of people that I've crossed paths with one way or another that I would not like to be involved in any way whatsoever in my life having access to details about how things are going. It's selfish and kind of dumb, but I can't help it. I don't think it's entirely ridiculous for the person who called me the most abusive person they ever met and proclaimed they wanted nothing to do with me or my husband to NOT have access to our happiness in any way. I can let go of the conversation and the situation and chalk it up to ridiculousness that is beyond my control, but I don't want my baby exposed to it.

Does that sound retarded? It might. Sometimes I can't tell unless someone points it out for me.

My favorite blogger is Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com. I recently noticed that she never talks about her in-laws although she has mentioned that she lives near them. I read her blog regularly for a few years before I noticed that, so it's not conspicuous at all. I imagine it comes from a place of respect and not in an effort to not include them. When I think about writing in a long term kind of way, that's the approach I want to take. Crazy stories and funny pictures and good times shared without infringing on my entire life or the lives of those I hold dear in my life.

I'm still figuring out how to do that.

But with that said, I just can't contain my giddiness today about having got to watch my baby on a monitor with my husband by my side. Baby C was actually pretty calm for most of the ultrasound. Just at the beginning when the tech was trying to take measurements of the head, s/he was moving right along with the doppler (wand) which made the ultrasound tech laugh. I love this kid! But when she tried to get a really good clear picture of the face for us, Baby C refused to move arms and hands out of the way. This baby is completely adorable though. There are some very chubby cheeks already which I think is safe to say comes straight from Mama. I'm 90% sure the baby has Ki's nose. At one point, the tech was showing us the profile and Ki changed facial expressions and for a split second I was looking at the exact same profile in my husband and up on the monitor. The doctor said she saw my profile in the baby and I just don't know! Those cheeks may be my only claim to being in the room when Baby C was conceived.

I just want to look at the print outs from the ultrasound and show people and talk about the baby. I am supremely boring because of this. I can relate any conversation topic back to the baby or me being pregnant or almost being a mama or baby supplies. I can't help it. I'm one of the pod people. At least my husband doesn't mind. Too much at least.

I will figure all of this out about how much is too much to share and what kinds of pictures I'm willing to post for anyone and everyone to see. There's a lot of beauty in being able to let go and jump in but sometimes it's hard. I do believe I may be the fiercest Mama Bear you ever did see when it comes to my kids. And my husband too actually. Is that such a bad thing?

i have unanswered prayers

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of time at the apartment trying to get things boxed up so we can just be done already. We moved in with my parents three weeks ago I think and everything at the apartment should have been done already, but it's not. There's a tiny bit more to come to the house and then about one load of stuff to go to storage. I'm sick of it all and frustrated that it takes me so long to get anything real accomplished because I'm seven months pregnant and it is taking a toll on my body.

So at one point when I need (ANOTHER) break, I picked up an old journal and started skimming through it. I have a love hate relationship with journaling. I absolutely love it sometimes. I think it's inherently valuable for me to sit with blank paper and a pen and write and get thoughts out of my head on to paper. It helps me be able to concentrate on the actual tasks at hand much better because I either see how plausible it is to take care of or I get all the stupid worries circling my brain out on paper in front of me. I like having a record of things that have happened and I like to read them later and see how I handled the twists and turns of that time or what I was struggling with that is now easy peasy and everything in between. But I absolutely hate the thought of someone else reading them.

Most of my journals are the type that I would be embarrassed if someone I knew were to stumble across them and read from cover to cover. I have been relatively boy crazy since I was a teenager and a lot of my journals are heavy on analysis of what was really meant when a particular boy said something or did something. Embarrassing. My parents and I didn't get along super well while I was in high school especially (as is the case for a lot of people, I imagine) so several of those little notebooks I filled up included some not nice descriptions of what I thought of them. Embarrassing. And actually no longer existent.

There is one entire journal in particular though that I don't ever want anyone to read. That's the one I happened to pick up yesterday afternoon and read essentially from cover to cover. It is uncensored and honest about a bunch of situations that all happened to occur within roughly the same year and I was able to push out of my mind because I wrote all about it in a safe place. I set it aside yesterday and went back to packing and just thought about whether or not I should even keep it anymore. There are far too many good and memorable things recorded on those pages to destroy it just because I don't want anyone else to ever read it.

It's that kind of writing that inspires me to keep doing it. While I don't hope to face those kinds of circumstances ever again, I am proud of myself for making it through and being okay and for having a record of it. I don't necessarily want to have another journal that I am intensely afraid of anyone ever reading, but I do want another journal that is filled from cover to cover with absolute honesty.

This pregnancy has not been like other pregnancies I've heard about. In the beginning it was the diagnosis of high risk that threw me especially since it was coupled with so many doctor appointments and check off points. When I was first just dealing with the start of an unexpected (but very happily accepted) pregnancy that was also high risk, I searched for a book to read by someone who had been through the same thing. I have my fill of medical jargon and understand what is going on but I was hoping there was a narrative style book out there that I could read and not feel so alone. I still haven't found exactly what I was looking for. I decided to write out my story after I have the baby and see if it can help someone.

I think about writing a book that is as honest as my journals have been about everything I've faced during this pregnancy as a way to reach out and touch someone else who has done something similar or to encourage someone that they can face difficulties in their pregnancy because I did and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. It gets scary fast though because as comfortable as I am writing to an anonymous audience, the thought of my mom or grandmother or one of my aunts that I don't talk to much reading all of that about me makes my stomach ache.

There's so much we keep from each other. It's not just me and not just because I'm pregnant right now. I think we all have a small collection of people we are completely honest with at all times and then there's everyone else who we dish out carefully selected snippets of information to. I'm not condemning that because I don't think it's necessarily appropriate for me to answer the question "How is your day going?" with "It'd be so much better if I could just have a really good poo session." even if that is the absolute truth. At the same time though, my sister has three kids, several of my friends have kids, and no one EVER mentioned to me that constipation could be such a huge part of pregnancy. Maybe I could have used that information at the beginning and maybe it doesn't make that much of a difference.

The title comes from the first line of the song "Your Hands" by JJ Heller and it's practically my anthem right now. A lot of people have identified with it as being an encouragement because someone close to them died. I first heard it as I was nervously driving to my first WIC appointment to see if I would be able to enroll and I just sobbed. The song made me feel as though there was someone else out there who had faced a rough situation and didn't have any answers or practical advice but could say she wasn't actually alone while she was facing things and that was the biggest thing I needed.

The idea of being able to write out my experiences as a high risk mama to be with high blood pressure, probable depression, a new husband, and no money gives me the courage to plod along with more confidence. Maybe I can write it all down, edit it, and offer it to someone else who needs to know she isn't alone.

I still don't want anyone to ever read that particular journal.