Tell Me This is Normal

I feel so incredibly overwhelmed and alone right now.

I started my Happy project to combat this, but it feels like each day gets harder and harder to stay positive and optimistic.  I feel like I’ve been crying for two weeks straight.

Wednesday marks 32 weeks.  Just 8 short weeks until she’s here and I’m so overcome with all the to-do’s left on the list.  I feel like the house is a wreck.  We haven’t been able to buy her furniture for her nursery yet.  We haven’t been able to get her anything yet, really, save a couple of random items here and there.

Stephen got another partial paycheck today.  We were expecting the whole thing so we could catch up on bills and get caught back up to where we needed to  be on our to-do list.  No such luck and it honestly felt like we were blindsided with this.  He doesn’t know when the remainder will be available.  Plus, he has no idea when his next one will come (which, in a normal world, it would be coming this week).  It is so unbelievably stressful to watch due dates go by and late fees accumulate with no way to address it.

The hospital has started calling us asking us where their money is.  Our insurance refuses to cover my maternity because I fell within the stupid 12-month pre-existing condition window.  We fought them.  It didn’t work.  So we have to pay for everything related to my prenatal care out of pocket.  It’s been hell, to put it bluntly.  Now, we received an estimated bill for her delivery and we have no idea how we’re going to pay it in the midst of everything else going on.  And that bill is based on a completely 100% normal, no complications birth.  Now we both hope and pray that her birth is 100% normal with no complications but we aren’t 100% hoping that for her sake which is wrong to me.  We’re 95% hoping that for her sake and another 5% hoping that so we don’t have to owe more money we don’t have.

I feel so guilty for thinking that.  I’m already a bad mother and she isn’t even born yet.

We are better people than this.

My shower is in four weeks.  The excitement I feel for it is marred by the fact that some close friends of mine won’t be there for various reasons.  It just adds to the alone feeling I have through all this.  See, I don’t view a baby shower as a “oh I get to get stuff” party.  I view it as a coming together of friends and family to support a couple in a huge step in their lives.  This is why you usually only see a shower for the first baby and that’s it.  The presents are just bonus and, honestly, I don’t care as much about that as I care about having people stand up and show their support for Stephen and I as we move into a very overwhelming, scary, and unknown part of our lives.  It’s why we made the shower co-ed – so Stephen could have friends there to support him as well.

Stephen and I each deal with stress differently.  I vacillate between angry and crying.  He gets very distant and withdrawn.  Those don’t mesh well.  He wants to work it out in his head or just do something else so he doesn’t have to think about it; and I want someone to hold me and tell me it’s going to be okay or to see some sort of proactive “we’re going to do x, y, and z to see if this works” something.  So the result is we get snippy with each other.  Not good.  Then I feel guilty.

And I know all this stress isn’t good for the baby.  Any time I start to cry, she gets agitated and that makes me feel even worse.

I want to be enjoying this time being pregnant.  I want to be able to pay my bills.  I want to get her things for her nursery.  I want to honestly completely totally look forward to my shower.  I want to spend one day without bad news.  I want to laugh with my husband again.

I just want all of this to be over with.