I've been thinking, every day, that I'm too dependent on my smartphone. I know for certain that it's enabling me to separate my mind and body, to miss what's going on around me and live in an echo chamber that reinforces what I think I know, bypassing growth opportunities.

It enrages me when I see Nick in "phone mode," too. Extra enragement if I'm ( Read more... )

It's hard to know where I should start this story. 7:30am on Monday, December 10th is a clear dot on the timeline, so I'll begin there. It may be necessary, later, to begin sooner.

I checked into the hospital at the absurd hour of 7:30am. An hour or more before my usual wake time. I had a neatly packed bag of clothes, things to keep me busy, and a ( Read more... )

Well, after getting off to such a nice start documenting my pregnancy here, I moved my venue to a Reddit community. For the sake of completeness, I'm pasting my updates from there below. These are very superficial, but they're something. I may write another entry with more personal details. Also there is a double-focus on the pregnancy and nursing ( Read more... )

Lately Desdemona has been working on the art of negotiation. Her specialty is leveraging the phrase "last time" to get something she wants, one more time. The funny thing is, she often resorts to "last time" before she really needs to. I'm sure she'll fine tune it in the coming months. Sometimes she says it in this adorable way where she takes a ( Read more... )

It's 11:00pm. Desdemona is asleep in her room for the night, for the first time in her life. For the first time since before I was pregnant, so close to 3 years, I'll be falling asleep for the night without any part of me touching my daughter. I miss her. Nick is in the living room, watching her on the monitor and unwinding for the night, unsure of ( Read more... )

Early this year, during a rare moment of free time, I asked Nick what it would take to ease some of the stress in his life and make him feel more happy and energized. This after several years of seemingly unchangeable anxiety and depression. (Stop. I know anxiety and depression may require clinical/therapeutic treatments, and we have pursued ( Read more... )

It's been a difficult summer. Lots of changes taking place that I can't control. It makes me think about the things I can control, and then realize that I can't control those either.

The pregnancy is going well. So well, in fact, that I can't resist a paranoid sense that if I feel this normal, something must be wrong with the baby. Or something ( Read more... )

And the depression is here. I almost feel like I'm back in my first pregnancy; all the effort to think positive and do things differently this time around is irrelevant. I told Nick I feel like I'm alone on a ship that's sailing away from all the people and things I love that make me happy, and there's nothing I can do to turn around. I have a list ( Read more... )

I'm afraid the morning sickness, or as I experience it, the all-the-time-sickness, arrived right on time. I remember lying down 24/7 at this stage with Desdemona, but I'm trying not to do that this time. I am resting when I feel tired (which is a LOT) but when I feel up to it, I try to get out of the house or at least move from room to room. Also ( Read more... )

So far, so good! The only real symptom of pregnancy I've noticed so far (aside from my missed period, which is always nice) is being extremely emotional. I don't know if this didn't happen to me last time, or if I just didn't realize it was happening, but I don't remember it at all. Here are a few things that have made me cry in the last week:

The ( Read more... )