Sanity is precious

These past four days have been some of the most emotionally trying ones of my life. Thursday I was hauled into the Pres' office to talk about all the time I'd been missing due to my "condition". He was pleasant about it, but pointed out that I had gotten paid for all the time I'd missed (32 hours since the beginning of November, it turned out), and that some adjustments might need to be made. (He also asked how the pregnancy was going and I said it was getting difficult. He asked why and I said I was only getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night and he said that was not enough. I told him that I was also starting to feel it affect me in that I was feeling more sluggish and things were taking me longer to do. He said to take it slow and easy. I was thankful for how understanding he was, but I also wonder if he'll remember us talking about that.) I agreed to put together a log of the time I'd missed, and did so right away, thanks to my day planner. I detailed out which days I had appointments, what time they were at, what kind of appointments they were (or if I was just staying home because I wasn't feeling well), how long they were and how many hours I had worked that day. I sent it directly to the Pres because he was the one who'd discussed it with me. Instead of talking to me about it, he sent it to the controller with (apparently) little explanation, because then I was called into the controller's office to explain to him what this log was all about and why I thought the Pres wanted it. Controller mentioned such terms as "docking my pay" and "making up time". I pointed out there must be an office policy on missed days and how many are ok and at which point the time must be made up. He said there was, and it detailed that 7 days per "issue" were allowed. He said he'd have to talk to the Pres about what exactly he wanted to do about this, and that was that. The Pres had left for the day, but the controller talked to him on the phone, according to a co-worker of mine (see how fucked up this is? NO straight lines of communication AT ALL). No one said anything further to me on Thursday or Friday about this. So I GUESS I am in the clear. Except today (Monday) I am home. The shit should hit the fan nicely tomorrow.

On Friday, I was doing filing that I do every single Friday morning and have been doing for months. Well, my superior in the financial dept came in and saw me doing this filing, then so did the controller. Not 10 minutes later, the controller came back into the office where I was filing and asked to see me in his office. He and the financial lady were there, and she was looking all agitated with her hands on her hips and he said "are you aware that we have a deadline of Wednesday?" (Or shit maybe he said June 6th which is tomorrow and in which case I am fucked because there is no way I can get the work they need me to do done by tomorrow morning.) I said yes, because I'd asked the financial lady on the previous Wednesday when the stuff for the deadline needed to be done by. He said, "well we are curious why you are doing FILING when OUR DEADLINE needs to be met.". I said, "I do this filing every Friday morning and having been doing so for months. Usually it takes me half an hour to 45 minutes but today its taking longer because I'm having to do some rearranging as well. But I never spend more than 2 hours doing this." Again, no inter-office communication. I try to just sit quietly and do everything everyone in the different departments is asking of me, but I'm falling behind on it all because I'm just slower than I used to be and now I'm getting squeezed from all side and then I also get tired, dizzy, faint, exhausted, etc. and on Friday I left 1 hour early and got Tomek to pick me up from work. The controller was fine with that probably because the Pres wasn't there that day to witness it.

Friday evening we had a meeting with our new real estate agent. I called her mid-afternoon to confirm that we were meeting at 7 p.m. because at our previous arranged meeting, she forgot and didn't call me until 2 days later to tell me she'd forgotten. It was fine because I'd left her a message saying I couldn't make it and Tomek was working, but she apparently didn't get that message till AFTER she called me those two days later. She agreed to the 7 p.m. meeting, saying she hadn't been sure if it was 7 or 730. So in the few hours between getting home and going to the meeting, I wanted to get groceries and the laundry done and work on our wedding thank-you cards. Instead, Tomek and I fell asleep on the futon all wrapped up in each other (which was WONDERFUL because I rarely can fall asleep with body contact--I have to have my own space and be facing out). When I woke up, I was so drowsy that the farthest I got was to our bed to flop down again. So Tomek did all the laundry and the dishes and I just slept slept slept. We arrived for our meeting at 7 and poured over the listings she had sent us (well Tomek went over them more than I did). Turned out she got held up at a viewing and had trouble with a client of hers, so she was almost an hour late to meet us. When she told us, I understood, but I wished she'd just called us before we were supposed to meet so we'd have known. When she called us back after we called her wondering where she was, her first question was if our meeting was at 7 or 730. I don't think she has a day planner.

And I wonder if we'd get better treatment from realtors if we were SELLING a place in addition to buying one.

The smell of drying laundry wafts through the window every once in a while and it's very comforting.

On Saturday and Sunday Tomek and I had our weekend intensive birthing class, which meant of course that very little if any housework or catching up of anything oat all was going to happen. Tomek had done the laundry, and he did the groceries at 10:30 Friday night when I fell back into bed after our meeting with the realtor. It was such a relief to be unable to do something, but to be able to fall asleep and wake up and it's DONE. Normally I can't sleep if I know all there is to be done. And right now, we have a huge list, and it's totally freaking me out.

Saturday we were up at 7:30 to get to our class from 9:30-5. I didn't think the class would have much of an emotional impact on me, but it did. I'm feeling afraid of the labour pains, of the feeling of another body coming out of me.

We went over the emotional and mental aspects of labour, watched a video where a midwife in Mexico gave birth to her daughter via home water birth. It had me tearing up but I didn't totally cry. Tomek looked closed up to me during most of the class, but he told me later that he'd had to clench his jaw pretty hard on a few occassions to not break down. We discussed what the sequence of labour actually is, what tends to happen when, what it actually is (when the baby's head engages, or drops down into the pelvis, how many contractions per minute to be in "active" labour, the difference between early labour contractions and active labour contractions, and how the baby rotates both internally and externally when it is being born). I learned that in first births, there will usually be a pause when the baby's head comes out, before the rest of the body slips out. The idea of sitting or lying there with just a head poking out of me... I don't know. I don't know what, if anything, I'm going to be able to do to be OK with what is going to happen. Maybe I would be better off without all the graphic detail. It was definitely educational and I feel much more knowledgeable about what is likely going to happen, but I also feel scared, too.

After our lunch on Saturday, we watched a video where women were actually going through labour and giving birth. Watching all those women in such pain--I didn't feel it was empowering at all. The class kind of emphasized women's power in birth and I just couldn't get that feeling. Maybe it will be different once I'm actually in labour, though. I don't know. Right now I just feel so emotionally tangled about all of it, and I don't know who to talk to about it. After the labour video I totally broke down, and I was so glad Tomek was there to hold me tight, even though the movie had been hard for him to watch, too. I don't like crying in front of people I don't know, it's embarrassing. After that, we rehearsed ways of coping with contractions: deep breathing, focusing on some outward point (Tomek's eyes worked best for me), or just thinking about something else. We practiced all these in 60 second spans of time while clenching a chunk of ice in our hand. That's not near the pain of contractions, but it still burned, and it was interesting how different ways of coping worked better than others, and made the time seem to go by more quickly.

When we got home, I was intending to make a meal plan for the week and get some cleaning up and such done. But instead I worked for a few hours on some promo for my parents (which they didn't end up needing right away) and then Tomek and I made an udon noodle salad, which turned out pretty good once we stopped following the instructions. Note: online recipes suck. So, no meal plan done.

We went to bed around 11 p.m., and I fell asleep again wrapped up in him, although I extracted myself about an hour later.

And proceeded to have one of the worst nightmares of my life.

I was in our apartment, and I was about as pregnant as I was now. It seemed to just be the next day in my life. But then I got a phone call saying Tomek had passed away from some kind of infection or cold. The wave of anguish that hit me while sleeping was beyond intense. I could feel my body seizing up in gut-wrenching tears. I tried to stay busy to stave off my impending collapse, and took the garbage out at one point. A guy I know met me at the dumpster and said something about how it would have been better if I had gotten pregnant after Tomek and I were married. That knocked down half of the wall I was putting up to keep the full force of my loss at bay. I returned to our apartment and felt it all rushing in on me. Then I woke up, but it was such a smooth transition from dream to waking that at first I "knew" Tomek wasn't in the bed with me.

But he was. And then all the tears came. I clung to him, and pulled him close to me, feeling the touch of his skin on mine, the warmth of his living, breathing body, heard him asking me in a sleepy startled voice what was wrong... tried to tell him, but just got lost in the shock of him being "back".

We headed out to our second day of the birthing class, and it felt really weird to be continuing on with a schedule after feeling that pain of losing him.

The second day was less heavy as far as seeing women in pain and watching labours. Midway through the morning, our instructor told us to do an exercise where we were to face our parter, take their hands in ours, and tell them why we were glad/thankful that they were going to be the ones with us during the labour and delivery. So I took Tomek's hands, took one look into his eyes, and the tears started all over again. He held me again, stroking my hair and letting me curl into him. I heard other couples around us doing the exercise, and there were scattered bursts of laughter, and everyone seemed so calm about it all... I couldn't be calm about it. Every day I feel so thankful and so lucky that he is in my life, and then to have him standing by me so strongly through all of this, and then through the labour as well, I don't know how to thank him, how to show him how much it means to me.

After the class was over (the rest of which consisted of how to breastfeed, burp and swaddle the baby, as well as drugs that can be offered & taken at the hospital), we were due at Tomek's parents house to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. We stopped back at home first to pick up some things and so Tomek could shave. We arrived at his parents' house at around 8 p.m. and I was exhausted. We were late, of course, so everyone else had already eaten and was waiting for the toasts to begin. The house seemed full of Polish folk. I stood and sat and smiled and sipped, listening to conversations I couldn't understand. We ate quickly and then Tomeks' parents toasted everyone there and each other. Tomek's dad teared up a couple of times, most of all when his wife told him that every year he gets her something and she'd never really gotten him anything and then presented him with a gift which turned out to be a very thick very gold bracelet and chain (something he'd been wanting ever since he was in his 20s I think).
Then a woman brought out her accordian and the music and singing began. At around 9:15 I told Tomek I was so tired I was starting to feel woozy and he looked uncomfortable and said that he had hardly spent time with his family or talked to his brother, who had flown in from the next province over and would be leaving early the next morning. I offered to go lie down in another room while he visited, or maybe he could see if his brother could drive him home once he finished his visiting. He said he'd go talk to his brother, who was outside showing his new car to a friend who had dropped by. I laid down, but there was no way to muffle the accordian music. I watched the minutes tick by until 10:30... 10:45... cried because I felt so damned alone and couldn't walk out there with my face all puffy and Tomek was outside talking to his brother and his friend. So around 11 I went outside and asked for my car key. He then said that we'd leave now, but I just wanted my car key. I wanted to get home whether or not he was going to come with me. He said he'd go say goodbye to everyone and then we'd go. Their stupid friend said something about how I was "glowing" and called me sweetie, but I ignored him. I didn't like appearing like this in front of that guy, or in front of his brother, and that I wasn't going back into the house to say goodbye to his parents was even WORSE. I mean, I look like a total nutcase. I know I must. But was I supposed to say goodbye when it was obvious I had been crying? I don't know. There is no good way that I know of of handling these situations, other than not going out to his parents' place at all when I know I have to be up early to work the next morning. Tomek can function fine on a little bit of sleep. I cannot.

I fell asleep quickly last night when we got home, but felt so drained when I woke up that I called into work to tell them that I wouldn't be in today. So I'm sure there will be more talks and discussions tomorrow, even though I'm already planning to get into work at least an hour early so I can try to get that deadline done on time.

The thing with my difficulty with this pregnancy being mental and physical exhaustion rather than something measurable like high blood pressure is that there is really no way of proving it to anyone. For all I know, I look like a wimp to them, someone who is copping out of work and not meetin deadlines. And it's true that I'm not meeting deadlines. I'm trying, but I just feel so confused most of the time.

And with the ever-growing list of things that Tomek and I need to be doing and handling and finishing, I'm just reeling, drowning in this sea of incompletes. And I really am starting to question myself. I'm starting to confuse myself, I don't know what I'm really feeling and what is just in my head, what is me giving up what is me giving my all. I don't know anymore. And I don't know how to make it right.