Unplanned Parenthood

Hiatus

After I started taking anti-depressants, when Jack was about 6 weeks old, I started to feel much better.  Not great, but better.  Over the last few weeks I've started to feel much, much worse again.

I don't know why, I don't understand why I feel like this.  I feel broken and I'm tired of it.  I'm so sick and tired of feeling less than human.  The anxiety has crept in and my heart pounds as if it's trying to escape my body.  I'm crying again.  Sometimes all day.

Tonight Jack and I are getting on a plane and going to stay with my parents for a bit.  I'm calling my doctor and asking her to change my medication.  I'm going to stop pretending that everything is okay.  It is not okay.  I'm going to lean on my family as much as I can to get a break.  I need to heal.  I'm tired of feeling broken.

I will have Internet access while I'm gone, and I'm sure there will be much navel-gazing, but hopefully it will be interspersed with cute baby pictures.  I'll talk to y'all soon.

RIP My Laptop

The night before last my husband and I were getting ready for bed and he picked up both laptops from the coffee table and, in a horrifying slow motion moment, dropped my pretty, pretty MacBook Pro.

I took it into the Apple store last night and it seems that the hard drive is shot now (something about a needle and a hard drive and something else I didn't quite understand, blah, blah, blah, all I heard was "lost everything"), and because I'm an idiot who didn't back anything up, I have likely lost all of my pictures.  All the pictures of my newborn baby.  Someone pick me up off the floor, please.

I realize how stupid this is and I feel awful.  I'm taking it back in tonight for them to do a full diagnostic (which required an appointment, which I didn't have last night because it was like taking my baby into the emergency room - someone fix this STAT.), so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there is something they can do to recover the pictures.

Lesson learned.  The hard way.  [*insert mournful howling dog sound*]

Sometimes Anger is Motivating, Sometimes it Just Ends in Hysterical Sobbing

Health insurance in this country is abominable.  This whole situation could quite possibly turn me into an advocate for serious healthcare reform.

Let's say, hypothetically of course, that I quit my job to move to Arizona.  I am eligible for COBRA and all my benefits stay the same, if I'm in a state where my HMO has a presence.  Guess what?  Arizona is not one of them.  This means that the only things my COBRA covers are emergency and urgency care.

I'm sorry, is Arizona in a different country?  I'm confused.

This leaves me with two options:  a) fly back to CA for doctor's appointments and, when I actually do go into labor, drive REALLY, REALLY FAST over the state line so I'm covered or b) go live with my grandparents in San Diego for a month or so until the baby is born and we get coverage through my husband (they have a 3 month waiting period).

And you know what?  Both of those options suck.  Not that I don't love my grandparents, of course I do, but spending the last month of my pregnancy living in someone else's house, waiting, pacing and convincing myself that it will be during one of my husband's treks back and forth between Arizona and California that I will go into labor and he will miss the birth of his child.

I...can't even find the words to explain how frustrated I am.  Things are finally moving in the direction of us moving, of there being a resolution to all of this uncertainty, but STILL there are a million and one disaster scenarios and I AM SO SICK OF IT.  I am so sick of it that part of me wants to just pack a backpack and go live with my parents until this whole thing is worked out, which is chicken-shit and of course not what I will do because ultimately I am stronger than that and I support my husband in what he's trying to do and I know that in the end it will all work out and we will have a lovely child and will probably look back on this time and romanticize it as the time when we were young and things were "so hard" and jesus this is a run-on sentence.

Thankfully, I have a wonderful husband who talked me off the ledge this morning, and gave me a dose of rationality through my hysterical sobbing.  The company he's going to work for in AZ is trying to find a "management carve-out" for getting us on health insurance.  There's nothing that indicates that things aren't going to happen as we are currently planning.  But holy shit.  I've never been so sick of thinking about, and living in, uncertainty in my whole life.

When the going gets tough, the tough get organized

No, nothing is resolved. Yes, we are closer to being 100% sure we are moving to AZ. Yes, I'm about to jump out of my freaking skin because ANSWERS. WE HAVE NO ANSWERS. So, how does a crazy, controlling pregnant lady deal with this? LISTS. Or, more acurately: outlines. Yes, that skill that I thought was so 'academic' comes in handy when dealing with large amount of change. I find that I can deal with monumental change better if I compartmentalize it. If I try to think about everything at once, I hyperventilate, cry and then curl up in the fetal position. Which is...unhelpful. Also, it's harder to get up from a heap on the floor when you're 7 months pregnant. And I'm all about ease, which is why I'm wearing flip-flops to work today and I haven't worn make-up in a year. And I rarely make dinner anymore. And sometimes I skip showers and just put my hair in a ponytail.

Wait. What? Oh, lists.

(I also tend to get hyper and frenzied when faced with change. It's pretty wesome for everyone involved.)

So, because I have very little control over my life right now and it all hinges on a start-up company and a VC firm, I'm going to start a mammoth outline. I might post it here if I don't feel self-conscious and crazy after I'm done. First on the list? Health insurance. Because nothing says welcome to motherhood like a $40K c-section bill. I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

Scaring the crap out of myself, because I do it so well

Over the last few months I've been daydreaming about what it will be like when I go into labor.  The beginnings of labor, the trip to the hospital and finally holding our boy.  I have approximately 9872397 possible scenarios in my head and my guess is that not one of them will match the ultimate reality.

I was driving to work this morning and some idiot scenario was playing in my head and it all took a turn for the worse.  I had myself on an operating table and mass chaos in the delivery room, doctors yelling about putting me all the way under, them kicking my husband out of the operating room and suddenly feeling very alone, lots of people in blue scrubs doing doctorly-type things, bright overhead lights.  By the time I exited the freeway my hands were sweating and I was starting to get weepy, I didn't even remember the last few minutes of my commute.

I think it's time to reign in the daydreaming and concentrate on the good things, and also, maybe, the task at hand.  Like driving.

Brown is not as cool as UPS thinks it is

Yesterday was hard. Driving around during the day, I realized that everything is brown. Sure, some things are more of a tan and some are more of a darker brown with a hint of red. But they are brown. And covered in stucco. I feel like a fish out of water. I'm a pacific northwest girl! We don't own umbrellas, we own parkas and use the hoods because it is just easier than dragging around an umbrella everywhere we go. We picnic in the rain, hike in the rain, BBQ in the rain. There is a reason that it's called the Evergreen State. It is very dry here. Very. Like, my skin and sinuses are already protesting and it's only day three. I couldn't picture myself living here and I started to panic. What the hell am I going to do in ARIZONA? I don't belong in the desert. Putting an Irish girl in the sun is like putting a fork in a microwave.

I had a little breakdown (it was little! Only like 20 minutes of sobbing!) and we talked a lot about making this work. I'm willing to at least give it a year. Financially it makes a lot of sense, and if we can save money for a year, that's good. My biggest concern is being isolated and lonely here with a baby (that I have no idea what to do with). Our friend down here has started a 'Mommies group' and now has something like 95 members, so that's one way to meet people. They get together a couple times a week (not everyone at once, usually 20 or so at a time) and have a girls' night out once a month. Generally they are in my age range and now that I'm procreating, we'll be in similar places in our lives. There is good potential for making friends. There is a good culinary school down here if I decided that's what I want to do and good graduate schools if that's what I decide.

My husband feels much the same way - this would not be a first-choice living situation for either of us. We won't get stuck here, I do have faith in that. Today feels a little brighter than yesterday and I think we'll be fine. This is not a life or death situation and if we're really that miserable, we'll find a way to get out of it. Financial stress is frustrating and consuming and this could be a chance to alleviate some of that, and that is worth something. Maybe it's worth a lot.

Trying Not to Panic

Today I received an email from the MD/Owner of my company congratulating me on my pregnancy, but also saying that he'll have to "think over the consequences and details for the office" and that he's "not sure how it will play out."  Which immediately throws me into panic mode because WTF?  What if I lose my job?  I know that I can get on COBRA, but with the loss of this income, how would we pay for COBRA?

Obviously, I'm jumping the gun here and no one is saying 'later sweetheart, good luck with that whole baby thing."  Maybe everything will work out fine.  I'm just not sure how much more uncertainty I can deal with (note to God/Goddess/whoever is up there:  no, that is not a challenge.  It is a rhetorical statement.  Please do not smite me.).

On a positive note, I ate those frosted animal cookies today (with the colorful sprinkles on them?  like we had when we were kids?).  Damn, those things are delicious.