Gestational logorrhea: week 19

Next week, Wednesday, midwife visit and then ultrasound at the hospital. A big day in the life of this fetus, the biggest so far. I'm looking forward to seeing the spine, which is what impressed me so much with Jonah. We aren't going to find out the sex, though the Chinese gender prediction chart I consulted (because I couldn't help myself) was right about Jonah, and has a 50/50 chance this time around. (At least, let's hope it's 50/50 and not 33/33/34. Because that would give me nightmares.)

This week, little flutters in there. A weak wave? Backflips? Or just, Thank you for all the chocolate, Mama, and can I have some more now? So much for all the healthy cravings I started out with. Eating has well and truly gone to shit.

This week was Jonah's first full school week. Five consecutive days of packing his bright yellow lunch bag. I never know how much of his lunch will come back intact - today, apparently, his lunch consisted of goldfish crackers and apple juice. He didn't seem especially hungry when he got home, either. Those tiny stomachs get by on fumes. He came home wearing the same clothes he went in with, this week, which is progress, except his diaper was so full two days that he was leaking pee on the walk home. Poor kid. Luckily, he's too young to sense the squalor of that.

I did accomplish 3/4 of a small project this week, involving getting a laundry basket full of random crap out of our bedroom for the first time in probably two years. I still need to finish up. I could have accomplished this task in a single day, if things were well with me. But they aren't. My first full week of semi-employment as a full-time mom started on Monday with my feeling pretty good, but gradually my resolve to feel good and be productive crumbled, and by tonight I was a weepy mess. I'm so happy for Jonah - he enjoys his new environment (even as he drops references to the places he would rather be going with me, in the mornings as he is getting ready for school). But I am not yet happy for myself.

There's a whole cocktail of things responsible for my shitty emotional state (see first paragraph for the hormonal basis). But I concluded tonight that in addition to that, I am simply lonely. For 20 hours of the week, I am suddenly without my 3 foot sidekick, a sidekick who also facilitated my interaction with other people in the world, via playdates or other activities. Even though I've made some efforts, so far I have failed at rustling up even a coffee date for my time off. Which, after a while, has the tendency to make one feel & act like a pariah. A pariah with an increasingly protruding belly and decaying sense of balance.

How I wish I'd kept a more regular blog when I quit my job to stay home with Jonah. I'm sure a lot of this emotional terrain was trod back then, in a different context, and I could be saving myself a lot of aggravation.